Dan Harris

Seb feels aversion when we make inappropriate jokes.

So that's another of the principal hindrances.

The third would be boredom or restlessness.

I'm not sure exactly, I'm sure Seb could correct me, but I'm not sure, or educate me, I'm sure exactly why these are lumped together because they, for me, experience them in quite different ways.

But boredom is a kind of numbing out or delusion, restlessness.

It's also something I'm very familiar with because I apparently have restless leg syndrome, the dumbest syndrome.

Why can't I get a dignified syndrome?

So restlessness, I often experience.

I don't know if you ever saw, since we're making Gen X references, The Princess Bride, where they have this torture device that just makes you feel, like, gross.

That, for me, is restlessness, this ants in the pants, or as my Jewish grandmother would have said, spielkes, spielkes.

that that's another problem that can emerge in meditation.

Another is doubt.

It's often described as kind of the most insidious.

And now, doubt is not to be confused with a healthy skepticism.

Oh, let's not take everything the teachers say as a commandment or inarguably true.

That's just healthy skepticism, which I would encourage as a journalist, and one of the reasons why I like the Buddha is he encouraged skepticism.

Doubt is more paralytic, a kind of analysis paralysis.

I'm so wrapped up in questioning whether I'm doing this right that I am befogged and stuck.

And I know there's a fifth hindrance that I've missed.

Sloth, yeah, how could I miss that?