Drowsiness, Restlessness, Anxiety, & Doubt

Yesterday morning we discussed strategies for dealing with two of the five hindrances that can get in the way of your concentration: sensual desire and ill will. Today I’d like to discuss strategies for dealing with the remaining three: drowsiness, restlessness and anxiety, and doubt.

• First, drowsiness: There’s a story in the Canon where Ven. Moggallāna, who at that point wasn’t yet awakened, was sitting in meditation, nodding from drowsiness. The Buddha suddenly appeared in front of him and asked him if he was nodding, and Moggallāna said Yes.

You can imagine that the Buddha suddenly appearing in front of him would startle him and wake him up. Can you imagine if you were sitting here nodding in the middle of the afternoon, and suddenly one of the great ajaans suddenly appeared in front of you? That would be enough to wake you up. It would be enough to wake me up. It’s a shame we don’t have some famous ajaans doing that. But we do have the Buddha’s instructions to Moggallāna on how not to fall asleep when you’re meditating.

To begin with, change the object of your meditation. This means that if you’re focusing on the breath, you either change the way you breathe or you change to another topic. You can start thinking thoughts of goodwill, thoughts of death, anything that will wake you up. I’ve found it useful, when focusing on the breath, to take longer in-breaths and to change the spot on which I’m focused with every three breaths: three breaths at the navel, three breaths ay the solar plexus, three breaths in the middle of the chest and so on, going systematically through the body like that.

Another tactic is to ask yourself, “What are the physical symptoms of drowsiness as you’re experiencing them right now?” Taking an interest in things like this may be enough to wake you up.

The second technique would be to repeat some chants that you’ve memorized. If you haven’t memorized any chants, repeat a passage of poetry you may have memorized, something with a wise message. And while you’re repeating these things, you can think about their meaning. If sitting with others, do this quietly in your mind. If you’re sitting alone, you can repeat it out loud. The important thing is that you don’t call up an old song you may remember that will pull you out of meditation.

The third technique, the Buddha said, is to rub your arms, pull your earlobes, get up, and wash your face. You can do walking meditation. Ajaan Chah says that if walking meditation isn’t enough to wake you up, try doing it backwards. The fear of running into things will be enough to wake you up. Sometimes in Thailand, you hear people recommending that you sit at a place—say, at the edge of a wall, or at the edge of a precipice—where the fear of falling down will be enough to wake you up. I tried that once. I almost fell off, so I don’t recommend it.

If you’re still drowsy, it’s a sign that you need some sleep. The important thing is that you don’t give in to drowsiness right away. When you do lie down to sleep, resolve that you’ll get up as soon as you wake up. If you give in to drowsiness right away, it’ll come earlier and earlier and eat into your meditation time. Remind yourself that drowsiness can come from boredom or it can be one of the mind’s tricks to hide something from itself. In other words, part of the mind may sense an issue or a memory coming up, one that it doesn’t want to deal with, so it makes you drowsy as a diversionary tactic. This means that if you can fight off the drowsiness, you may get to see something that part of the mind has been hiding from you. So let the desire to know help you resist falling asleep.

• The next hindrance is restlessness and anxiety. Restlessness is when you’re worried about something in the future. Anxiety is when you recall something unskillful you did in the past. When you’re worried about the future, part of the mind will tell you that the more you worry, the better prepared you’ll be. And it is true that we should learn to prepare ourselves for future dangers. This is part of the quality called heedfulness, which the Buddha praised as the root of all skillful qualities. So, if there is a specific issue you have to prepare for, you can devote the last few minutes of your meditation session to thinking it through. At that point, the mind is rested and calm and can think more clearly about what might be the best way to prepare for the future.

But while you’re trying to get the mind into concentration, you cannot let thoughts like this invade the mind. They may accuse you of being irresponsible, but when you promise to take them up at the end of the meditation, their accusations are groundless.

At the same time, you can remind yourself that the future contains many variables that you cannot anticipate, no matter how much you worry about them. But you do know that you’ll need your powers of mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment to respond skillfully to the unexpected. That way, you can think quickly on your feet. So when you’re developing these qualities in your meditation, you’re not being irresponsible at all. You’re preparing for the future in the best way possible. And of course, if you spend a lot of time worrying, that takes away the energy that you’re going to need in order to respond skillfully to the future.

As for thoughts of anxiety over mistakes you’ve made in the past, you have to remember, one, you can’t go back to change them. And two, remorse won’t undo the mistake. You’ve probably seen what I call the guilty dog syndrome. You come home. Your dog has pissed on the carpet. It’s lying on its back and wagging its tail to show that it’s really, really, really sorry, hoping that you’ll forgive it. Well, kamma doesn’t work like that. No matter how much you lie on your back and wag your tail, kamma will still have its effect.

The best course of action is, one, recognize the mistake. Two, resolve not to repeat it. And then three, spread thoughts of goodwill and the other brahma-vihāras for all. Start with goodwill for yourself, for the person you wronged, and then for all beings. Goodwill for yourself is so that you don’t beat yourself up unnecessarily. Goodwill for the person you wronged and for all beings is to remind yourself you really don’t want to harm anybody ever again. Then you spread thoughts of equanimity. Remember that everyone has made mistakes. If the world is a stage, everyone is ad-libbing his lines—and most people are really terrible at improv. The best course of action is to have goodwill for all and do what you can to get out of here.

• Then there’s doubt. Traditionally it’s divided into two sorts: doubt about the Dhamma and doubt about your ability to practice it. I’ve found that a more pertinent way of dividing doubt into two sorts is this: One is the doubt that wants to know, and the other is the doubt that doesn’t care—that says, “I don’t want to bother with this,” so you come up with all sorts of reasons for not practicing.

In the case of doubt about the Dhamma or yourself that wants to know, tell yourself, “Here’s your chance to explore whether what the Buddha said is true about developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones.” Regard the meditation as an experiment. Only when you conduct a fair experiment can you know the truth. And only if you try the path will you know whether or not you’re capable of doing it.

If nothing else, develop thoughts of goodwill for all. You know that that’s skillful and you know that you can do it.

It’s also useful to regard the meditation as a game. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “Play at the meditation.” We’re not talking about little kids just playing around. We’re talking about professional athletes playing to win. But regard it as a game. Otherwise, it gets too serious and grim.

Doubts can also come because you get discouraged about how slow your progress is. Remind yourself of Ajaan Lee’s image of trees. Some trees grow fast; others grow more slowly. Banana trees grow really fast. Oaks grow slowly. If you’re an oak, you don’t want to compete with a banana tree, because you know that banana trees are going to die before you do. They’re empty inside and very weak. Slow-growing trees are stronger and last longer. They have more branches and they give more fruit. So console yourself with that thought.

Ajaan Fuang once talked about how there are two types of meditators: those who think too much and those who don’t think enough. Those who think just the right amount don’t exist. He said that the ones he was worried about were the ones who think too much, because they can get easily discouraged. However, when their mind does settle down, they’ve learned a lot about their mind in the course of getting it under control. When they run into a problem, they know, “Oh, I’ve dealt with this problem before. This is how I solved it.”

People who don’t think enough find it easier for their minds to settle down in the beginning, but they really don’t know why it settled down. On the days when the mind is recalcitrant and refuses to settle down, they don’t know what to do. If you belong to the first type, remind yourself that when concentration comes, you’ll have a better sense of the ins and outs of your mind.

As for the doubt that doesn’t want to know, that’s basically laziness. You have to tell yourself, “Here’s a chance to relieve your sufferings. Can’t you at least give it a try?” The Buddha isn’t forcing you to take it all the way. You’re free to stop at whatever point you feel satisfied. Just be careful that you don’t sell yourself short and become satisfied too easily. The dangers of aging, illness, and death, even in this lifetime, don’t play around. They’re serious, and you should be serious about wanting to be free from them—serious, but again, not grim. You’ll notice that the Buddha and all the great ajaans have really good senses of humor. Just give importance to the things that really are important: the desire for true happiness that’s harmless. That’s when you can say that you really love yourself.

For an example of the Buddha’s humor: One time the Buddha compared brahmans with dogs, and the dogs came out better. He started by saying, “In the old days, brahmans didn’t handle money, and dogs didn’t handle money. Nowadays, some brahmans handle money, but dogs still don’t handle money. In the old days, brahmans didn’t have sex with non-brahmans, and dogs didn’t have sex with non-dogs. Nowadays, brahmans will have sex with non-brahmans, but dogs still will not have sex with non-dogs.”

As for the ajaans, Ajaan Mun had a reputation for being very strict and very serious, but Ajaan Fuang liked to tell stories of Ajaan Mun’s humor. When Ajaan Fuang went to stay with Ajaan Mun, he was a young monk and fairly good-looking. There was a community of nuns who lived down the road from where Ajaan Mun was staying, and the monks would go there for alms every day, as part of their alms round. There was one young nun who took a liking to Ajaan Fuang. She would knit little things for his spoons and fix central Thai food for him.

Ajaan Mun noticed this. So, first he wanted to check out Ajaan Fuang to see if Ajaan Fuang was interested. Ajaan Fuang was not interested. So then Ajaan Mun decided it was time to help the nun. There was one time when the nuns came for some instruction. Ajaan Mun started out by asking if they were observing the eight precepts properly. Then he told a story of Lady Visākhā, who was one of the Buddha’s lay disciples. She saw groups of people observing the eight precepts, so she wanted to know why. First she went to a group of old people and asked them why they were observing the eight precepts. They said, “We’re observing the eight precepts because we want to go to heaven.” Then she went to other groups and asked them their reasons. Finally she got to a group of young women. “Why were they observing the eight precepts?” They said, “We want something better than heaven. We want a husband.”

That was the end of the special knitted things and the special central Thai food.

The point of this is that if you learn to laugh at your defilements, it makes it a lot easier to deal with them.