Short answers, pulled from the story.
The five hindrances are sensory desire (kāmacchanda), ill-will (vyāpāda), sloth-and-torpor (thīna-middha), restlessness-and-worry (uddhacca-kukkucca), and doubt (vicikiccha). Buddhist texts identify them as mental factors that obstruct meditation and clear living. They appear consistently across Theravada, Mahayana, and contemporary insight meditation traditions.
The Pali term nīvaraṇa means covering, according to scholar Gil Fronsdal, describing how these mental factors cover over clarity, mindfulness, and the capacity to concentrate. Rhys Davids observed that the term refers to an obstacle specifically in the ethical sense and is almost always used when enumerating this set of five.
The Samaññaphala Sutta, known as 'The Fruits of the Contemplative Life,' compares a monk burdened by the five hindrances to someone experiencing debt, sickness, imprisonment, and slavery, traveling a road through desolate country. When the hindrances are abandoned, the same text says, the monk sees himself in a state of good health, freedom, and security.
In the Samyutta Nikaya's discourse SN 46.37, the Buddha describes the five hindrances as obstructions, corruptions of the mind, and weakeners of wisdom, setting them directly against the seven factors of enlightenment. The seven enlightenment factors are described as nonobstructions and noncorruptions of the mind that, when developed, lead to the realization of true knowledge and liberation.
Theravada Buddhism identifies five counteracting mental factors. Vitakka (applied thought) counteracts sloth-and-torpor; vicāra (sustained thought) counteracts doubt; pīti (rapture or well-being) counteracts ill-will; sukha (non-sensual pleasure) counteracts restlessness-and-worry; and ekaggatā (single-pointed attention) counteracts sensory desire.
Mahayana Buddhism places the five hindrances within a broader two-tiered framework of āvaraṇas, or obstructions. The five hindrances belong to afflictive obstructions (kleśāvaraṇa), which practitioners and beginning bodhisattvas can overcome through antidotes. A second category, cognitive obstructions (jñeyāvaraṇa), can be removed only by advanced bodhisattvas and blocks omniscience rather than liberation.