Image: Source unknown, help us credit the illustrator!‍

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.

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Images Jisho shares during her talk:

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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.

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‍MUSIC

‍Heart Sutra by Kanho Yakushiji – Buddhist priest and musician of the Rinzai sect and Imaji temple in Imabari, Japan. In 2003, he formed “KISSAQUO”, a songwriting duo based in Kyoto.