What is this study group about?
Five Hindrances
In the Buddhist tradition, the Five Hindrances are seen as obstacles in your meditation practice, but they also affect you in your daily life. Wikipedia gives a concise summary:
Sensory desire: the particular type of wanting that seeks for happiness through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and physical feeling.
Ill-will: all kinds of thought related to wanting to reject; feelings of hostility, resentment, hatred and bitterness.
Sloth-and-torpor: heaviness of body and dullness of mind
Restlessness-and-worry: the inability to calm the mind
Doubt: lack of conviction or trust
In this course, we are going to study all five of them in detail, with the goal of developing a more healthy relationship with all of them.
Flipped classroom
This study group follows a flipped classroom structure, which means the following:
You will listen or read the main teachings at home.
The group gatherings are used for discussion and clarification.
A gathering will consist of the following:
We discuss how last week's practice went.
We meditate together.
Someone gives a summary of this week's material.
We discuss this week's material.
And you get some homework for next week, which means incorporating something new into your meditation practice.
Why a study group?
Developing a quality course takes a lot of expertise, not only in the subject at hand but also in devising a curriculum. My ego thinks I could do it, but luckily for you, I was lazy enough to find a better solution.
In this modern-day we are fortunate when it comes to meditation. Some of the best meditation teachers in the world have been recorded and are freely available online, so you can be taught by all of them. At no point in history has there been more information available to develop an introspective practice.
That is why this course ended up being a study group—studying a beautiful course made by Gill Fronsdall:
Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California and the Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz, California. He has been teaching since 1990. Gil has practiced Zen and Vipassana since 1975 and has a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Stanford. He has trained in both the Japanese Soto Zen tradition and the Insight Meditation lineage of Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia.
So, during this course Gill Fronsdall will our teacher, and we will try to make sense of him together.
Why you should join?
You might wonder, if this course of Gill Fronsdall is freely available online, why join this study group? I could do it in my own time!
True, you could do that, but joining a study group offers some benefits.
A group creates some accountability. While you can study basically any subject at home, it is often very difficult to stick with it. In this study group we can keep each other motivated.
When you study alone, you can't reflect on your experiences with a group. Sharing your practice can be scary, but it is also helpful—we might be able to learn something from each other.
If you enjoy the exploration of consciousness, it will definitely be more fun doing it together!
Last updated