“BOREDOM IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN HUMAN LIFE. Only man is capable of boredom; no other animal is capable of being bored. Boredom exists only when mind starts coming closer and closer to enlightenment.
Boredom simply shows that you are becoming aware of the futility of life, its constant repetitive wheel.
Now, you can respond to boredom in two ways. one is what is ordinarily done: escape from it, avoid it, don’t look at eye to eye into it.
Keep it at your back; and run away; run into things which can occupy you, which can become obsessions; which take you so far away from realities of life that you never see boredom arising again.
That’s why people have invented alcohol, drugs. They are ways to escape from boredom. But you really cannot escape; you can only avoid for a while. Again and again the boredom will be coming, and again and again it will be more and more loud. You can escape in sex, in eating too much, in music — in a thousand and one kinds of things you can escape. But again and again boredom will arise. It is not something that can be avoided; it is part of human growth, it has to be faced.
The other response is to face it, to meditate on it, to be with it, to be it. That’s what Buddha is doing under the Bodhi tree. Facing boredom is meditation. The whole effort in meditation is this: be bored but don’t escape from it; keep alert, watch it, witness it. It has to be looked into, to the very core of it.
So What Exactly is Boredom?
A GREAT SPIRITUAL PHENOMENON. That’s why buffaloes are not bored. They look perfectly happy and enjoying. Only man is bored. And in man also only the people who are very talented, intelligent, they are bored. The stupid people are not bored.
A man becomes human when he starts feeling bored. You can see it: the most intelligent child will be the most bored child — because nothing can keep his interest for long. Sooner or later he stumbles upon the fact and asks, Now What? What next? This is finished. SOON he starts finishing things and By the time he becomes young, he is already bored.
Buddha was utterly bored. He left his kingdom when he was only twenty nine, at the peak of his youth.
He was utterly bored — with women, with wine, with wealth, with kingdom, with everything. He had seen all through and through. He renounced the world NOT because the world is wrong. He renounced the world because he became so BORED with it.
And what was he doing then for six years sitting in those forests? He was getting more and more bored. What can you do, sitting in a forest? — watching your breath, looking at your naval, day in, day out, year in year out. He created that boredom to its ultimate peak, and one night it disappeared. It disappeared of its own accord.
If you reach to the peak…the turn comes. It comes! And with the turn of the tide, light enters into your being — you disappear, only the light remains. And with light comes DELIGHT. You are full of joy — you ARE NOT, but full of joy — for no reason at all. Joy simply bubbles up in your being.
Only man is capable of boredom, only man is capable of enlightenment.”
(As narrated by Osho.)
न कोई वा’दा न कोई यक़ीं न कोई उमीद
मगर हमें तो तिरा इंतिज़ार करना था — फ़िराक़ गोरखपुरी
na koī va.ada na koī yaqīñ na koī umiid
magar hameñ to tirā intizār karnā thā — FIRAQ GORAKHPURI
Though there was no hope nor any promise,
I had to wait for you.