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All Part of the Practice: Obstacles and Their Antidotes

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN

EZRA BAYDA

KAMALA MASTERS

What do you see as the biggest obstacle in meditation practice?

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: Two immediately come to mind. One is the obstacle of not getting to the cushion regularly in the first place. The other, faced by more mature practitioners, is becoming addicted to meditation experiences that masquerade as the fruition of the path but cause a dead end in one’s practice. But perhaps the most haunting obstacle to practice is the way we try to use meditation to fix ourselves rather than to connect with our fundamental humanity and goodness.

EZRA BAYDA: Resistance is an inevitable part of practice life. It comes in many forms, such as not wanting to sit, choosing to spin off into our thoughts, and not wanting to stay with our experience for more than a few moments at a time. A more subtle form of resistance is talking and thinking about practice rather than actually doing it.

The root of all resistance is wanting life to be other than it is. It’s something we have to be honest about—there’s a really big part of ourselves that doesn’t want to wake up, that doesn’t want to be present, that would rather hold on to our habits and illusions and beliefs than do what’s necessary to make us happy. Until we recognize the extent of our resistance, it’s very hard to get beyond it.

KAMALA MASTERS: Meditators often think that practice is all about achieving states of calm and tranquility, and when the opposite comes up, they find themselves wanting something that isn’t happening. Many people also think practice is about sitting still or just getting to the cushion, which is a very low expectation. So one of the obstacles is low expectations and not understanding what the practice is really all about, and the other is having too high expectations about practice. Students can feel inadequate and disappointed in their practice and think they’re doing it wrong.

We tend to think of obstacles as problems rather than as a normal part of our meditation experience. Is that part of the problem?

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: Such a big part of our human nature is rejecting who we are and feeling that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us—that’s what’s called dukkha in the Buddhadharma.

The core of the Buddha’s genius was seeing that our struggle to live life as we think it should be, as opposed to how it actually is, is our fundamental dilemma. And of course we can use practice the same way—as a means of rejecting who we are and trying to create an ideal world instead. It’s difficult to see that all of our turbulence occurs within nonturbulence and goodness. It takes time to understand the totality of our experience. That’s why practice is so subtle and a lifelong journey. It’s not just a challenge for beginners; it’s a challenge however many years we’ve been practicing.

KAMALA MASTERS: As we go deeper, we learn to become more present with subtleties in our practice. We also tend to develop an awareness that’s like a magnifying glass, so obstacles may feel even bigger than what we’ve experienced before. So as our practice matures, we still need people to remind us that this is a natural part of the unfolding of our practice.

EZRA BAYDA: One of the major obstacles in practice is our universal, deep-seated desire to feel a particular way. I think all of us begin with the illusion that if we practice hard we’ll feel better. So when obstacles arise, we automatically see them as impediments and don’t understand the pivotal point that practice is not about feeling any particular way. As long as we view obstacles as obstacles, as something to oppose, we’re going to stay stuck.

One of the most crucial things for students to learn, at any point along the path, is that obstacles are the path. We have such an instinctual aversion to discomfort that when an obstacle arises, we forget to ask the simple question, Can I see this as my path? Whatever comes up is our exact path to freedom, no matter how much of an impediment it seems to be.

What are some of the other obstacles that come up?

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: The six classical obstacles outlined in ninth-century Indian texts are exactly the obstacles I face in my own practice, so that really is testament to the universal experience of meditators. I find it very enriching to realize that meditators from the beginning of time have struggled with falling asleep, with wild, intense, angry, and lustful thoughts, and with dullness of the mind.

KAMALA MASTERS: In the Theravāda tradition there are the five basic hindrances—attachment, aversion, restlessness, doubt, and sloth and torpor. My grandfather teacher, Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma, taught that there are over a thousand defilements. Of course, I can’t remember them all, but they include arrogance, pride, ingratitude, extolling oneself, disparaging others, and indulging in pleasant experiences in our practice.

Once when I was cooking for one of my teachers, Munindraji, I noticed he got a bit annoyed at me because I wasn’t putting in the right herbs. I said, “Munindraji, are you annoyed? Are you upset?” He looked back at me and said, “My path is not yet finished.” I was so relieved when he said that; he was honest about the fact that he was still working to free his mind of greed, hatred, and delusion. That was very reassuring.

EZRA BAYDA: Human beings spend the vast majority of their time in a state of waking sleep, lost in their thoughts, activities, and emotions. Waking sleep is our default position. We walk around asleep, but through conscious efforts we can become more awake.

No matter how strong our aspiration or understanding of practice may be, if we don’t become familiar with the power and magnitude of waking sleep, it will blindside us again and again. So we must learn to see waking sleep in all its forms, in all the ways it manifests within us. The more we see it, over a long period of practice, the less it blindsides us and dictates our behavior. We’re born with our buddha nature intact, but the paradoxical truth is that we live a life of complete sleep unless we’re able to see the nature of that sleep and begin working with it in an intelligent way.

KAMALA MASTERS: Delusion is a kind of baseline; it’s what lies underneath, holding up all other hindrances, fueling our misunderstanding. The potential to be awakened is always within us, but in order to awaken fully to our potential we must be conscious of all the ways delusion manifests.

Doubt can also be a serious obstacle even for longtime practitioners. People who’ve been meditating for decades sometimes confide that they don’t know if it’s doing them any good.

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: In the Shambhala teachings, doubt is considered the greatest obstacle, more so than ignorance, because it makes us fundamentally doubt our own buddha nature, or basic goodness.

According to the Shambhala tradition, we live in an age when people have lost track of that fundamental goodness at the core of who they are. So when people take up practice, they often use it as some kind of self-improvement campaign, as a way to further reject themselves. If meditation becomes a way to express harshness and negativity toward oneself, a sense of hopelessness can creep in. In our Judeo-Christian culture, we have been so shaped by a belief in original sin. People can practice for a long time and feel they’re not benefitting from it because that fundamental obstacle has never been addressed.

EZRA BAYDA: I think self-doubt is a natural part of the path; you can’t enter a practice life without doubting yourself on occasion. But there’s another kind of doubt that I want to mention. In Zen it’s called “the dry spot,” which is when we lose all connection with the aspiration that originally brought us to practice. Usually people hit this after a number of years of practice, when they realize that all the expectations they brought with them, like wanting to become calm or enlightened, haven’t been fulfilled. Discouragement creeps in, and we lose connection with our genuine wish to wake up.

The dry spot is probably the deepest form of doubt because we’re not only doubting ourselves, we’re doubting practice. It’s as if none of it makes sense anymore. But the interesting part is that the doubt itself is the solution. When we are able to see doubt as the path and stay present with it, a much deeper renewal can take place.

Thomas Merton said, “True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossible and the heart has turned to stone.” So it’s really important to understand that dry spots are a very natural part of practice and that they don’t mean we’re a failure on the path.

KAMALA MASTERS: I have experienced doubt as a place where things have broken apart. It feels like something whole has shattered, like a glass dropped on the ground. I have come to realize that this signals a new stage in my practice, a place of crossing a threshold into the unknown.

What about the experience of doubt for someone who’s new to practice?

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: I find that my newer students deal with doubt as if it’s doubt about something in particular—they doubt whether they have found the right teacher or the right practice, or they may doubt some aspects of themselves or the teachings.

EZRA BAYDA: I think the doubt that new practitioners experience is quite different from the kind that long-term practitioners get caught by. What’s really unfortunate is when new practitioners get so caught up in doubting the practice or the teacher or themselves that they leave the practice. They don’t understand that having periods of insecurity and doubt and believing the things that go through your mind is part of what practice is.

I think that when people have practiced long enough, and have gone through a few periods of dry spots, doubt doesn’t impact them in the same way. At some point along the path we can actually welcome the experiences of doubt because we understand them as an opportunity to go deeper. We do not really doubt in the same way. We’re asking ourselves, “What is this?”

KAMALA MASTERS: I’ve found that seasoned practitioners are more spacious around what happens in the terrain of their bodies and minds. There’s usually more flexibility and more ability to see doubts as passing thoughts and not to believe them. Seasoned practitioners have that ability to see everything as more impermanent and impersonal. You see that nothing is going to give you lasting happiness, or unhappiness, so why hang on to them or why push them away?

Let’s look more specifically at how to work with obstacles that arise. Let’s start with dullness. If there’s not much life energy in our practice, what should we do?

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: Dullness is one of the hardest obstacles to work with because it tends to defeat any momentum to do anything about anything. The classical texts say that people who have this kind of dullness need to be around death—to lean into the urgency of life and death as a way to wake themselves up.

But Trungpa Rinpoche said that getting heavy-handed with our dullness will make us retreat into dullness even more. So he advised using a light-handed approach. For instance, if you keep falling asleep on the cushion, just let yourself fall asleep. Eventually you’ll jerk awake, and that kind of natural return to wakefulness works best.

EZRA BAYDA: If someone is experiencing dullness, I don’t think they’re going to want to go out to a cemetery and contemplate death because they’re not motivated at that point—there’s dullness in their motivation as well. So what we recommend is to have the curiosity to study dullness itself. We tell people to just let themselves fall asleep and to study as best they can what it feels like to be dull or tired. How often do we spend time honestly studying what dullness or sleepiness or boredom feel like? When you’re sleepy on the cushion, feel what it’s like in those last few moments before you close your eyes. When you wake up, maybe just a few seconds later, feel what it’s like to wake up from sleep. In doing so, even though there may still be residual dullness, you’re actually being present. I think that’s the best solution, rather than trying to push yourself into a “better experience.”

KAMALA MASTERS: According to the Theravāda tradition, what causes dullness is a lack of investigation. One thing that’s helpful is to ask yourself what other conditions are present. Is there heaviness, lightness, or confusion? Just be aware of whatever the experience is. Also dullness often has a physical component. Standing up helps because we tend to be more alert in that position.

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: In the Mahāmudrā tradition, the approach to practice is to sit for very short sessions, as short as five minutes, to keep the mind engaged and fresh. There’s something wonderful about using really short sessions as a way to reinspire the mind. Making sure that you never sit long enough to get dull begins to ignite a new kind of freshness in your practice, so even if you go back to longer sessions, the quality of freshness remains.

What would you say to practitioners reading this who may feel like their meditation practice has stalled or gone off the rails in some way?

EZRA BAYDA: Life itself is our best teacher, much more so than any living person. Life has a way of constantly putting us up against ourselves, and if we’re fortunate enough to have the desire to keep learning, this adversity is where our deepest awakening takes place. There are certain qualities that we learn on the cushion, like the ability to persevere, to be curious, and to be present, but the deepest learning takes place off the cushion, in learning how to deal with life itself and understanding that adverse circumstances are the path.

JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: We need to remember that meditation practice is not a self-improvement project that is going to proceed according to our plan. When we really step inside our practice, we begin to tune in to who we are underneath it all. The most powerful thing I’ve learned in practice is to tune in to how I actually feel. Our tendency is to either bury or act on feeling but not to actually feel feeling. Here I don’t mean a particular feeling but the felt sense that is underneath all feeling: our beating heart, our humanity, our buddha nature, or basic goodness. The most important thing is to connect with that, and then everything else is just our life. Our path is not a project; it’s life. It’s so powerful to realize that practice is fundamentally choiceless. It’s about being able to connect with our humanity on a more complete level.

KAMALA MASTERS: It’s important to remember to be patient with the unfolding of our practice. When we practice mindful attention, along with honoring the precepts of nonharming and developing the wholesome qualities of the mind, the seeds of liberation are being nourished. In their own time, these seeds will sprout, break ground, and bear fruit. We really can’t rush the process.

Sometimes patience can sound like a command, so it’s helpful to gently remind ourselves to relax around whatever is arising. If that can happen, then clarity, compassion, and liberating wisdom come naturally.