36 / 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination

[Shokai]

gate1.jpg
一百八法明門
IPPYAKUHACHI-HOMYOMON
One Hundred and Eight Gates of Dharma-Illumination

• [36] Being without hindrances is a gate of Dharma-illumination; for [with it] the mind is free of doubt.

The 5 Hindrances in Buddhism are mental states that obstruct concentration and insight, especially in meditation, and are:

Sensual Desire (craving pleasure),
Ill Will (hostility/aversion),
Sloth & Torpor (lethargy/drowsiness),
Restlessness & Worry (anxiety/remorse),
Skeptical Doubt (lack of conviction).

Recognizing and working to overcome these states through mindfulness helps purify the mind and progress on the spiritual path, with specific antidotes (like joy or energy) used to counter each.

Explain some of the problems you may have with these and how they make you feel.


合掌,生開
gassho, Shokai
stlah
仁道 生開 / Jindo Shokai
"Open to life in a benevolent way"

[Tenryu]

I mostly meet the hindrances as very ordinary states of mind. Restlessness and doubt are the most familiar ones. Thoughts start circling, asking whether this is right or enough, and in those moments the mind feels slightly tense and divided.

Sloth and torpor show up more subtly, as a kind of flatness or lack of presence rather than tiredness. Ill will and desire appear less often, but when they do, I notice how quickly they narrow my view.

What helps is simply recognizing them without trying to fix anything. When they are seen clearly, they tend to lose their weight. The mind doesn’t become still in a special way, but it feels lighter and less entangled.

Gasshō,
Tenryū
sat&lah

[Tairin]

Thank you Shokai

This Gate brings to mind the lines from the Heart Sutra

With no hindrance of mind,
No hindrance therefore no fear

This is one of my favourite parts of the Heart Sutra. How many obstacles do I put up in my mind? What are those hindrances obstructing?


Tairin
sat today and lah

[dorgan]

The Theravāda tradition provides specific antidotes (pratipakṣa) for each hindrance, drawn primarily from the Nikāyas and systematized in Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga and other commentaries. In the Soto Zen tradition, we learn that we are Buddha. Practice doesn't lead to realization; it is realization manifesting. Each moment of zazen is complete Buddha-activity, not preparation for future attainment. There is no duality, no future-present-past; there is just now, being-time, complete. One does not progress towards enlightenment; one is already Buddha.

Just sit with a hindrance, be mindfully aware of it in daily life, do not dwell on it, let it pass. The practitioner's dilemma of developing skillfulness while accepting that realization is already present in practice (in zazen and in mindfully executed daily life) is a tension that can be set aside as "just is." Return to just sitting and just mindfulness.

The hindrance-free state is not achieved by removing obstacles one by one, but by realizing the fundamental unobstructedness of Buddha-nature itself. When one sits without goal-seeking, without trying to attain or reject anything, the natural state of non-obstruction reveals itself. Doubt dissolves not through the accumulation of certainty, but through the direct experience of practice-realization (shushō-ittō 修証一等). The mind free of doubt is not a mind that possesses definitive answers, but one that has abandoned the subject-object duality that generates uncertainty. It trusts the practice completely - not as belief in a doctrine, but as embodied confidence (shin 信) in the non-dual nature of sitting itself.

What is this existence? What am I? If everything is ceaselessly changing, if "being-time" (uji 有時) means that existence and time are not separate, if there is no stable self to grasp, then what is practicing? Who is sitting zazen? The conceptual mind reaches its limit, but these fundamental questions of existence remain urgent, unanswered, and unresolvable by thought. Dogen wrote: "Great doubt, great awakening". The doubt is "great" because it encompasses one's entire being. It is not localized in a particular question that the intellect might resolve, but pervades one's whole existence. When "great doubt" resolves, it's not that one now knows something one didn't know before. Rather, the entire structure of knowing-and-not-knowing, question-and-answer, collapses. What remains is not certainty in the sense of grasping a truth, but direct, non-dual functioning. No 'I', no 'self', just 'this'.

gassho, david
stlah

[Choujou]

I will admit that I do sometimes struggle with the hindrances… almost each one, with the exception of the last hindrance. This I can honestly say is not an issue for me due to experiences I’ve had along the way, but with the other four I do at times struggle with them. It’s not really a surprise to me since as humans we have an agathokakological nature. ( it was the word of the day and it worked!) There is a story I’ve heard that talks about the two wolves inside us all. One is dark, one is light, and they are constantly at odds with each other. Which one wins? The one you feed…
Part of our practice is to foster compassion, kindness, love, joy… all that is wholesome and good, and to let go of the rest. I have been single for almost a year now, but at times I crave the pleasure of the company of someone who cares and loves me. It was a messy ending… and I still have some negative feelings about it. Not that I wish ill on anyone, but these feelings don’t sit well with me. Unrelated, I sometimes am tired from work or hiking, and drift into drowsy states when I don’t mean to and am really trying to focus… sometimes I get a little frustrated with myself when I get caught up in these webs of hindrance, but like thoughts, I just let go. They are delusions really, desires and expectations that only cause suffering. When I get lost in the hindrances when they arise, it makes me feel off and cloud minded, drowsy, closed off… it also makes me feel a little guilty as I know that I have strayed from where I want to be. But I try to be gentle with myself, forgive, refocus, and bring myself back to center, back to Buddha mind.

Gassho,
Choujou

sat/lah today

[Seikan]

Ah, the hindrances . . . We've gotten to know one another quite well over the years.

My first "line of defense" with the hindrances is to usually to accept them into my awareness and see if they evolve or dissipate (not always successfully). However, another practice I've added since completing my yoga teacher training is to try to cultivate the opposite quality. If I'm experiences of ill will towards anyone/anything, I try to practice metta. If I'm spiraling into a black hole of doubt, I try to find something about the issue at hand that I do feel confident about (at the very least, I focus on how I am confident that I am experiencing doubt—it actually works!).

This technique works better for some hindrances than others, while simply awareness seems to work better for others (like anxiety), but it's good to have a few tools in the toolbox to respond to different situations accordingly.

Gassho,
Seikan
stlah

[Ryūdō-Liúdào]

For me, being without hindrances isn’t about finally achieving some spotless, Zen-master mind. It’s about noticing the usual suspects when they show up and not giving them the keys to the house, both on and off the mat.

Sensual desire and ill will are the two hindrances that still need the most tending. The good news is that years of just sitting and watching what rises and falls have made their early sparks easier to spot. When I notice them forming, I try not to feed them. Let them fizzle instead of throwing logs on the fire. To be fair, that’s pretty much how the other three lost their bite too, hahaha.

Sloth and torpor I handle in a very un-mystical way: I organize my time and just get things done. The more efficiently I work in the present, the more time I have to rest and sit afterward. Motivation through laziness, basically.

Restlessness and worry used to be my biggest problem, but recently, something finally clicked into full understanding: Events are just events. In the bigger picture, everything is unfolding exactly as it does. Like the old farmer and his horse, I’ve stopped judging things as good or bad. Yesterday’s joy becomes tomorrow’s pain, and that pain ripens into more joy. Big suffering often brings big understanding, so why panic when things don’t go my way? As for remorse, what’s done is done. Learn from it and move on.

Skeptical doubt is the easiest one for me. I’ve always leaned into positive skepticism: logic, direct experience, and trial and error instead of blind belief, just as the Buddha suggested in the Kalama Sutta. What I’ve seen for myself lines up pretty well with Zen and Dao. That’s given me a quiet, steady conviction without needing to cling to ideas.

How does all that feel? It's a lot more like I’m surfing the wave instead of arguing with the ocean.

Gasshō,
流道-Ryūdō-Liúdào
Satlah

[Chikyou]

Of all of the five hindrances, there are two that I think I struggle with more than the others. Anxiety is my biggest hindrance, both on and off the cushion. With practice though, it has become less of a problem. Now many days it’s not a problem at all. Ill will is probably the other one I struggle with the most. I have noticed that it’s closely tied to anxiety. If something or someone is triggering anxiety, I lash out at it/them (usually only in my mind). One leads directly to the other.

Gassho,
SatLah,
Chikyō