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Thammajareea Dhamma notebook

Section 04 · The Five Hindrances

The Five Hindrances

The five hindrances named, felt and met: sense desire, ill will, sloth, restlessness and doubt, with the antidotes the canon itself assigns.

Still water in a stone basin holding a few fallen bodhi leaves with late sun crossing the surface in long warm bands

The Satipatthana Sutta and the Anapanasati Sutta both stop to name the five hindrances, and the canon is unusually practical about them: AN 5.51 compares each one to water made undrinkable, SN 46.55 assigns a counter attitude to each, and SN 46.51 explains what feeds them and what starves them. The overview in hindrances and their antidotes keeps those references on one table.

The deep dive into sloth and drowsiness takes the hindrance every lay sitter knows best, the heavy sit after work, and works through posture, light, walk and honesty about sleep debt. No hindrance is treated as an enemy; each is weather with a forecast.

In this section

  1. A single oil lamp burning steady beside a closed notebook on a dark wooden desk with faint evening shapes of cushions behind it

    The five hindrances and their canonical antidotes

    The canon names five clouds over the mind and assigns each a specific counter move. Here are both lists on one table, with the references to check them against.

  2. Open window at dusk with a linen curtain moving slightly inward above a cushion on a wooden floor and a cool lamp switched on nearby

    Sloth and drowsiness: working with the heavy sit

    The after work sit starts foggy and ends in a long blink. Here is the hindrance of heaviness met with posture, light, walking and honesty about sleep.

Two neighbouring doors extend the practice: Meditation Practice and Suttas Made Accessible.