Employing the Satipatthana Sutta, Joseph Goldstein shows us how to overcome the mental states of sloth and torpor.

The Satipatthana Sutta is one of the most celebrated and widely studied discourses in the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism. This episode is the seventeenth part of an in-depth 48-part weekly lecture series from Joseph Goldstein that delves into every aspect of the Satipatthana Sutta. If you are just now jumping into the Satipatthana Sutta series, listen to Insight Hour Ep. 203 to follow along and get the full experience!

In this episode, Joseph instructs listeners on:

• The mind states of sloth and torpor
• Defining sloth as a sluggishness of mind which dispels energy
• Noticing when sloth and torpor are present in us
• How sloth and torpor can spread via unwise attention to boredom and depression
• Watching the thinking patterns we have around slothful mind-states
• How sloth and torpor can signal us to other hidden emotions
• Over-consumption and being attentive to what we put into our bodies
• The benefit and value of the eight precepts
• Having a balance of both concentration and energy
• Deepening our insight into the impermanence of the hindrances
• Mindfulness as the most basic strategy for overcoming laziness
• Adding in more objects to our meditation as an antidote to the sinking mind
• Being alert even in times of low energy as practice for conscious dying
• Finding inspiration in reading the dhamma, listening to a recording, or chanting

This talk was originally published on Dharmaseed

“Mindfulness, here, is deepening our insight into the impermanence of the hindrances. If we can stay with it, we see that they come and go by themselves. We don’t have to fulfill the desire, we don’t have to act on the anger, we don’t have to indulge the sleepiness, in order for them to go, we just need to stay with it and we’ll see their changing nature simply through the awareness of them.” – Joseph Goldstein

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