This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome, everyone, to Wednesday Night Dharma Talk at Beginner's Mind Temple. For those of you who might be new, Big hearty welcome. And to those of you online, thank you for being here. I want to thank Anna, our lovely head of practice, for inviting me to give this talk. And to my teacher, Tia, for all of her guidance, wisdom, and extreme patience dealing with me for the last 25 years. And to everyone here at City Center Samba for your dedication to practice.

[01:06]

So I'd like to speak today about my favorite hindrance, which is the second hindrance. There's five. And the second one is ill will or aversion. I'll start with a story. Back when I first began practicing Zen at the Austin Zen Center in 2003, I did my first seven-day session or retreat. The word session is Japanese for something, means something like touching or collecting the body-mind. We're really like retreating into ourselves, if you will. We're taking this backward step and removing as many distractions as possible by going into this intensive meditation retreat. Now, I had never, ever done anything but a one-day sit up to this point. So no one told me to proceed with caution.

[02:15]

So I just dove in and did this retreat, this session. And it was very new for all of us there because we did areyogi. And oreochi is like a ritual way that monks eat out of these three bowls. The first bowl is the Buddha bowl, and that's where the grains go. And then there's a smaller bowl, and then there's a third bowl. And when they're empty, they nest in each other. So everybody was new to doing oreochi, the servers as well as those of us being served. And some of you know this, but there are these hand gestures, right, that some of us... forget, that indicate how much food you want. So I was being served by this person, this woman, call her Amanda. I gave her the signal that I just wanted a little bit, something like this, right? Just wanted a little bit of rice. And I sat there in horror as she just kept like putting rice in my bowl.

[03:20]

Just... What made matters worse was that this was a person who was kind of hanging out with my ex-boyfriend who moved into the Alston Zen Center. So there was already this other filter of, oh, she's doing this on purpose. She's ignoring my hand signal and giving me all this extra rice. That illuminates my mind, huh? So I'm sitting there and she's giving me all this rice. And all these thoughts are zooming through my head. She's doing this on purpose. You know, she's being vindictive or just whatever those thoughts are that were arising of annoyance. And back then I didn't know to, I noticed the thoughts, but I didn't know that they were thoughts like that, that they really mattered at all. Right. Like that they were thoughts of dislike and really they were thoughts of aversion. Right. They were just pushing away.

[04:22]

that I didn't want all this rice. And then, like I said, Stiltero, this is a person serving me who I think doesn't like me, even though I barely even spoke to her. That was another thought that was in my head, that she didn't like me. And so this was really one of my first epiphanies was after we bowed to each other, like we do after you receive the food, and she walked away. And all these thoughts, again, were zooming through, I was getting a little agitated. This was lunchtime. And then I looked down at my Buddha bowl, and guess what? All the rice was still there, even though I had had all these thoughts about the rice, and I wanted all this rice. So there was all these thoughts of resistance, but it didn't change the reality that I still had to eat all this rice. And I wasn't that savvy of an oreo eater to know what to do with the rice that I didn't want to eat, so I was stuck. eating this rice.

[05:23]

And when I noticed that all these thoughts didn't lead to changing the reality of the rice in my bowl, I actually laughed out loud because it was like seeing the mind, you know, seeing the mind creating these stories and seeing how that was a real disconnect from what was going on. And also I had no idea. I'm 99% certain she just didn't understand my little signal and that she was also nervous. serving and also serving me whatever feelings she might have had about me. So since I was new to Zen, I didn't label these thoughts as aversion. Oh, this is the second hindrance of aversion. I'm pushing this away and drop to your breath and all that. But I thought that the laughter definitely helped to break up some of that sense of, my God, this is happening to me, me, me, me. So this is the second hindrance. The other four hindrances are grasping for pursuing sensual desires or pleasures, sloth and torpor or lethargy and drowsiness, and lesslessness and remorse, and then also doubt, like corrosive doubt, not just a regular questioning, but a doubt that sort of corrodes your faith in the Dharma.

[06:49]

And also your faith in your ability to practice the don't. So what do these hindrances hinder? So they hinder our spiritual development and our liberation amid suffering. Amid the suffering of this arising aversion. They distract our minds. They perturb our minds like what was happening to me with this rice. getting too much rice. And they prevent us from realizing the boundlessness, spaciousness of the mind. It's sort of like if the sky kind of held on to every plane and bird and thunder clap and lightning bolt that passed through, that sky would be really cluttered. So these mental afflictions hinder our ability to taste and touch true nature of the mind.

[07:51]

Also, these scriptures, the Buddha scriptures, these hindrances are also sometimes referred to as overwhelmers of the mind or overpowers of wisdom. So they overwhelm our mind and they obscure wisdom. Also, while we're meditating, and even while we're not meditating, but while we're meditating, they disturb, they Our hindrance is to our ability to settle on the cushion, right? To help the body and mind both settle, right? So the calming, the body-mind, so that we can experience insight. And this would be insight into the three marks of existence, that there's suffering in the world, which is also the personal truth, that everything that arises is impermanent, And that it's also the third characteristic or the third quality is that it's not self, that it's not who I am, what's arising.

[08:56]

Just like all that phenomena going through the sky isn't the sky. Sky is not harmed by, well, I guess you could say some way with climate change, we are changing the atmosphere. But the spaciousness of the sky is not harmed by this phenomena, this passing phenomena. So when we're able to, when our mind is not obscured by these hindrances, we're able to clearly know that what's arising in the mind and body is not us, that it's just mental activities or just mental activities, bodily sensations or just bodily sensations, right? So we're experiencing what arises in our sense doors, right? Our eyes, our ears, our nose, our tongue and our body, our skin, as well as the mind as the sixth sense door as unsatisfactory. So they are subject to, they cause dissatisfaction and they also are subject to falling apart.

[10:05]

And that they're not, like I said, who we are. When I was mentioning that I was going to study the five hindrances and give a talk on one of them, some esteemed Zen person said, well, that's not really so Zen. Five hindrances, it's much more of a, at least this person thought, was much more of a paschna or an insight tradition practice. I did come across a mention of the five hindrances in the sixth century text called The Essentials of Buddhist Meditation. It's by this Chan monk, Ji. He dedicates an entire chapter to what he calls the elimination of the hindrances, the chapter's name. And he says that these hindrances, right, that they're desire-based ideas, right? So while we're sitting there in meditation, you get to notice all these thoughts like I did with the Orioki lunch, and they cover over the wholesome mind, right?

[11:11]

They're covering over. So he uses this word cover, coverings. These are five coverings. And then somebody sent me a copy of Eihei Dogen's Hokkyo Qi. So Dogen, for those of you who are unfamiliar, he was a 13th century founder of Soto Zen in Japan. And in this Hokkyo Qi, which is in Chinese, it's his dialogues between Dogen and his teacher, Ru Jing, who is also Chinese. And he studied with Ru Jing in China for two years, 1225 to 1237. And in this particular excerpt, Dogen asks Ru Jing, what is dropping off body and mind? Which is a, I would say, common phrase in Zen, and particularly if you're studying Dogen's teachings. And Ru Jing said, dropping off body and mind is Zazen.

[12:15]

Zazen just means seated meditation. And Rujing says, when we just practice the seated meditation, we part from the five desires and remove the five coverings. So just in this practice of Zazen, those five coverings are removed. And he continues on to say, for the descendants of Buddhas and ancestors, removing even one of the five coverings, or... One of the five desires is a great benefit. It is meeting the Buddha's ancestors. So in this passage, the five desires, as some of you might have surmised, is that the desires that arise from the sense organs, right? The sights and sounds, like I mentioned. So those are referred to as the five desires that we often grasp onto. Oh, I'm always grasping onto the Mini Coopers when I see them. I love Mini Coopers. And also the character, the Chinese character for... The Chinese character that's used for coverings actually literally means like a lid, right?

[13:27]

So it's an actual lid, but in this case, it is a hindrance, right? Spiritual hindrance to cultivating wisdom. So, of course, it's important to study all of these hindrances. But I decided to focus on ill will or aversion because I think it's one of my dispositions. And the Buddha says that even infants display these dispositions. So this disposition of being averse to something or I want that rattle, I want that bottle, I want this. Or maybe most babies are sleeping a lot, so I'm not sure if they're actually being lethargic. There's a lot of ill will in our society today. A lot of ill will. We have lots of wars raging around the world and thousands of people have been killed and there's millions of refugees.

[14:32]

And here already in 2023, we've had about 172 mass shootings in the United States of America. which I'm calling now the divided states of America. And these external divisions, of course, they reflect our own internal divisions, right? Our internal states of aversion and hostility. So the Buddha offered many analogies to demonstrate how ill will affects us and how all the hundred uses actually affect us. And for ill will, he has this image of a bowl of water. that is heated on a fire and starts boiling and bubbling over, right? And that if a person with good eyesight were to look at this bowl of water that's bubbling and bubbling and bubbling, they wouldn't be able to recognize their face, right? So it's distorting our perception.

[15:35]

Not only is it distorting our perception of ourselves, but also then, of course, perception of reality. Reality being all of you, any situation that's arising, the environment, right? Whatever we're perceiving through our sense doors is the reality. So when our awareness, the Buddha says, is possessed and overcome by this ill will or aversion, we're not really able to see what benefits us or what might benefit other people. So in comparison to the violence that's being committed around the world, my being annoyed by this, my getting too much rice, seems pretty innocuous and hardly worth investigating. However, this is kind of how the will starts, right? There is a situation arises, whether it's just in your mind where a lot of the situations arise or in relation to somebody else.

[16:38]

And we start to, the mind starts to proliferate. These thoughts that start off like, oh, there's too much rice can go to, oh, this person is being vindictive because she wants to date my ex-boyfriend and she can't stand me. So it's a slippery slope down that road if we allow those what seem like innocuous thoughts of aversion to allow them to continue proliferating like that. So this book that I'm usually really fortunate to have stumbled across by a Thai forest monk, his name is Ajahn Tiradamo. It's called Working with the Hindrances. He talks about the hindrances and working with the hindrances in a way where we're focusing on the energetic dynamic, the energy dynamic, right? So... This desire for sensual pleasure, as many of us probably have experienced with a grasp of desire.

[17:45]

Like I said, the ill will aversion is this pushing away energy. And then sloth and torpor or lethargy and drowsiness is this collapsing energy. Restlessness and remorse is when we're overstimulated, overactivated with energy. And then this corrosive doubt is like a vacillating energy, right? Sometimes when you can't make certain decisions. So when we can pay attention to all these hindrances, especially while we're meditating and focusing on the hindrance of ill will, what really came up for me in reading Ajahn Taradamo's book is he talks about ill will as an expression of the rejection syndrome. Now I've heard of ill will or anger, like, oh, you're afraid of something or you're afraid of being vulnerable. But I confess that I never quite put together this fear of being vulnerable with the fear of being rejected.

[18:49]

And since I don't usually consider myself a fearful person, that word fear didn't really resonate in that way. But when I read rejection syndrome, I thought, ooh, yeah, I felt that. I felt that right here in my heart center, this rejection syndrome. It really... struck a chord for me, the way that he stated that in his book. So fundamentally, what gives rise to ill will is just an unpleasant sensation or unpleasant thought, something that's causing us discomfort. So it could be a mental or emotional event, right? just like it was for me with the rice. And because I was in this session, this retreat, and I was very new, I mean, I didn't give voice to any of these thoughts, and we were silent, so I couldn't say anything, which is really wonderful, right?

[19:55]

That I was so, as one of the sayings, just being, you know, being confined on this meditation cushion Being able to touch the mind, right, to see all that that was arising was really helpful for me. And had I been able to get up and run out the door, maybe I would have because of what was arising, the agitation and the fact that I was feeling maybe there was even some rejection that I wasn't feeling in my heart because even though I wasn't with this man anymore, I was still feeling a little bit of that like, oh, maybe he's with her now. Yeah, so I was able to, because I was confined like that, to actually have to stay with what was arising, all this uncomfortable mental and physical sensations and thoughts. And of course, if you want to, you know, there's an instinctive reaction to protect the self, right?

[21:02]

That's just for all animals, we move away from pain and we move toward pleasure. So what happens within this rejection syndrome is something uncomfortable in the mind or body or both arises. We recoil or contract from it. And that energy gets stuck. If it doesn't move, if it's not moving through us, it gets stuck. And how we experience or express this contracted pain energy, right, depends on a lot, a lot of. causes and conditions in our lives, right? Considering also how we were conditioned as children. So some of the common reactions to avoiding this rejection wound, which, you know, we also could call trauma, now that most of us are aware of this, of trauma, which wasn't the case when I was growing up in the 70s, is fleeing, fighting.

[22:06]

freezing, or fawning. I had never heard of fawning. Fawning means people-pleasing. Another way to avoid rejection syndrome is to people-please. So whether we're aware of it or not, the stuck pain energy is seeking an outlet, right? Because everything is, energy is flowing all the time, but when it gets constricted and when it's not flowing, it's seeking a way to release itself. And also I feel that You know, part of our journey here in this body-mind is to heal our past karma, right? To heal, transform this karma that we've inherited from our family, our grandparents, our great-grandparents, who knows how far that all goes back. But we're here to heal all this unresolved hurt that we might have inherited from family, society. It's all inter... We can't pull out ourselves from a circumstance.

[23:08]

Everything is interrelated. So like all these hindrances, the still will or aversion can be subtle or gross. And sometimes we don't even notice this aversion until we're in a situation with a person or just in any situation that's new to us. And then all of a sudden, there's some kind of crazy reaction. And so we get triggered by this person or the situation. And depending, again, how we're conditioned, this pushing away energy, some of us will be fighting, fleeing, freezing, or people-pleasing. And the thing is that if we don't take responsibility for whatever reaction is arising, if we say, oh, it's because of this person or this situation, then we're not, we have to follow that person around in order to be liberated, right?

[24:09]

So I think one of the main backward steps in the practice is taking that responsibility, remembering that if our mind becomes unbalanced, it's our responsibility, right? Even though that person might be the trigger, so it's like, it's not accurate to say, well, that person's causing me to be angry. It's like, no, that person is triggering this affliction, and it's here. It's being triggered because it exists here, and I'm responsible for paying attention to it and for healing it. So Ajahn Tiradamo says that it takes a lot of substantial degree of patience and perseverance to to undo this habitual pain contraction that underpins ill will because it goes against all of our ego conditioning, right, that we've cultivated during this lifetime and maybe other lifetimes.

[25:10]

And that the more intense our reaction is, usually the deeper the wound is. And I have this very big story about a friend of mine who said one day when he was, I don't know if it was one day, maybe it was more than one day, when he was feeling upset or angry. I don't know how old he was, maybe five or six. And he went to see his mother and she said, go upstairs and don't come down until you have a smile on your face. Now that feels like a big rejection syndrome to me. Maybe if it just happens once, maybe it's not so bad, but if it's a routine dismissal of how you're feeling, because that's the mother or the caretaker, not able to be with whatever's arising for her in relation to their child. So my friend's anger or upset, or maybe it was just even sadness, I don't know, was dismissed. And it gets stuck.

[26:11]

Again, especially if it happens more than once. So to me, that feels like a very tender place to come down with a need, with an emotion, looking for the person who's taking care of you to meet it to be there with you, but instead you get brushed aside. So I think, of course, I don't know, I can't speak for everyone, of course, but I do feel like that type of rejection or dismissal can really take a long, long time, as Ajahn Saradamo saying to Kiyo. And I think the younger that that happens to us, the more it gets embedded in our psycho-emotional personality. And then it's harder, I think, to unearth. And there's a lot of ways in which that we move away from this unresolved hurt. Of course, the more visible ways, it may be even the way that causes the most immediate harm, is what we would call is anger or rage.

[27:16]

So somebody shouting, you're shouting, or someone shouting at you, right? This is the fighting reaction. But the other... Averse reactions, which may be a little more subtle, but still cause harm. If the way a person's been conditioned is to flee or threes or fawn, it might be that this is expressed in some sort of like simmering resentment or passive aggression. The habitual conflict avoidance or not taking responsibility for yourself. Isolating from others, that way you don't have to worry about interacting with people. Some drug use, which, of course, you can also be a fighter and angry person and use drugs as well. Codependency, criticizing others, and just maybe not even appreciating other people. And, of course, that list goes on and on. So practicing meditation helps us to cultivate the ability to be mindful of our mental states and our bodily sensations.

[28:21]

And, of course, this is key to begin working with any of these hindrances. Because if we're not able to stay put and really be with what's coming up, we won't be able to investigate it. And I remember when I first started practicing, some of the teachers would say, oh, this will deepen and widen the container. Like, what container are you talking about? But they meant me. They meant us. Our ability to stay with uncomfortable, physical, and emotional feelings sensations becomes deeper and wider, the more we practice with what's arising while we're meditating. So without this mindfulness, we won't know when these hindrances are present. And of course, practicing meditation helps us to cultivate this mindfulness. So we need to know when these hindrances are present. We need to observe what triggers them. Because sometimes it just can help.

[29:22]

And the Buddha does say this. It's okay to actually avoid the person during the situation if you're being triggered. So you can avoid the person. But eventually, you know, you can't outrun yourself. You can't outrun your body. So we need to understand what conditions arise to the hindrance. And what actually causes that hindrance to cease or to dissipate. I think that's also really important. Is it here? Oh, what caused it? Oh, look, what made it go away? What helped it to dissipate? And then also trying to prevent, but not suppress, but trying to prevent the arising of these sentences, like with regard to the thoughts of annoyance with too much rice. Again, I could have just really let that run out of control and had some sort of major reaction. right there in the living room, which was our meditation hall at the time.

[30:23]

So it's like paying attention to it before it gets out of hand, before it actually boils over, right? They use that water image. So when we're meditating, part of the practice really is to drop below the thinking mind, right? Drop below those stories that are arising. Because when we start to interact or start to engage those thoughts, It's like proliferating mind is engaging with proliferating mind, and it just starts to continue to proliferate. And by proliferate, I mean just generate stories, ideas, stories, over and over again. So once we can start to really just take time, and I think it goes in phases, practicing with paying attention while we're meditating on whatever emotion sensations are arising in the body, right? This helps transform that karmic energy of suffering, which is what the Hindu masses are.

[31:26]

They're suffering. These conditioned patterns of being and doing that cause harm to ourselves as well as to other people. So for some of us, it doesn't feel so safe to get close to the body and especially maybe to that pain detraction of ill will. So some other ways that we can work with the hindrance of aversion, maybe like sort of tiptoe a little closer to it, is cultivating loving kindness or friendliness toward ourselves or the hindrance when we notice that it's present. I remember there's a book, I believe, by the Tibetan meditation teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche. It's like Smile at Fear. So we could smile at this aversion as it arises that... Or it helps to shift our mental posture a little bit where we're not like being angry at ourselves or being angry. It's extra, extra anger. So that friendliness, that smile can give some space for us to actually be a little bit with that arising version.

[32:32]

Energy, also cultivating friendliness to the person that might be triggering you. And maybe even giving that person a gift. So maybe she recently just got a gift. It might be because you're triggering that person. So that, you know, again, like acting in a way to soften or reduce or not take so seriously these feelings of aversion. Because even though, you know, the object of the aversion really isn't the issue, right? It's here that we have to pay attention to our heart, mind. And then Ajahn Saradamo mentions practicing with the elements and anatomical parts, which I thought was really genius. So if you're feeling triggered by someone, you can say, oh, what part of that person am I angry at? Is it their hair? Is it their fingers? Is it their feet? So just looking at them in this way where we're not saying, oh, I know who that person is.

[33:35]

We're not seeing them as a sixth unit, but we're just going through their parts and saying, oh, well, how could I possibly be angry at someone's hair or at their feet? And then also with the elements, am I angry at the liquid flowing through the person or air, right? Or the element of fire, which essentially is body temperature, right? So I think that helps depersonalize and maybe diffuse some of that aversion energy when we're looking at people that way, because everyone else has, same anatomical parts and all the elements run through all of us. This is again, this looking, taking apart the sense of a solid self or that somehow I'm separate or different from you when we all share the same anatomy and all the elements of the universe run through all of us. So it's a depersonalization. So I thought that was really helpful. And then also reflecting just on the harm that we cause ourselves by holding on to anger, right?

[34:39]

Like, holding that match of anger, and you get burned first, right? Not the person that you're holding the angry match as. So for me, you know, when I practice, when I notice ill will aversion is present, I do my best to, you know, notice the thoughts, like the texture of the thoughts. They might be bracing, they might feel a little volcanic, or maybe they're kind of sluggish, not really engaging the content of them, right? the why or the stories, and then just bringing my mind back to the anchor of the breath. Just bringing the mind back to the breath and also noticing the breath. Are the exhales or inhales fast or slow? So just taking the focus off of the stories that might be stoking that anger and coming back to the body because Zen is a body practice. And this helps to slow the mind, right?

[35:39]

So had I done that with the too much rice situation, maybe some of those thoughts would have slowed and I wouldn't have been so agitated. And I think that this also, as those thoughts slow and the breath maybe gets deeper and deeper in the body, it helps to cool the fan, the flames of aversion. And every time we interrupt whatever habit pattern it is, aren't we'll have a pattern that lessens the intensity, usually, not always, force of that habit pattern, the harmfulness of it, as well as it reduces the frequency of the arising of that hindrance. So if we can clearly know that whatever is arising in our sense doors, that it's not who we are, and that it's just this passing phenomenon, I think it can slowly heal this pain of rejection and remove the armor from our hearts.

[36:40]

And I'll just close with this quote from Suzuki Roshi today, who's upset in mind, beginner in mind, that really, really helps me remember who we all are. Suzuki Roshi says, moment after moment, everyone comes out from nothingness. Moment after moment, everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life. So if we can remember that each moment, each one of us is new, not making people and ourselves into statues, remembering that we're all always changing. And the more that we can stay with the slucks of what's arising in our own body, mind, and not move away from it, cultivates all this spaciousness for us, which means there's more spaciousness for other people just to be who they are and for us to perhaps not react to this beautiful being that's in front of you.

[37:50]

Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:18]

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