When I teach meditation I emphasize the importance of watching the mind.
While doing this you will see a lot of defilements. In their grosser
manifestations, the defilements are anger, greed, and delusion. And they
have plenty of friends and relatives, who often show up as the five
hindrances: desire, aversion, torpor, restlessness, and doubt. I advise
yogis to get to know and investigate the defilements, because only through
understanding them can we learn to handle them and eventually become free of
them. If we ignore them, the joke’s on us: they’ll always get the better of
us.
– Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “The Wise Investigator