The Five Hindrances

What the Vammika Sutta is about: a deity's late-night riddle

The setting of the Vammika Sutta (Pali Vammikasutta, MN 23, "the Anthill Discourse") is this: while the venerable Kumārakassapa is staying in the Blind Men's Grove, one night a radiant deity lights up the whole grove, comes to him, and drops a riddle in his lap. This "anthill," the deity says, smokes by night and blazes by day; a brahmin tells a wise man, "Dig on without stopping—take up the knife." So the digger goes down, spadeful by spadeful, turning up in turn a bar, a toad, a fork in the road, a sieve, a tortoise, a slaughterhouse, a lump of meat, and finally a nāga (a great dragon-serpent).

The deity leaves this string of questions for Kumārakassapa to put to the Buddha—for no one but the Tathāgata and his disciples can solve them. The whole discourse is therefore a riddle-and-solution structure: the deity throws out a sequence of images, and the Buddha reveals, one by one, what obstacle on the path each image stands for. The five hindrances are not the whole riddle, only one thing that is dug up; but precisely because they are set within this string of images, we get to meet them as a story rather than as a list.

The key to the riddle: the anthill is the body, the knife is wisdom, digging is energy

The next day Kumārakassapa brings the whole string of questions to the Buddha, who unpacks it item by item. First, the "anthill" is nothing other than this very body—made of the four great elements (earth, water, fire, air), born of mother and father, built up from boiled rice and porridge, impermanent by nature, and destined to be rubbed and worn down and finally to break up. The "smoke by night" is thinking over and turning about by night the things done during the day; the "blaze by day" is acting during the day, by body, speech, and mind, on what was mulled over at night—body-and-mind smouldering around the clock. This smoking, blazing anthill is us.

As for the riddle's characters and tools, the Buddha matches each in turn: the "brahmin" is the arahant, the fully awakened one (the Buddha himself); the "wise one / clever man" is a monk still in training; the "knife" is noble wisdom (paññā); and "digging" is the arousing of energy. Put together, it is a clear picture: a monk in training, following the Buddha's instruction, takes wisdom as his tool and energy as his action, and digs down layer by layer into the depths of his own body-and-mind. Everything he then unearths is an obstacle standing in the way, to be recognized and cleared out.

Obstacles dug up layer by layer: the bar is ignorance, the toad is anger, the fork is doubt

As the digger goes down, the first thing turned up is a "bar" (a bolt)—which the Buddha says is "ignorance," so the refrain runs: "Lift out the bar, abandon ignorance." Deeper down is a swollen "toad," standing for "anger and vexation" (kodhūpāyāsa): "lift out the toad, abandon anger." Then he digs up a "fork in the road," which the Buddha identifies as "doubt" (vicikicchā)—the wavering of someone who reaches a fork and cannot tell which way to go: "lift out the fork, abandon doubt."

With each thing dug up the pattern is the same: first recognize which obstacle it is, then be told to "lift it out and abandon it," then repeat the line "dig on, wise one, take up your tool and go." From beginning to end the riddle is not asking anyone to collect what is unearthed, but to recognize it and then throw it away, clearing deeper with each layer. Worth noting here is the "fork = doubt": this same doubt will appear once more in the list of the five hindrances—the riddle lets it show its face alone first, then folds it into a fuller set of obstacles.

The sieve is the five hindrances: the heart of this page

In the narrative of the riddle, the digger takes up his tool and goes on down until he strikes a "sieve"; the brahmin, as before, says, "Lift out the sieve, dig on." It is only when the Buddha solves the riddle that the sieve's meaning is revealed—he says plainly: the sieve is the designation for the "five hindrances" (pañca nīvaraṇa), and names them one by one: the hindrance of sensual desire, of ill will, of dullness-and-drowsiness, of restlessness-and-remorse, and of doubt. The refrain is unchanged: "Lift out the sieve, abandon the five hindrances."

These five are called "hindrances" (literally coverings) because they cover and veil the mind like a lid, so that it cannot settle and cannot see clearly—hence they are the principal obstacles on the way into concentration. The "doubt" answered by the "fork" one layer up is now, precisely, the fifth of the five hindrances: the same obstacle appears first alone as the "fork," then is gathered into the fuller list of "the sieve = the five hindrances." In the whole excavation picture, the five hindrances are one layer that must be lifted out and cleared before what lies deeper (the five aggregates, and further down the liberated one). It should be said that the text gives only the correspondence "sieve = five hindrances" and the instruction "lift out = abandon"; it does not go on to explain why the image of a "sieve" was chosen, and we do not supply that reason on the text's behalf.

After the sieve: the tortoise is the five aggregates, down to the nāga (the liberated one)

After the sieve (the five hindrances) is cleared, the digger keeps going. Next he turns up a "tortoise"—which the Buddha says is the "five aggregates subject to clinging": the form-, feeling-, perception-, formations-, and consciousness-aggregates of clinging, so "lift out the tortoise, abandon the five aggregates of clinging." Deeper still are a "slaughterhouse" standing for the "five cords of sensual pleasure" (the alluring objects of the five senses that provoke attachment) and a "lump of meat" standing for "delight-and-lust" (nandīrāga)—each, likewise, to be "lifted out and abandoned."

At the very bottom of the dig, what he meets is a "nāga" (a great dragon-serpent)—which the Buddha says is "the taint-free monk," the liberated one whose defilements are exhausted. For this one the instruction is no longer "lift out and abandon" but its reverse: "Let the nāga stand, do not disturb it, pay homage to it." The whole riddle thus has a clear direction: from the surface—that body smouldering day and night—down through ignorance, anger, doubt, the five hindrances, the five aggregates of clinging, the five cords of sense pleasure, and delight-and-lust, all the way to the one who can be dug no further and can only be revered. Placed on this route, the five hindrances are a layer that must be crossed but is not the destination—and this is exactly the distinctive position the Vammika Sutta gives them: not an isolated list, but one stratum in a whole excavation.

Relation to Mahāyāna interpretation

The list of the five hindrances (sensual desire, ill will, dullness-and-drowsiness, restlessness-and-remorse, doubt) is shared across the Theravāda, the early schools, and Mahāyāna, appearing widely in the meditation and calm-and-insight literature of each as common obstacles to concentration. East Asian Buddhism likewise speaks of "the five hindrances" and "removing the five hindrances," and its calm-abiding and seated-meditation traditions take over this set of obstacles while developing their own methods and stages for countering them. This page presents only the single simile "sieve = five hindrances" from the Pali Vammika Sutta (MN 23) and its context; it does not enter into the detailed antidote schemes of the various traditions, nor rank one account above another.