Community Blog

What do we usually consider love to be? We conventionally "love" based on desire and attachment—unreliable because it is fundamentally about grasping—one of the roots of suffering. This "love" is conditioned on what returns to us. Love with attachment or mixed with expectation, by definition, contains unskillful mind states. At first, the attraction and grasping can feel exciting, which veils the underlying suffering.

Maya Angelou said, “The ache for home lives in all of us—the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” Loving-kindness (metta), Compassion (karuna), Sympathetic Joy (mudita), Equanimity (upekkha). In Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, these four are known as Brahmaviharas—Divine (Brahma) abodes (vihara) or more commonly, high or sublime states of mind/heart—safe home.

The fourth hindrance of restlessness and worry, encountered in meditation and in daily life, is nervous unsettled physical energy, characterized by quickly changing thoughts, anxiety, agitation and worry in the mind, and difficulty sitting still.

Sleepiness, a/k/a sloth and torpor (the phrase admirably describes the state)—is the third of the five hindrances or difficult energies that arise in practice. Training the mind to work with them in meditation is a template for arousing energy for quotidian tasks.

Aversion, the opposite of desire, is the second hindrance encountered in meditation as well as daily life. Anger, fear, boredom and judgment are facets of aversion. Anger is outflowing, expressive, energized; and fear is held in, frozen, imploding—both striking-out against what is happening, wanting to declare it not-to-be-so, separating from it, pushing it away.

The first hindrance is desire for sense pleasure—pleasant sounds, sights, tastes, smells and bodily sensations. Desire in itself is not wrong or a problem—it is the concomitant mentality in which we believe that if we can string together enough pleasant experiences—the right job, relationship, personality, looks, amount of money, etc., we will have a permanently happy life without cease—the “if only...” mentality.