How Do I Deal with Aversion?

The following excerpt was taken from a conversation between Ajahn Martin Piyadhammo and one of his students.

I know there are five hindrances to meditation, but my biggest problem is something else—aversion. How do I deal with strong aversion? Aversion isn’t easily seen. If you are aware, if you have sati (Pali; awareness/mind emptiness), you know something is wrong when you feel a very slight contraction of the heart. If the heart isn’t completely open, something is wrong. The center of the citta (Pali; heart/mind) is located close to the physical heart, so if your attention isn’t on the citta at the time something happens, have a look at your physical heart because people feel most comfortable when their hearts are completely open. In the morning, you can sometimes observe your heart hardening up, and that means something is wrong. There’s something you don’t want to see. When the heart closes, it tunes out everything around it, and that’s not the way to be. So the state of the physical heart can be a good barometer of our innermost feelings. If it contracts and pumps faster, you know something is wrong; if it’s quiet everything is fine. Through the action of the heart and lungs, the citta manipulates the body. So if you don’t yet have the ability to stay within the citta and know your real intentions, you can observe the state of the physical heart.

The problem we have with boredom or restlessness is our aversion to them, and that manifests in the physical heart. But when you see aversion, tell yourself that you now have a wonderful object to investigate. You have to get used to all the irritations and painful feelings that arise in meditation. The kilesas (Pali; defilements) come with all sorts of tricks: tiredness, worry, pain, and so on. Restlessness is a very difficult hindrance to deal with because it has no focus, whereas pain is a definite object. There are lots of difficulties to overcome at the beginning, but you have to face them and deal with them in a skillful way. But remember—meditation isn’t about pushing things away; it’s about accepting rather than turning away. I usually talk about dealing with pain, but the process is the same for all kinds of feelings. The first step is to accept the feeling—aversion or anything else—wholeheartedly, ask what it feels like and get to know it. Once you can do that successfully, you can calmly investigate what it is.

When you see aversion, tell yourself that you now have a wonderful object to investigate.

I used to tell my heart to open up, and that was painful. In German there’s a saying that we want to see the truth but we don’t want to know it, and that’s because it’s painful. When the heart closes, it doesn’t want to know about the things it fears or doesn’t want to see or remember. However, when it opens up, it starts to feel them, and it feels them as pain. If you can be patient and become calm, you’ll be aware of just the reality of experience. In that state, if you ask the right question, you might get an answer. But the answer doesn’t come in the form of thoughts but rather as a knowingness. And, by the way, the answer from the knowingness doesn’t come as an “aha” moment. The moment you think “aha,” the knowingness is gone. If you think you know something, that’s only a thought, and thoughts and views can change over time. But in the knowingness, you just know, and it never goes away.

The moment you think “aha,” the knowingness is gone. If you think you know something, that’s only a thought, and thoughts and views can change over time. But in the knowingness, you just know, and it never goes away.

Now, we as ordinary human beings can’t distinguish between knowingness and thought. Knowingness is like a small bird twittering while thought is like an express train, and as long as thoughts are there we’ll never be able to experience the knowingness. The Western mind is trained to look for solutions, but in the spiritual life the solution is to become calm and stop the thoughts in samadhi (Pali; meditative absorption), for then we won’t have a problem. Most of our so-called problems come from thoughts and memories, and when they stop happiness arises. The longer we stay in samadhi, the longer we have a connection to the knowingness, to the truth. But we can’t solve our spiritual problems with thought.

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Excerpted from Signs Along the Path by Ajahn Martin Piyadhammo. Used with permission.