July 27, 2006

• Boredom

  
  

   

  
  

  Buddha left his kingdom when he was twenty nine at the peak of his youth.  He was bored with women, wine, wealth, kingdom, and everything.  He had everything.  He had seen them all.  He renounced the world not because the world is bad but because he was bored with it.  What was he doing for six years sitting in those forests?  He was getting acquainted with boredom.  What can one do in the forest but watch one’s breath, look at one’s navel, day in, day out, year in, year out.  He created that boredom to its ultimate peak and one night it disappeared.  He became enlightened.

  
  

   

  
  

  Only human being is capable of being bored and enlightened.  Boredom is one of the most important things in human life.  It exists only when the mind starts coming closer and closer to enlightenment.  No other animal is capable of being bored, hence they cannot become enlighten. 

  
  

   

  
  

  We can respond to boredom in two ways.  One way is to escape from it temporarily and avoid it by finding things to keep us occupy.  But we’ll find that again and again boredom will come back.  It has to be faced.  The other response is to face it, to meditate on it, to be with it.  That’s what the Buddha was doing under the bodhi tree—that’s what all the Zen people have been doing down the ages.

  
  

   

  • 5:38 pm
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