Lam-rim 82: Forgetfulness, Being Unalert, Mental Wandering

We’ve completed our discussion of the initial scope. Without going into great detail about that, we looked at the precious human rebirth with all the freedoms that we have, although they are only temporary respites from the worst states. We also looked at all the opportunities that enrich our lives and saw how difficult they and their causes are to attain. Then, we thought of how easy it would be to lose these opportunities. In fact, we will lose this precious human rebirth at the time of death. Death will come for sure, but we can never tell when. The only thing that will be of any help will be any positive habits that we’ve built up and the preventive measures that we’ve taken to avoid worse rebirths. 

We looked at the worst rebirths states: the hell realms, the realm of the clutching ghosts, and the animal realm. How awful it would be to be reborn in one of these realms. We are afraid of that happening. We really dread it. But still, we don’t feel helpless and hopeless because we see that there is a way to avoid that by putting a safe direction in our lives, that of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This means that we aim to achieve a true stopping of the causes not only of worse rebirths but rebirth in general and also to gain all the realizations that will bring that stopping about and that result in that stopping, which the Buddhas have done in full and the Sangha have done in part. The initial way to go in that direction is to avoid destructive behavior. That brought us to the whole discussion of karma.

On the intermediate scope, we saw that even with better rebirths, we would continue to have different types of suffering. We looked at the sufferings of samsara in general and also the specific sufferings of the god realms, the demi-god realms (the asuras), and the human realm. This is quite awful as well. If we want to get rid of that and the basis for that, our uncontrollably recurring rebirths, we need to understand the causes of all these different types of suffering. We’ve already looked at destructive behavior and karma as a cause. What is behind that are the disturbing emotions and attitudes. 

We’ve looked at the six root disturbing emotions and are nearly finished with the 20 auxiliary, or subsidiary, ones. Without going through the list again, we are up to the last three of these.

Number 18 is forgetfulness. 

• Based on the recollection of something toward which we have a disturbing emotion or attitude, forgetfulness is losing our focus so that it will wander to a disturbing object. It serves as a basis for mental wandering (which is primarily an obstacle to concentration).

Forgetting in a Western sense usually refers to not being able to remember something, like not remembering somebody’s name. However, that’s not what this refers to. This refers to mindfulness, the mental glue that holds us to an object of focus. When we are being forgetful, we are recalling something toward which we have a disturbing emotion or attitude. We are thinking about someone or something that we’re attached to or annoyed with or someone that we’re jealous of. We recall that person or object and, so, lose our object of focus. It’s basically forgetting to stay focused on the object. 

That’s the intent of this disturbing emotion because it makes us lose hold onto something constructive. As it says, it’s the basis for mental wandering, for going off to this other object. Obviously, it’s a troublemaker. It is basically just letting go.

Participant: Is this the opposite of mindfulness?

Dr. Berzin: No, this is the actual letting go of something that we were holding onto. Not being mindful is not retaining. This is a more active letting go because of being attracted to something else. It’s quite a subtle thing to recognize when we are letting go of holding onto something positive.

Think about that and think of why that would produce more suffering than not remembering somebody’s name, which is what we usually call forgetfulness.                                                                       

[meditation]

Participant: If we’re trying to hold onto these positive mental activities, actions, or words, then we’re not going to build up any merit, any positive force. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. If we’re trying to do something positive and we can’t hold onto it and stay with it, if we’re constantly losing it, then we’re not able to build up any positive force. 

Not being able to remember somebody’s name or all the items on a list is one thing. But not remembering to apply an opponent when we have a disturbing emotion, for example, is discussed as an obstacle. It’s just that it is not the disturbing emotion of forgetfulness the way that it is defined here. It certainly is a troublemaker as well not to think of applying something when we need to. I suppose that’s a form of mental dullness – being unable to generate an opponent state of mind. Of course, there are two situations. One is that we try to generate an opponent state of mind and can’t, like what we discussed about trying to meditate on compassion and not feeling anything. The other is that we don’t even try because we don’t remember to try to do it. 

Even though we don’t find all the items that we’ve just mentioned in these lists, I think it’s very important to think of different types of disturbing states of mind in terms of what we need to work on.

Try to recall a situation in which you’re trying to focus on something positive, even in your work, and you lose mental hold of it. Can you distinguish all the different factors that are involved in that?

[meditation]

Participant: I usually only realize it when I’m already off the road.

Dr. Berzin: That’s true. That’s why alertness is very important. The next disturbing emotion here is being unalert. We have to be able to detect when we’ve lost our mental hold, when we’re just wandering, spaced out, or dull.

Participant: The object before becomes a bit unclear. 

Dr. Berzin: That’s what we would call indecisive. It’s non-determining in that we’re not decisive about the object. It becomes stale, not fresh, to use the variables discussed in concentration and valid cognition theory. We’re no longer decisively focused, determining that this is the object. It’s not clear. And there can be different disturbing emotions that, in a sense, cause the mental hold or attention to drop.

It could be, as they state here, desire, anger or naivety, naivety in the sense of thinking that this isn’t really important. It can also be boredom. What’s boredom? That doesn’t seem to be discussed.

Participant: The mind craves input or entertainment, no?

Dr. Berzin: That follows from being bored. Isn’t boredom a step before that?

Participant: Is it a lack of interest or freshness?

Dr. Berzin: Not fresh could simply be that we’ve become a little bit dull. Boredom has more of an emotional impact to it, doesn’t it?

Participant: Is it that we want to get away from something?

Dr. Berzin: No, I think that boredom is when the level of interest isn’t there or is very low. 

Does something have to be entertaining to be interesting? Entertaining is another difficult thing to define. Or fun. What’s fun? It’s difficult to define, and certainly, different people have different notions of what fun is. But the definition of fun isn’t just something we like. To say that it’s entertaining, what does that mean? Does life have to be entertaining?

Participant: Otherwise, it’s boring.

Dr. Berzin: Do we have this feeling that if someone comes to visit us, we have to entertain them?

We can’t just be with them; we have to do something in order to have fun. That’s a very strange state of mind.

Participant: If it’s a good friend, we can just be with them.

Dr. Berzin: They come over, and then we just do our work or whatever we were doing before. 

Participant: When we try to entertain someone, it’s stiff. 

Dr. Berzin: It’s stiff or artificial. 

Participant: Entertainment doesn’t have anything to do with being artificial. It’s just fun.

Dr. Berzin: This is what we’re trying to distinguish by defining these two terms, fun and entertaining. To just say that one is the other doesn’t help us with the definition. But if we relate this to our discussion here, it’s that we lose mental hold and forget to stay focused on something, presumably something positive, because it’s no longer fun. It’s boring. That could be one reason. Another reason, as it says here, is that our minds wander off to something that we like or that annoys us or something like that. 

Doing our daily practices, for instance, death meditations – is that supposed to be fun? No. But we can get bored because we’re doing it again and again and there’s nothing fresh. Here’s your point: If we do the same thing over and over again, we can feel that it’s not fresh.

What about these sadhanas that we’re supposed to do, this whole routine with the recitations and so on every day for the rest of our lives? Does it become boring, and therefore, we don’t hold onto it with our mindfulness? We’re so familiar with it that part of our minds can be reciting it while another part is thinking about something else?

Participant: Being bored maybe doesn’t have to have an emotional taste to it. There is also the habit of mind that can’t stay focused on one thing for a long time.

Dr. Berzin: The emotional taste of it can just be not being satisfied. I meant it in this sense. People can’t stay focused on one thing, unless it’s a video game. Then they can stay focused for a very long time. Why can children whose minds are all over the place focus on a video game for a very long time but not focus on schoolwork or something like that? Or television – we can focus on television for a very long time.

Participant: There, we are challenged the whole time to follow something. 

Dr. Berzin: We’re challenged all the time because it’s moving. Well, what about sadhanas, these meditation practices in which we are reciting and visualizing the script of an opera basically? Everything is changing constantly.

Participant: Video games are active. Television is more passive and is a completely different thing.

Dr. Berzin: Yet, people can concentrate very well on either. I think the difference is that we’re not generating it like we have to do with a sadhana. In a sense, it’s more active.

Participant: If we watched the same television show or the same video game every day, it would be the same thing. But we can do other things with the mind while playing video games.

Dr. Berzin: Let’s try to stay with our topic here, which is forgetfulness, losing hold of the object, and what would help us not to lose hold. What do we need to recognize? What are the tiny little steps that are happening? 

First, some disturbing emotion is coming up. Maybe dissatisfaction, comes first. We’re dissatisfied with staying with the object. That’s a low-level feeling of unhappiness, actually. It could manifest as boredom, not having enough interest in it, the motivation being too weak, and not thinking of the benefits of doing it. Then comes forgetfulness, losing hold. Then comes mental wandering.

Does Our Mental Hold on the Object of Focus Have to Be Conscious?

The interesting question is: does having a mental hold on something have to be what we would call “conscious”? In other words, we’re doing the meditation, and there are benefits to doing the meditation. But while we’re doing the meditation, let’s say shamatha on some object of focus, visualizing the Buddha or the breath. Would we, at that time or maybe beforehand, be remembering the benefits? That’s part of the general instructions for generating enthusiasm and so on. We think of the benefits first; then we really want to do it. Nevertheless, while we’re focusing on the breath or whatever, we’re not consciously repeating the benefits in our minds. Could we forget the benefits? Do we have to consciously hold onto the benefits?

Participant: It has to become a habit.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Anything else? The way that it’s described in the texts is that the meditation is held by the force of the motivation we’ve set beforehand, such as thinking of the benefits, generating compassion and bodhichitta, or whatever. Then, the meditation is held by the force of it. It’s not that we are actively repeatedly words like compassion in our minds or thinking of the benefits. But we could forget. 

That’s a very interesting phenomenon. How do we lose hold of something that is unconscious? It’s there, basically, and we understand the benefits. But we forget, don’t we? If we remembered without necessarily having to repeat it, we wouldn’t let go of the object of focus.

Think about that in terms of our meditation experience. When we generate the motivation before a meditation and then try to maintain that motivation throughout the meditation, how do we do that?

[meditation]

Methods That Can Help Us to Keep Hold of the Object of Focus

Participant: I don’t repeat the motivation throughout the session, but what helps quite a lot is when I’m able to put the motivation into a visualization, some sort of thing that I can hold onto throughout the whole sadhana. With this picture or image, I’m able to have the motivation throughout and not lose the grip. For example, with refuge, I have a clear picture of where I am now, surrounded by all beings and Buddhas, and of what I would like to attain. This picture symbolizes the motivation.

Dr. Berzin: Yes, but someone could be focusing on this without any understanding of it and without being moved by them at all. They could just be wondering about the jewelry and the clothes in the image.

Participant: Yes, but if one does generate and understand it, then one has this picture throughout the whole sadhana.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, if we’re doing a meditation that involves a visualization and we are mindful of what the visualization represents, it helps us to maintain. Is it that you see yourself in this horrible situation and that you are heading toward the light?

Participant: No, in a more realistic way, I’m still wandering around uncomfortably from lifetime to lifetime.

Dr. Berzin: I think this is something that we need, whether it’s a picture or a word. It’s like a clue. It’s like the instruction that’s given for discerning or analytical meditation and formal or fixating mediation. Let’s say we’re single-mindedly focusing on compassion. If the feeling becomes weak, we need to go through the analytical mediation again and build ourselves back up to it again. The point is to be able to do that very quickly without having to take five minutes off to do it. Therefore, if we have something that reminds us, whether it’s just the word “bodhichitta,” a mental picture like you were referring to, or something like that, we have to remember to apply it, to bring it back. It’s a conceptual or verbal key, whatever we want to call it.

Participant: This seems like a long verbal process.

Dr. Berzin: It doesn’t have to be verbal. It could be a picture. Whatever works. The real trick is to detect when we’re starting to get bored, when the meditation is getting stale, and then to try to freshen it up before we forget and lose the object and begin mentally wandering.

Of course, for most of us, it is such an unattainable, advanced stage to be that sensitive to each moment of what’s going on. Usually, we’re just way off into mental wandering before we even think to try to correct it. We can go through the whole recitation thinking about something completely different.

Participant: If we do remember to correct it, whether with a word or image, it should be on topic.

Dr. Berzin: Right, everything should be connected. We should use an image or key that will fit into the other topics. For instance, by just remembering a Buddha, we can remember that this is the goal that we want to achieve. We are trying to leave the state of not being a Buddha. How to become a Buddha? A Buddha can represent many different things as a key to help us recall.

I think it’s also very important to realize that these are not only skills that we need in meditation; meditation is where we train. We also need them in our daily interactions. For example, we’re talking with somebody, or someone is speaking to us, and our minds wander off. We’re not paying attention to them anymore. That’s where we really need to apply this. Or we could be doing some task, and our minds aren’t on it.

Participant: When recognizing that I’ve wandered off, what comes out is, “Oh no, I’ve lost the grip.” Sometimes it’s better for me to think how lucky it is that today I recognized that my mind wandered. One feels much better right away to go back.

Dr. Berzin: Very good. When we lose the object of focus and we discover it, we shouldn’t think negatively. We shouldn’t think how horrible that we blew it again. We should think how wonderful it is that we recognized it. That can be very helpful.

Participant: I remember a retreat where we were trying to practice mindfulness. The teacher said that sometimes it’s helpful to make the object of focus more interesting. For example, if it’s the breath, we could try to recognize where it starts, where the air is coming in and so on, really trying to get into the details of it. I am wondering if one could try to apply that to sadhana practice.

Dr. Berzin: This raises the question again of what is interesting or fun.

Take a mantra retreat where we’re doing 100,000 or 1,000,000 mantra recitations, and in each session, we’re doing, let’s say, 1,000. Doing the same visualization for all 1,000 can get incredibly boring and very difficult to sustain interest in. The instructions that I’ve been given when doing these things is to do a wide variety of visualizations. Let’s say we’re doing a mala of 100 mantras. For the first mala, we visualize purifying things of the body. For the second one, we purify things of speech. And for the third one, we purify things of mind. Like this, there are things that we can specifically work on in the visualization process so that, in a sense, it becomes more interesting.                                                                                     

Here, the point of something being interesting is there being variety. Just as you were saying about a video game, it’s more interesting if there’s variety and different things are happening, rather than exactly the same things happening over and over again. It’s much easier to have a fresh mind. Doing prostrations – for example, doing a couple of hundred prostrations at a time – while reciting a verse and visualizing a tree of gurus or whatever can become very boring if we don’t vary the focus while doing that.

For instance, while doing prostrations with the tree of gurus in the Lama Chopa (Guru Puja) in the Gelug tradition, we have the Buddha, of course, and 11 rings of figures around the Buddha. There are also different clusters of other figures, different yidams of each of the four classes of tantra. There are the Buddhas, shravakas and pratyekabuddhas. In the clusters, there are also the Indian and Tibetan gurus, our own gurus, gurus of this and that lineage. There are tons of different figures. Therefore, if we focus in our prostration by doing 20 prostrations to the Indian gurus or Nagarjuna and then 20 prostrations to Asanga and so on – so, focusing on different parts of this tree of gurus – it’s much easier to get through 200 or 300 at a time. It’s really difficult to focus on all of them at the same time.

Does it make it more fun? I wouldn’t use the word “fun,” but for most people, variety is good. Then, the question is whether or not that contradicts shamatha, in which we’re just focusing on one thing.

Participant: How does it contradict that? I don’t understand.

Dr. Berzin: Let’s say we’re doing shamatha and focusing on a small Buddha the size of a thumb in front of us, an arm’s length away at the level of our brow. This is the usual instruction. Buddha is not supposed to move or change sizes; it stays exactly the same. We’re not thinking anything, though we could be mindful of the good qualities of the Buddha. But it’s not changing; we’re not focusing on different aspects of it. We’re trying to keep it to just one object.

Participant: It’s important to have in mind the negative aspects of forgetfulness. This helps to keep hold of an object.

Dr. Berzin: Right, to maintain hold on an object, whether in meditation or when interacting with others, we need, in the background, to be remembering the disadvantages of not having mindfulness. This is why I said at the beginning – that we remind ourselves of the benefits of doing meditation or listening to somebody when they want to talk about their problems or whatever. We need to think about the disadvantages of not paying attention. Hopefully, then, the whole interaction or meditation is held by the force of that. This is an interesting thing. How do we maintain having the force of that? Sometimes, we have to refresh it with some image or word, something that can remind us.

Attachment to the Mental Bliss That Arises in Meditation Is a Big Obstacle

Participant: Regarding shamatha, I think there also comes a point when a mental bliss arises that someone can be attracted to in their concentration.

Dr. Berzin: One of the biggest obstacles is being attached to the bliss and doing the meditation just to get high, as it were. If that is what is keeping a person in meditation, it’s a big obstacle.

Participant: While going through a sadhana, I couldn’t achieve shamatha anyway.

Dr. Berzin: No, we get to a certain point, before we do the mantras, when we stop and just focus on the visualization. Then, when we’re no longer able to keep the visualization, when that period of visualization and shamatha finishes, we do the mantra recitation. This is if we’re going to do it in the full form.

Participant: Is it an obstacle to be attracted to the serenity of the mind?

Dr. Berzin: They say that if one is attracted and attached to the blissful feeling, that’s a cause for being reborn as a desire realm god. If one is attached to the clarity aspect, one is reborn as a form realm god. And if one is attached to the bareness aspect, one is reborn as a formless god.

Participant: You don’t have to be attached to it; you could just enjoy it. Isn’t this what we’re trying to cultivate? Clarity and serenity should be the motivation to achieve these states.

Dr. Berzin: Yes, we can be attracted to it, but the motivation isn’t to achieve these states. The motivation is not to achieve them even as a provisional goal but to use them as a tool. That’s quite a different emphasis.

Participant: Isn’t it about attachment? We can use it to a certain point but not beyond.

Dr. Berzin: Definitely, we can use it, but we have to be very careful not to use the meditation as a substitute for a drug. 

Participant: We’re beyond that now. 

Dr. Berzin: Many people come to meditation from a drug background. We’re not talking about heroin. We’re talking about marijuana and these more recreational drugs. Coming from that background, they often look to meditation as a better high. That habit of wanting to get high and being attracted to it is there, unconsciously even, but it’s there.

Participant:  I was talking about how shamatha practice becomes interesting when we see that we have made progress.

Dr. Berzin: One could also get terribly discouraged as well. If we see it as a challenge, an adventure in a sense, it can become an ego trip. “I’m going to win. Me, me, me.”

The next disturbing emotion is being unalert. 

• It’s a disturbing deluded discriminating awareness associated with longing desire, hostility or naivety that causes us to enter into improper physical, verbal or mental activity without knowing correctly what is proper or improper. Thus, we do not take steps to prevent or correct our improper behavior.

What is being alert? It is the mental factor that, in concentration meditation, acts sort of like a spy in the back of our attention. It keeps watch on the meditation to see that we don’t lose our hold and have forgetfulness, dullness, flightiness or mental wandering. It rings the alarm bell, ding, ding, ding. Then we re-apply attention. Being unalert is not having that. Why do we not have that? It’s a disturbing deluded discriminating awareness. What are we discriminating incorrectly? What’s proper or improper. We don’t see that the mental wandering and so on is improper. We don’t discriminate it as being improper, as it says, because of desire, hostility, naivety or whatever. This causes us to enter into some sort of improper mental, verbal or physical activity.

This becomes a very delicate issue. Are we always going to be the policeman with ourselves? Do we always need to keep on guard? We drop our guard, and then we do or say something stupid. Does having this alertness make us stiff and uptight all the time? Many people say just be natural.

Participant: If we drive a car, we should always be alert. That doesn’t make us artificial or stiff.

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good example. In the beginning, we’re stiff because we’re not accustomed to it. This is also interesting in terms of discipline, having to refrain from destructive behavior and so on. There are rules of the road that people obey, such as driving on the left or right side of the road, stopping at a red light and so on. We’re mindful of these rules without constantly having to remind ourselves. We just do it, and we’re not stiff.

It becomes very delicate as to how to maintain this alertness in our behavior and interactions with others. It’s based on a correct discrimination of what’s beneficial and not beneficial, what’s appropriate and inappropriate. We just know that and understand it out of familiarity. We have a sense of what’s civilized, what’s rude and what’s polite. Again, we need to remember to be alert. Forgetfulness can affect the alertness as well.

Participant: We need a spy for the spy as well.

Dr. Berzin: This becomes what we call in English, the third man argument, or the infinite regress. The way that His Holiness has described and explained this is that alertness is part of mindfulness. If we have the mental glue and it’s holding, it’s because we have alertness. The alertness doesn’t have to be a separate dualistic part of the mind, as in me watching myself to make sure that I don’t make a mistake. If done in a dualistic way like that, we can have problems of guilt and other issues.

Participant: If we have sincere refuge, that will help keep the alertness. 

Dr. Berzin: Yes, that’s why it’s called the basis of the whole path. It’s this direction in life, definitely. Refuge could be our clue or our key to keeping mindful. It could be an image of a Buddha or just remembering Buddha. 

Participant: It will keep us from going in a lot of other directions.

Dr. Berzin: It’s simply because we don’t remember that we go in other directions. For example, we are at the computer doing something, and the thought comes up to go surf some pornography site or some other naughty site. But then the screensaver of a Buddha comes up or something like that in our minds, and we don’t. This isn’t what we want to do or the direction that we want to go in. It doesn’t have to be pornography. I speak as a self-confessed news junkie, always clicking the tab to look at the news headlines again and again. I have to remind myself, what difference does it make? Looking at it once a day is enough.

Participant: Being close to a teacher keeps people mindful.

Dr. Berzin: Right, living close to our teacher makes us mindful. Also, visualizing our teacher on our heads or shoulders or in our hearts can keep us straight, as it were. Definitely. How could we act like an idiot in front of our teacher? How can we look at a naughty website with our teacher sitting next to us? That’s why it’s often recommended that if we have a teacher that we have tremendous respect for, we keep a picture on our desks to help remind us. 

Of course, the danger is becoming stiff and inflexible with all of this. I think the inflexibility comes from doing this in a dualistic way, with a big grasping at a “me” who has to be the policeman and the “me” who is the potential criminal who always has to be watched. Then, one becomes very stiff. Do you agree?

Participant:  I notice again and again that I still have a lot of moving away from alertness on the object. In a way, it does seem like there are two different faculties.

Dr. Berzin: It can work. But to be ideal, part of each moment of experience would have the mental factor of alertness. Remember, we discussed a deluded outlook toward a transitory network which seeks to latch onto some part of our experience as “me.” For example, here’s a moment of experience. One mental factor is the mindfulness holding onto the object. Another mental factor is alertness, an awareness of what is going on, in a sense. Attention is keeping that alertness there, and concentration is staying with it. There are all these mental factors. Now, if this deluded outlook comes along, it throws “me” onto the alertness. Then, it becomes “me” watching what’s going on. Or that “me” can be thrown onto the mindfulness. It can be divided and also throw “me” onto both of these, as if there were two different “me”s.

Soon, we will get to how these disturbing emotions arise and what the order in which they arise is. They come from this deluded outlook toward a transitory network, which latches onto different parts of what’s going on in the moment as “me” (or “mine”). This is what we really have to watch out for if we want to go really deeply and not identify in a solid way with any part of what’s going on. This, of course, is very subtle. Slowing things down, as they do in Theravada practice is very helpful – for example, in walking meditation: “Now I’m intending to lift my foot. Now I’m lifting the back of my foot. Now I’m intending to lift the front of my foot.” By really slowing it down, we get in the habit of seeing in slow motion what is going on with the mind. The point isn’t to be able to walk like that; the point is to recognize all our disturbing emotions and so on. 

Let’s do the last one, mental wandering. Then we’ll be finished with the 20 subsidiary disturbing emotions.

• It’s part of longing desire, hostility or naivety. It’s the subsidiary awareness that, due to any of the poisonous emotions, causes our minds to be distracted from its object of focus. If we are distracted due to longing desire, the object of our desire need not be something we’re already familiar with, as in the case of flightiness of mind. 

Flightiness of mind is one of the major obstacles to concentration. It’s when the mind flies off toward something that we’re familiar with or that we desire or are attached to. With mental wandering, our minds could fly off when hearing a noise in the street. It’s not that we’re familiar with it. We’re just really curious, “What’s that?” Or it can be because of being angry or upset with whatever. It’s a more general type of distraction. With forgetfulness, we lose our mental hold and start to mentally wander off. With alertness, we want to catch it as quickly as possible. This is basically what we’re doing in any of the concentration meditations. We’re practicing recognizing when we’ve lost the object due to dullness, flightiness, mental wandering or whatever and to bring it back.

Let’s think about these points and remember where in the lam-rim this whole discussion is taking place. Where is it presented?  It’s presented as part of the causes of suffering. That really causes our problems. We have mental wandering; we can’t stay focused. And that’s not just in meditation. We can’t stay focused on work; we can’t stay focused in our interactions with others. Mental wandering is going on and on when we try to go to sleep. We can’t go to sleep because we can’t quiet our minds. There are all sorts of problems. We can’t stop worrying. These are the troublemakers.

[meditation]

These are just the 20 auxiliary, or subsidiary, disturbing emotions in the list. As we’ve looked at each of these in turn, we’ve seen, however, that there are many more.