I am seldom bored. There are always new sights, sounds, experiences, tastes, music, movies, books, and people for me to encounter. I have a vivid imagination which can take me places I have never been or that never existed. I love to write on just about any subject. I have family and friends with whom I can communicate in person or in some other way. I like listening to baseball on the radio. I love walking and solitude. I sit in meditation nearly every day (and Lord knows I could stand for that to be, if not boring, at least at little bit less filled with activity).
But lately I have been finding myself feeling that sensation of boredom creeping in, that dull, gray miasma of complaint. Everything seems the same, day in and day out. I do the same tasks, walk the same walks, eat the same food, sleep the same sleep, wake to the sameness of doing it all over again. Blah.
Boredom is a trick of the mind, though, an egoical request to constantly be entertained with bright colors and new experiences. I have often thought that the mind has the attention span of a three-year-old, though even children of that age can often find a single activity absorbing for longer than the mind usually can. Fortunately, I know better than to take boredom seriously. It is always a symptom rather than a problem. And we all know how very easily boredom can turn into an excuse to eat everything in sight.
The reality of life is that it is a constantly changing kaleidoscope of sensations, impressions, sights, sounds, smells, feelings, and surprising behavior by others (and sometimes by me!) When I feel boredom, I need only reflect on the first of the Buddha's teachings, that life is only suffering if I allow it to be.
I should mention that suffering is the most commonly used translation of the Pali word dukka . However, I have been told by those who have reason to know, that suffering is not a very precise rendering of this term. Unsatisfactoriness is one suggested version, but the one I prefer is Sylvia Boorstein's unappeasable need. This, to me, communicates the active yearning that is so much a part of the experience of dukka. If we always feel ourselves to be in need and if that need can never be appeased, we will indeed by in a constant state of suffering. As should be obvious by now (I hope I'm not belaboring the point), this is a matter of choice and is not inevitable. It would have been cruel of the Buddha to tell us that there was suffering and then to shrug and say, in essence, "Oh, well! Suck it up." Instead he told us that there was a way out of this unappeasable need, which is the Noble Eightfold Path.
But even the Eightfold Path is something of an overcomplication of the idea that, by refocusing our energies and harnessing them in the service of paying attention and being unfailingly kind, we need never be bored or dissatisfied again. While it is true that there are some situations that seem to carry suffering with them such as grief, pain, loss, illness, and death, even these can be turned to good account with the reflection that such is the circle of life, that all of these come to all of us, that it cannot be otherwise, and that true suffering would be to have even these painful things excluded from us, for then we would be something other than alive. One of the (only) aspects of the vampire lore that is so popular just now that I enjoy is the sheer ennui that is usually attached to living forever, being unable to die, and the boredom of imperviousness. Being undead is distinctly unlike being alive and in the end is grossly inferior to it.
Boredom, then, is a symptom. It is a symptom of giving in to the childlike ego, the craving mind, when it insists on being entertained. What consciousness knows is that the simple act of living in this moment is a miracle filled with miracles. There are galaxies beyond galaxies and subatomic particles that surpass our ability to comprehend the enormity of their tininess. Even at its quietest, life is a flow of sensations and experiences beyond measure. We can never step into the same river twice and boredom threatens to keep us from stepping into it even once. Dive in! It is going where you wish to go.
Boredom is a trick of the mind, though, an egoical request to constantly be entertained with bright colors and new experiences. I have often thought that the mind has the attention span of a three-year-old, though even children of that age can often find a single activity absorbing for longer than the mind usually can. Fortunately, I know better than to take boredom seriously. It is always a symptom rather than a problem. And we all know how very easily boredom can turn into an excuse to eat everything in sight.
The reality of life is that it is a constantly changing kaleidoscope of sensations, impressions, sights, sounds, smells, feelings, and surprising behavior by others (and sometimes by me!) When I feel boredom, I need only reflect on the first of the Buddha's teachings, that life is only suffering if I allow it to be.
I should mention that suffering is the most commonly used translation of the Pali word dukka . However, I have been told by those who have reason to know, that suffering is not a very precise rendering of this term. Unsatisfactoriness is one suggested version, but the one I prefer is Sylvia Boorstein's unappeasable need. This, to me, communicates the active yearning that is so much a part of the experience of dukka. If we always feel ourselves to be in need and if that need can never be appeased, we will indeed by in a constant state of suffering. As should be obvious by now (I hope I'm not belaboring the point), this is a matter of choice and is not inevitable. It would have been cruel of the Buddha to tell us that there was suffering and then to shrug and say, in essence, "Oh, well! Suck it up." Instead he told us that there was a way out of this unappeasable need, which is the Noble Eightfold Path.
But even the Eightfold Path is something of an overcomplication of the idea that, by refocusing our energies and harnessing them in the service of paying attention and being unfailingly kind, we need never be bored or dissatisfied again. While it is true that there are some situations that seem to carry suffering with them such as grief, pain, loss, illness, and death, even these can be turned to good account with the reflection that such is the circle of life, that all of these come to all of us, that it cannot be otherwise, and that true suffering would be to have even these painful things excluded from us, for then we would be something other than alive. One of the (only) aspects of the vampire lore that is so popular just now that I enjoy is the sheer ennui that is usually attached to living forever, being unable to die, and the boredom of imperviousness. Being undead is distinctly unlike being alive and in the end is grossly inferior to it.
Boredom, then, is a symptom. It is a symptom of giving in to the childlike ego, the craving mind, when it insists on being entertained. What consciousness knows is that the simple act of living in this moment is a miracle filled with miracles. There are galaxies beyond galaxies and subatomic particles that surpass our ability to comprehend the enormity of their tininess. Even at its quietest, life is a flow of sensations and experiences beyond measure. We can never step into the same river twice and boredom threatens to keep us from stepping into it even once. Dive in! It is going where you wish to go.
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