Whenever we dwell into our spiritual training or cultivation, little is known that we will have to undergo the same equal obstacles and hindrances into our journey of purifying our mind, heart and body. The way to tread our golden path of enlightenment is always filled with hidden adversaries and predicaments which will deviate our successful path if we do not heed certain rules and observations to be considered.
In light of that, let’s go through some of the hindrances of a successful cultivation.
The Trend of Sticking Solely to Science Reasonings
Being a practitioner of spiritual training and cultivation, we should never stick to the rule of scientific reasoning alone as divinity is spaceless, fathomless, incomprehensible, and intangible. We should use pondering, contemplation, and meditation as our substantial yardstick in understanding the true foundation of our spiritual training.
Nevertheless, earthly people nowadays only believe in something that can be measured, witnessed and that can touch any divine manifestations not permissible in the law of the universe. Hence, there will be lot of hindrances coming into our path because the cosmic law states whatever you may see may not be the actual sight while anything you could not see does not means it does not exist in this world, such as the case of life after death.
Acting In Opposite of God’s Teachings
In all goodness, all religions of mankind teach us to be good, caring and kindhearted as well as possess empathy. Yet in reality, mankind tries to repudiate each other’s teachings and slander against each other all in the name of God.
Of course, this is a fallacious statement as all laymen in this world is full shortcomings and impure thoughts unless one has initiated the successful training of cultivation regardless of race, creed or status.
All laymen in this world easily succumb to the beauty of earthly gadgets and celebrations, which only make us become greatly attached to this world and in turn, blur our visions of simple living, having pure thoughts and being understanding of natural phenomena enough to care for our Mother Earth.
Today, the society has become confused, agitated and full of shortcomings in their thinking. The common mistakes of mankind is the bad character of possessing suspicion, doubt and curiosity or inquisitiveness of our mind. These are some of the ominous evil hindrances in our path of cultivation.
Without any good cultivation or proper path of training. we are certain to be manipulated into treading the wrong direction in our search for successful attainment. All these bad features of poor reflection in life will give rise to mistrust, misgivings and misconceived ideologies. We should always learn through good pondering, logical reasoning and careful analysis before we truly accept any idea in toto.
The 3 Major Hindrances of A Successful Cultivation
In our world of spiritual cultivation, we should always be cautious of these three evil elements that will impede our spiritual cultivation progress: Suspicion and doubt, Curiosity or inquisitiveness, as well as Self deceit.
These are the great hindrances on our path of training ourselves to gain purity of mind, heart and body to achieve liberation across the ocean of Samsara, which is the vicious cycle of rebirth and death. These are very important aspects to tackle in establishing a firm footing in our spiritual practice.
Suspicion And Doubt
Firstly, we should never cast any suspicion onto the ability of our spiritual teacher or master. In the first place, before we decide to become their student, we must be careful to ascertain if all the finer qualities of character are easily manifested in our teacher or master through the means of detecting one’s eating habit, simple needs and decent attire or frugal spending.
In speeches, the teacher or master does not boast nor over glorify himself. Simplicity, moderation and humility must truly be manifested in all these great masters or teachers. We should also set our priority in determining whether our teacher-to-be possesses all these criteria before we set our goal to enter their spiritual training program.
We should never prejudge nor do we drop out halfway after getting disillusioned with our teacher’s ability. We should do our own research first before agreeing to partake the spiritual training of the day. The doubt and suspicion must be completely extinguished from our mind if we are going to tread a good path towards a successful cultivation.
Curiosity
Another important step we need to observe is to obliterate our habit of inquisitiveness or curiosity. A lot of times when we are easily hooked with this habit of curiosity and we ended up deviating from the original path of cultivation. This is because once we are stuck with frequent habit of curiosity, we will eventually come into contact with sect or cult groups that easily influence us to cease our proper cultivation and tempt us to learn their deviated teachings instead. This will be an erroneous action and a failed journey of a successful cultivation on our part.
The need to fulfil our curious feelings for our satisfaction will end up destroying oneself and increase the chance to fall into the hands of unscrupulous people looking to take advantage of our curiosity. We should come to a good understanding that this bad habit of inquisitiveness will lead us to nowhere and should be obliterated from our mind immediately.
Self Deceit
Lastly, many Buddhists going into training practices often overlook the importance of possessing a humble attitude. Many simply overshadow themselves with self deceit of superiority over others. They tend to look scornfully upon others from the standpoint of wealthiest status, driven by their lack of exposures and experiences in understanding human nature of living.
This is the most common weakness among most Buddhist laities who love to prejudge others before one even started the initial journey of a good spiritual training. Self deceit will only lead to over-admiration of oneself and illusionary outlook in life.
Conclusion
With all these pinpointing guidance and fruitful comprehension of a good head start in our journey of a successful cultivation, we should constantly ensure we always stay aloof in all common shortcomings of a laity and begin our cultivation with a neutral and good sense of impartiality in everything we do or act.
This way, we will surely set our footing on more firmer grounds in our spiritual training and have better assurance of a good and beneficial outcome of gaining bliss of happiness, and wisdom of knowledge and power.