The Six Obstacles To Mindfulness Practice And Their Eight Antidotes

Op het web vond ik een tekst over obstakels in het beoefenen van Mindfulness en hun tegenrecepten. Met dank aan Morbious - http://www.guitarprinciples.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=102&p=814

Obstacles

1) Laziness
A sense of heaviness, no appreciation of one's human existence or of warriorship. Not wanting to cooperate with the descipline of mindfulness: "do I really have to do this?" Absence of exertion, or the joy which sees the meditation cushion as an invitation.

2) Forgetfulness
Once you get to the meditation cushion, forgetting the technique, becoming lost in fantasies.

3) Drowsiness or Depression
Your interior monologue perpetuates itself in low-level muttering patterns. Your fantasies are associated with an animal mentality, or feeling poverty-stricken. Mental fog rather than physical tiredness.

4) Wildness or Craziness
Your interior monologue perpetuates itself by cranking up high drama and obsession. Molehills become mountains. There are three types of wildness, associated with lust, hatred, and regret.

5) Carelessness
Although you recognize obstacles as they come up, you can't be bothered to face them and come back to mindfulness.

6) Lack of Coordination
Through your sitting practice you have begun to be tender and vulnerable to any possibility of distraction. So you either push yourself too hard to "meditate properly", or just give in to distractions.

ANTIDOTES

1) Faith
A basic feeling of the rightness and healthiness of being involved with warriorship. It fits, it works, and it is the right thing for you to do.

2) Respect
A sense of sacredness, i.e., upliftedness, gentleness, and letting go.

3) Effort
Just do it, best you can.

4) Shinjang, or Thoroughly Processed
Making friends with your mind and your practice. Your mind is workable.

5) A folksy Attitude; Natural Mindfulness
The more you practice, the more coming back to mindfulness seems natural and ordinary, almost a habitual pattern. Practice is not felt as something foreign but has begun to be part of your system.

6) Alertness, a Light-handed Warning System
As you become familiar with Drowsiness and Wildness, whenever they occur they are not regarded as obstacles, but as reminder; they trigger a return to wakefulness and cheerful discipline.

7) Return to Mindfulness
Return to one point, this moment. Appreciating the freedom that you can shape your mind through your discipline. Your cheerfulness intensifies your awareness, which brings you back.

8) Equilibrium
A sense of balance, not too tight and not too loose, like the string on a musical instrument (HA!!). Gentle discipline.