What is boredom?… Just a repetition, without love, repetition of anything to the extent that it surpasses liking or interest, is boredom. It is not bad, neither is it good. Only man is capable of boredom; no other animal is capable of getting bored. That’s why cows are not bored; they look perfectly happy and seem to be enjoying. Suppose if you have to sing a song and if you don’t like it or if you have to sing it several times you get bored. Suppose you love a song, then it doesn’t bore you, you can sing it the whole day.
Boredom is lack of interest and love. If you keep doing all your practices again and again, that creates boredom. Is there any permanent solution for boredom? What are the reasons behind it? What are our feelings when we are bored? The want of new
What is the nature of the mind? The mind needs something new constantly, every minute, every second… It wants something today,something else tomorrow or an entirely different thing the day after tomorrow. You get bored if you have to eat the same vegetable everyday. You want to taste different varieties of food every day. Why? Mind wants something new all the time.
But how much newness can exist? The wanting for newness has to stop somewhere.
Become Aware of the constant Repetitive Cycle
There is no boredom in love. When lovers write letters they write love, love, love, love all over. They never get bored of it. As you keep repeating and doing your practices again and again, boredom vanishes and love arises.
Many eat rice everyday, only the vegetables served are different, but the rice is the same. People who are used to eating rice every day never get bored with it and in fact feel unhappy if there is no rice for even one day.
If you are used to somebody shouting at you all the time, you get so used to it that you just let him or her shout, however long they want to and you continue with your work. When you are used to anger, the heat of anger does not affect you.
Whatever the mind gets used to because of practice, it never gets bored with it. So there is a close relationship between practice and love. How? There is repetition in love and there is repetition in practice.
What is the purpose of practice? Practice means doing the same thing again and again like japa or sadhana. The purpose of sadhana is to first bring up boredom and then destroy the boredom. The goal of practice is to root away the boredom within us.
Where is love
The self is all love and love is always repetitive. If the self is all love, then how can you get bored with yourself? Not possible! You are bored with your mind, not with yourself. Mind always wants change. It is bored without change and practice is doing the same thing, repeating the same thing without changing so that the mind gets thoroughly bored and bored and bored.
Sometimes you hum a line of a movie song, bhajan or traditional music which suddenly flashes to you while bathing. You later realise that you would have hummed the whole day, the same line. This is because love and practice has happened. So sit for half an hour every day and say something, Ram, Ram, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva. You keep saying ‘Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya’ and you get bored and bored and the boredom becomes so much that nothing else can really bore you. Only when you penetrate this boredom does love arise.
Boredom and Enthusiasm
Have you noticed a child? A child never gets bored. It says the same thing again and again. If a child asks a question it keeps asking the same thing and it goes on non-stop. You get bored but the child doesn’t get bored. The child is not bored opening the same book several times. There is nothing new in the book, but it opens and closes, opens and closes. That is why mothers have time. They give some toy to the child, the beads in a string. They go on stringing the beads from this side to that side.
If you take children to an exhibition and they see the roller coaster or merry go round and they want to sit on it. You try to convince them, “don’t sit on it, your head will turn. Not today, we will come again tomorrow”. After listening to all that you say, at the end of it they, “daddy I want to sit on it. Mama, I want to sit on it”. Repetition is children’s nature.
When you cannot get bored with yourself, you cannot get bored with anything else in the world. Then if you have to say the same thing over and over again you will say it with the same enthusiasm. Wherever your mind goes meditate on that !
Maharshi Patanjali said, “yathābhimatadhyānādḥvā”. “Wherever your mind goes meditate on that”. If your mind drawn towards your grand child then meditate on your grand child. See God in your grand child and worship the child. Do whatever pleases you. At least let your mind get used to that half an hour of pr
actice. “yathābhimatadhyānādḥvā”. Do whatever pleases you the most. We had been to a place near kerala where we saw an idol. The idol was half Ganesha and half Hanuman. We were surprised to see this new idol. We had seen nothing like it before. We have seen Ganesha, Hanuman, Ardhanareeshwara (half man and woman) and Harihara (Shiva and Vishnu together). So we were surprised to see half Ganesha and half Hanuman, Ganesha’s trunk was cut into half and had become the face of Hanuman, Why this?
Humans have used up all that was there in the past and are bored by it, so there was this new combination of Gods. The idea was to arrest the mind in the new form. Now the mind runs towards Ganesha and also towards Hanuman. So what to do? Okay, join both of them. There is no harm in doing this. It is good if the mind stands still.
Move from Boredom to celebration
We are often bored with our own selves. To take away the boredom in us we keep doing many things and keep wandering everywhere. If the stink is arising from your mouth what is the use of applying perfume all over the house? What is the use of spraying the air-
freshener or lighting an agarbathi (incense) stick in the house? From where is the stink coming? It is coming from the stomach. Till you treat the stomach, the stink will not vanish. If you want relieve yourself from your boredom and you try to be in someone else’s company, they will be more bored than you, If you are bored with your self, they how much boring you must be for others?
Do your personal satsang everyday. Sit down everyday and assume that you have a return ticket in your hand and think that you are going to leave today. See how peaceful the mind becomes. You can see a vision. A vision which reveals that everything is a dream and
this life is only for a short time. The moment this realization dawns in you, the fault-
finding mind which keeps saying “that is not right, this is not right”, becomes calm, unless the grumbling mind is quietened, you will never get the ultimate. ‘When we are joyous with ourselves, then nothing from outside can seem boring to us’
Even if your practices are boring, then know that is doing its job. If it is giving you joy, then also know that it is doing its job. In eitherway practice, whether it is giving you joy or boredom. Don’t change your practices if you are bored with them. Be with the boredom,be with the practice and you will see a break through happening in you. If you change the practice and then you do another practice, you will just keep changing the practice and the mind remains as it is. It does not get transformed. Boredom is the boiling point of the mind, the mind bursts.
From Talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Life is Beautiful 