Anger is a hindrance
The second hindrance is anger.
The second hindrance is anger. An example from Judo is that if your hand is practically on the table, you can’t hit it very hard. To hit the table very hard, you’ve got to have a space between it and your hand. Well, similarly, anger needs a certain time to get going. It can seem to be instantaneous, but it isn’t. We feel, “Yes, it is. If you’re hit in the face, you feel anger immediately.” No. Often in a thing like Judo, you are hit, sometimes with an elbow in the face. You don’t feel anger, anger comes afterwards.
One of the things the teacher says is that if it’s caught very quickly, and immediately we either make the deep breath, or we turn away or – as one teacher says, we “put up the traffic lights and bring through another stream of traffic.” This is my ordinary stream of mental engagement, then to practise suddenly putting up the red lights and bringing through, for instance, the consideration of the five hindrances just for half a minute. Then again, to go on with adding the figures or polishing the floor or whatever it might be. If we practise like that then at the time of anger, if we’re quick, we can catch ourselves before the anger develops.
Before taking a course of studies, I learnt high-speed shorthand and typing. I had six months before I could go to the university, and this was one of the few sensible decisions I made in my life. I thought it may be useful. At the time, it wasn’t usual for men to study shorthand and typing. Anyway, I got a high speed in shorthand, 160 a minute and really good skill in touch typing. Well, when I came on scene [at Shanti Sadan] the teacher was lecturing twice a week, and for years [they had been taken down] in these painful longhand fractional notes. I was asked if I had shorthand, and so I took these things down, absolutely verbatim, every word. If he repeated himself, well, the repetition was there; if he hesitated over a word, that [was included] etc. It took some time to get me to type it back, but when it was typed back [it was complete].
I only give this as an example because it shows just how these things can develop. A disciple of that teacher, an old lady, came up to me once and said, “This is wonderful work you’re doing. You see, we get complete notes, hundreds of them.” Now, there’s a custom in India to put at the beginning of an undertaking, such as a book, or important document, certain words like ‘Shri’ or [‘padram astu’] – ‘May it be auspicious’. The effect is supposed to be that the deleterious effects of any mistakes that may be in the document will be rectified by the powers that be, if this reverence has been made by this word at the beginning.
She said to me, “Wouldn’t it be nice if at the beginning of your report of the lecture each time, you were to put the four-lettered ‘Shri’; then any mistake wouldn’t have any bad effect on you. That’s a charming thing, isn’t it?” But I said, “What mistake?” So she said, “Well, if there should be a mistake, you see it would be [covered].” “Show me the mistake!” Well, this gradually developed. At the beginning, it didn’t matter a damn to me, but gradually, one hardens, and you seem to be standing on a white marble plinth in a purple robe, standing for the sort of integrity of reporting. You say, “He did not say this word and therefore this word must not be put in; because if you put in one word, people will be putting in 10 words. Then people will be writing prefaces and the whole text will be altered.” You believe you’re standing for great principles, but actually, you’re just being bloody-minded. This was a good experience and I only pass it on. I know that nobody here would ever suffer anything like that, but it can build up. This was an example of the gradual building up of anger.
Sloth – a very well-informed Chinese, a great scholar, who also knew this country extremely well, told me that the character of the people here was ‘lazy angels’. He said, “There’s a tremendous lot of goodwill in Britain, but they are lazy.” So sloth is going to be one of the hindrances that we might be suffering from and one of the forms of sloth is interpretation.
When I read or hear the Buddhist teaching, if I agree with it, I say, “These are the very words, isn’t it wonderful?” These are the very words of the Buddha, coming to me through the living teaching tradition, which has been handed down. But if I disagree with it, I shall say, “Well, wait a minute. This was spoken 2500 years ago, in India, to Indians in their mother tongue – completely different, I think you’ll agree, from Westerners in Britain – and it’s got to be interpreted. And I generally interpret it into the exact opposite.”
One teacher said he was asked, that in the spiritual tradition, it must be much easier to teach people, because they had this absolute obedience to the teacher. Whereas in other subjects, when you teach them, the pupil can say, “Go to hell, I’m not going to do that.” The teacher said, “Yes, they do everything I say, as long as they agree with it. If they don’t agree with it, they interpret it into the opposite.” He said, “As what I’m telling them is nearly always against their habitual ways of thinking, in fact, they do everything I tell them, except what I actually do tell them.”
We tend to say, from this drowsiness and sloth, “Oh, I’m getting on, but the teacher doesn’t inspire me. It’s his fault, he’s got to teach me. Well, he’s not teaching me, you see, so I’m not getting on”. Well now, the traditional attitude is not that the teacher is there to teach, but the pupil is there to learn; and if he doesn’t get on, the fault is in the pupil. But with sloth and drowsiness, this third hindrance, people say, “You should find means of making it more interesting and stimulating.” So in our schools, today, we try and provide more and better facilities. But the fact is you have still got to study, you have still got to learn the same things. The extra facilities don’t help you. I’m only marginally supposed to interest you, but any subject will become difficult at certain periods and then you have to work like mad yourself.
Now this is sloth and one form of it is what used to be called ‘bat monks’. That’s to say, they find that there are differences in the Theravada discipline from the Mahayana discipline. So that when they come to some difficult point that they don’t care for much in the Theravada system, they say, “Well really, I’m Mahayana – so that’s that.” Then of course, if you follow Mahayana, and you find some other things which are almost equally unpleasant or unconvincing or that you don’t agree with, you say, “Oh, of course, really my true soul is in the Theravada, so I won’t do this bit of the Mahayana.”
They’re called bat monks. The bat is like a mouse with wings, isn’t it? When it’s on the ground, it’s among the mice. As mice, there are certain things you’ve got to do in the mouse community. Then it says, “Oh, no, I’m a bird.” It flies up and gets away from all the responsibilities of the mouse community. Then when it gets among the birds there are certain things that it has to do for the bird flock. He says, “Oh, I’m really a mouse, you see.” It avoids both of them, and they’re called bat monks who alternate the discipline according to as they feel. There’s a single sentence: “There’s a firmness and a strength with which men cling to pain, grief, and despair.” [Bhagavad Gita XIII:35?] This is on the sloth hindrance.
Talks in this series are:
1. The five hindrances are desire, anger, sloth, restlessness, and doubt
4. Restlessness and doubt are hindrances
The full talk is The Five Hindrances
© Trevor Leggett