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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello on this Thursday the fourth day of on the topic of the hindrances and

the hindrances and the hindrances are considered to be some of the primary

obstacles to mindfulness and to concentration, really being present here in some way,

and the same time, they're almost universal in human experience. And it's often emphasized that no need to take

them personally, like their personal failings. They're just part and parcel of what

we're born with or come into our life with.

And rather than taking it as enemies or as personal faults, we take them as subjects for mindfulness, for practice, for contemplation, and even for a certain degree of respect,

that these are part of the human condition and part of the even for a certain degree of respect,

that these are part of the human condition

and part of respecting ourselves

is to respect their presence,

and then learn how to overcome their hindering quality.

So there can be a desire that is a hindrance,

and the same desire can be there and not be hindrance.

The same thing with aversion, sloth and torpor, all of them.

And the difference is that when their hindrance were involved with them in some way.

We've succumbed to them, we've given ourselves over to them, we have somehow, you know, become

them. And the task of mindfulness is to step away enough so we're not involved with

them or not caught in their grip. We're not gripping onto them. And so they can be there, but they're not

interfering. So it's not all or nothing for these qualities. It's all or nothing in their hindering qualities, in the sense that we can either have

them as a hindrance or we can see them well enough and clearly enough

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