The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So welcome to this Monday a darma talk which is now beginning of part two of the introduction to mindfulness

meditation and for this week I would like to talk about the hindrances,

there's five hindrances.

And people who do mindfulness meditation,

one of the kind of standard things to do is to become well familiar with how the

hindrance is working us. And the value is that we want to understand

what hinders our ability to be aware, to be mindful.

And this is a wonderful principle that the very thing that is the obstacle is becomes the

the practice. So rather than letting it remain the obstacle that hinders

awareness because we get pulled into trained thoughts of the

thoughts of the hindrances, we turn around and make the hindrances the object of the mindfulness.

And what's brilliant about that is that it doesn't require

the hindrances to go away to reestablish mindfulness.

We establish mindfulness on the very challenge we have. And this is one of the important principles of

the epauz in general is not an avoidant practice but rather a practice that

turns towards that stands near stands next to what's happening

and able to accompany it, to see it, to know it without becoming it, without being entangled with it. And so rather than being

upset when we can't be mindful, it's just not being able to be mindful is an indication that we need to turn

our attention to something different than we have been paying attention to, to the very thing

that's making it difficult.

So if there's a lot of thinking, for example,

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