The Five Hindrances to Practice | Jisho Sara Siebert

“Many Buddhists reject even healthy, compassionate engagement with the world because they haven't figured out how to be in the thick of the world's conditions without developing ill will.”

What if the things that get in the way of our practice aren't signs that we're doing something wrong, but invitations to pay closer attention?

In this dharma talk, Jisho Siebert explores the Buddha's five hindrances: sense desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and skeptical doubt. These familiar states show up both on and off the cushion: we wish the present moment were different, we grow frustrated with ourselves or others, we become caught in anxiety about the future, or doubt our capacity to practice.

Drawing on her own experiences with parenting, worry, and the everyday challenges of being human, Jisho invites us to approach these hindrances with curiosity rather than judgment.

Towards the end of the talk, she introduces the hindrances' “healthy cousins”, the nourishing alternative states that the hindrances themselves point towards when we are able to abandon our grasping of them.

View the images Jisho shares at the end of her talk here.

Jisho Sara Siebert Sensei is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest who was led to Buddhism by the suffering around her and in her work to prevent domestic and sexual violence. Her path to understand suffering and joy led her to Los Angeles – where she first met her teacher, Gengo Akiba Roshi, then to Papua New Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, monasteries in Japan, and Haiti. She is recognized as an International Zen Teacher (Kokusaifukyoshi) by the Soto Shu and teaches at Zen Fields in Ames, Iowa.