The hindrances are the lever; the obstacle is the way

There is no wisdom in attacking a well-defended king if you are only moves away from being checkmated yourself. In game theory, a minimax strategy seeks to rule out your worst outcome. It means minimising the maximum you can lose. It's an inverted way of approaching our goals. Instead of reaching for the highest, we protect ourselves from the most unwanted outcomes first. Game theorists von Neumann and Morgenstern showed that this strategy is optimal for zero-sum games.

If we take a minimax approach to meditation, then the best path to take is minimising the hindrances and defilements (greed, hatred, and delusion). It's interesting that many disparate interpretations of Buddhism share this emphasis. Interesting, too, that the absence of the hindrances is one of the significant marks of access concentration and jhāna.

So rather than aiming directly for the highest results in practice, the minimax strategy would ask us to we close the door on the hindrances and work our way upwards in a stepwise fashion. The question to ask, then, over and over is...

Where am I stuck?

Then we resolve that stuckness, which may include bringing in an obstacle’s beautiful opposite.

I think looking at things this way also reconciles proactive and passive approaches to the path. Those that emphasise not clinging and grasping may be pointing in the same direction to those more direct practices—but the way of getting there is to take care of, and clean up, the hindrances—those tendencies that are most holding us back. I think of it like a ship: there's no point having the finest sails if you're holed below the waterline. And, when we apply this to meditation, it seems that healing the hindrances in some senses is not just a prerequisite for deeper practice but itself is deeper practice.

Finally, when you think about it, this via negativa method is often explicit in the Pali texts. We are told that non-greed, non-hatred is the way. Progress is often stated in the terms of the absence of the unwholesome. The four noble truths, even, are framed in terms of a minimax strategy: resolving the problem of suffering.

The impediment to action advances action.
—Marcus Aurelius

Ideas on how to work with hindrances

Having agreed that it's a good idea to prioritise your liabilities, it's going to take some reflection and mindfulness to know what these are and when they are present. When hindrances arise the first step is to be aware of it. We might then reflect on the gratification we get, and the drawbacks of this problem. We might also reflect on what conditions this mind state and what is conditioned by it.

This being, that becomes;
from the arising of this, that arises.
This not being, that does not become;
from the ceasing of this, that ceases.

This formulation of conditionality is said to be the essence of the dharma. So, what condition causes aversion to arise in its presence and cease in its absence? What does aversion, in turn, cause to arise? What ceases when aversion is no longer present? In this way, the heart learns about the emptiness of the hindrance and its undesirable effects.

The great game

But hold on, you say, meditation is not a zero-sum game. Do you remember image of the knight playing chess against Death in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal? Is that not similar to the Buddha's struggle against Mara? There is a concept in game theory known as "move by nature", which encompasses the way it can often feel like the world responds to our actions with countermoves. Perhaps we are in a kind of game where we move a step higher before Mara pushes us two steps backwards. But perhaps with our vulnerabilities healed, it will eventually be Mara who struggles to protect his king.