Five hindrances As Enemies

Five hindrances As Enemies

          The five hindrances known as hindrances (nīvaraṇa), defile, debase and agitate the mind to be restless, distracted, wavering and wandering from one sense object to another. They make us heedless and forgetful to carry out meritorious deeds. They hinder and prevent the arising of wholesome thoughts, good deeds jhāna and maggas. So they are our greatest enemies. We must wrestle with them all time in order to suppress them and drive them away from the mind. The represent the following immoral mental factors (akusala-cetasikas):

1.     Kāmacchanda: sense-desire or greed (lobha); it influences the mind most of the time to crave for sensual pleasure and to wander from one sense-object to another.

2.     Vyāpada: ill-will, anger or hatred (dosa); it overwhelms and burn the mind when one is angry or dissatisfied.

3.     Thīna-middha: sloth and torpor; they make the mind full, morbid, inactive, lazy and drowsy.

4.     Uddhacca-kukkucca: restlessness and remorse; they make the mind restless like a flag fluttering in the wind and remorseful for ones wrong doing.

5.     Vicikicchā: skeptical doubt or perplexity; it makes the mind doubtful, indecisive, wavering and perplexed obstructing wholesome thoughts and meritorious deeds.

          In the beautiful similes given by the Buddha in Aṅguttara Nikāya, sense desire is compared with water mixed with manifold colors, ill-will with boiling water, sloth and torpor with water covered with mosses, restlessness and remorse with agitated water whipped by the wind, and skeptical doubt with muddy and turbid water.

          Just as in such water one cannot perceive one’s own reflection, so also in the presence of these five mental hindrances, one cannot clearly discern one’s own benefit, or that of others, nor that of both.

Paṭṭhāna

(3) purimā purimā kusalā dhammā pacchimānaṃ pacchimānaṃ abyākatānaṃ dhammānaṃ upanissayapaccayena paccayo

-Preceding moral states are related to subsequent in terminate states by the force of strong-dependence condition.

(4) Purima  purimā purimā akusalā dhammā pacchimānaṃ pacchimānaṃakusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ upanissayapaccayena paccayo

-Preceding moral states are related to subsequent immoral states by the force of strong-dependence condition.

(5) Purima  purimā purimā akusalā dhammā pacchimānaṃ pacchimānaṃ kusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ kesiñci upanissayapaccayena paccayo

-Preceding immoral states are related to subsequent immoral states not immediately by the force of strong-dependence condition

(6) Purimā purimā akusalā dhammā pacchimānaṃ pacchimānaṃ abyākatānaṃ dhammānaṃ upanissayapaccayena paccayo

-Preceding moral states are related to subsequent indeterminate states   by the force of strong-dependence condition

DEMERIT is greater for a person who commits sins inadvertently.

8. The King said: ‘Whose, Nāgasena, is the greater demerit - his who sins consciously, or his who sins inadvertently?’

‘He, who sins inadvertently, O King, has the greater demerit.’

‘In that case, reverend Sir, we shall punish doubly any of our family or our court who do wrong unintentionally.

‘But what do you think, O king? If one man was to seize hold intentionally of a fiery mass of metal blowing with heat, and another were to seize hold of it unintentionally, which would be more burnt?’

‘The one who did not know what he was doing.’

‘Well, it is just the same with the man who does wrong.’

‘Very good, Venerable Nāgasena’

THE WAY not to increase the demerit.

          He who does wrong, O King, comes to feel remorse, and acknowledges his evil-doing. So demerit does not increase.