The link to the article is right there in my comment.

All the best,
Bodhipaksa

Thank you for your feedback. I would like to read the other article on resistance in daily life by Bodhipaksa. May I have the link? I do experience that the resistance in daily life is even harder for me than resistance to meditation. For example, when I am struggling if I should have a cup of coffee for my breakfast.

Sometimes, it is even more difficult to recognise if it is a kind of resistance or it is just a reminder of my another need. That’s tricky here. For example, on one hand I want to meditate while on the other I want to spend time with my family. Both of them seem to be very important to me. Would I consider spending time with my family is a kind of resistance to do meditation?

Catherine

Thanks very much for your questions, which are very interesting. I’m really glad that Bodhipaksa’s replied and I agree with everything he said. I would also encourage you to read his other article on resistance which I think is really good. Obviously he’s talking more about resistance in daily life as opposed to getting on the cushion specifically, but i think all the pointers apply to meditation as well.

Of all your options of how to treat it I agree that probably the best ones are as a friend or as a partner. Certainly seeing it as the enemy or as a temptation is unhelpful – as it is still rather oppositional. In my approach to meditation with physical pain, I always encourage people to turn towards the difficulty rather than resist and oppose it as this just creates more strain and REACTIVE pain. But if you can move towards it and soften around it then very gradually it can become just an aspect of one’s journey through life without being such a struggle.

I find myself that if I can simply notice resistance as resistance can be very liberating. If I intend to meditate and feel that weight of avoidance, then just noting “oh I’m resisting” with a sort of watching mind as opposed to being completely identified with the experience can sometimes help me kindly put it to one side and still meditate. I’ve also found that receiving benefits from medidation over time is a great ally. It helps me to remember that if I just meditate regularly then over time my whole quality of life has improved, even if I don’t want to get on the cushions on any given day.

I talk much more about some of these issues in the book that I’m writing that is going to be published in November, so perhaps you’ll be able to read it and get a broader picture then.

Thanks again for writing and good luck!

Vidyamala

Those are very interesting questions, and I hope Vidyamala will have time to respond. In the meantime I wanted to point you towards an article I recently wrote about resistance to meditation — not quite the same topic but there’s enough overlap that I think you’ll find some useful pointers there.

To have a stab at addressing a couple of the points you raise, I consider resistance to be a strategy where we assume on some level that we’ll be happier if we avoid a particular experience. The experience that we avoid may be an emotion, or meditating itself, or a sensation like pain. We assume it will help us if we avoid these experiences and we assume that it’s possible to push them away, block them out, or otherwise keep them at bay. But of course that’s not possible, and resistance is not helpful, so resistance is based on delusion.

I’d therefore not see resistance as an enemy, but as a misguided friend — one who wants to protect us but who’s going about it in the wrong way. And I’d suggest that we treat resistance like a friend — sit down with it and empathize wit it, but not necessarily believe what it tells us. As I suggested in the article I’ve linked to it’s possible to treat resistance as an object of awareness in meditation, and when we do this we eventually see through the delusions that drive the resistance.

I hope this is helpful in some way.

With metta,
Bodhipaksa

I think we have to understand resistance itself, to know it, to have a deeper look into it. But, how? specifically.

It’s interesting to see that when I meditate, all kinds of resistance come out. Even though we “know” that our persistance to meditate would eventually bring benefits to us, our natural response is to do anything to prevent ourselves to do so. Why?