Saturday 28 March 2009

DR. BERRY'S PATENT QUACK REMEDIES FOR BOREDOM

I go to see a friend who is dark, dangerous, clever and powerful - an almost irresistible combination to some women.
He is bored, and I promise to publish my quack remedy.
Here it is:

· Boredom is a metaphor for our own isolation.
· The only real remedy for being bored is full acceptance of what is, and full rejection of what is not.
· Pseudo remedies arise as palliatives to the pains of our own disappointments in being bored.
· Our disappointments are ultimately self directed.
· As with disappointment, so with anger, sadness, guilt and every other negative emotion.Disappointment is a failure of presence, nothing more. Boredom too.
· Filling time persuades us momentarily we are alive, but it is a temporary palliative. It is emptiness that really is persuasive of our life force.
· It is notable how many time-filling activities involve the mouth. This tells you that they are infantile drives toward nipple pleasure, the baby’s response to minor pain, neediness. Always, the filling response. Are you a baby?
· Filling time is an act based on the presumption of emptiness. But no time is empty to the person really there. And all time is empty to the person never there.
· Emptiness, fullness are points of view. Nothing more. One man’s emptiness is another’s fullness. One man’s fullness is another’s emptiness.
· There is a long standing story of the zen master whose student found just sitting and breathing boring. The Master took the student to a nearby lake. “Look in there.” He said. The student looked. “I don’t know what I am looking for” said the student. “Look closer”, said the Master. So the student looked closer, still rather mystified. “Kneel down and look” advised the Master. The student knelt at the edge of the pool but still remained puzzled. “Get down really close to the water” the master suggested. The student did so. Then the Master grabbed the student’s head and shoved it under the water, holding it there until the student was very nearly drowning. Eventually the master released him, whilst he choked and gasped for air. “Still find just sitting and breathing boring?” he asked.
· Life doesn’t have to be threatened to see its sheer ever present beauty and how every cell cries out to rejoice in it.
· Boredom is an opportunity for a repose of the ego, as much as it is a chance for frustration.
· As ego fades so disappointment and boredom fade also.
· A remedy for the mental disease of boredom is the same as for any other irksome thought: complete acceptance. Resistance is futile. With our own thoughts, the more one tries to master them, the more they master us. Stand aside, and thoughts do what thoughts will: arise, flare, subside, depart. If they are enemies to desired states of peace all the more so. The bio mechanics are evident: the bigger they come the harder they really do fall. But only if you get out of the way of their own energetic propulsion and let them propel themselves.
· I’ve heard it said that if you are bored it is because you are boring. Perhaps.
· “I am bored” is untrue. Are your feet bored? Is your pancreas? There is always a space between you and the thought. If there were not you would be your thoughts. If you are that, then you are ever vanishing or vanished as yesterday’s, last year’s thoughts are gone and lost now. If you are not that, then no need to worry about the boredom. It most certainly does not define you. At worst you are dealing with a little localised pain. Truer perhaps to say “boredom comes to visit now”.
· Stand and look at your visitor. Stop pretending there’s no one at the door.
· Some people fetishize the expression of boredom as a cue to those around them to do better, be more entertaining, please them more. It is a facile trap. These people are playing a low card trick which can’t work many times, and in any case is destined to destroy connection through its own power assumptions. Then that player will be left alone. And be more bored. So this gambit paradoxically reinvents its own problem and is self defeating.
· When a child says “I am bored” most parents rush to fill the void. This is bad education. “Be bored” is a better response.
· Boredom is also dangerous as a piece of self stimulus that suggests we are in control of life. At best this belief is headed towards yet more disappointment. At worst, megalomania.
· If you are bored you are not looking hard enough. And especially you are not looking hard enough at your own feeble attempts to control the world.
· Does all of this mean that it is easy not to be bored? In one sense it is incredibly simple. Surrender fully to the moment and you cannot be bored. But in many ways modern conditioning promotes boredom with its expectations of an ever exciting lifestyle, and an ever greater need for stimulus. It is instructive to think about who are the beneficiaries of such cultural norms. It doesn’t take long to realise that if you are bored you are very ready to be sold to. This makes ready victims of the bored. In a spare, bored moment or two, an interesting diversion to boredom is to wonder who benefits from it.
· Being against boredom, though, is like being against rain. It defies reality. Given conditioning, if it comes it comes. How can one be against that?
· What’s real, though? The boring circumstance? Or the mind’s reaction to it?
· And whose reaction is the reaction?
· Unravelling that little lot should keep the bored amused for some time.

4 comments:

  1. Philosophically, replying to a child's "I'm bored" with "Be bored" is fine. It will only annoy the child who will not understand the meaning. I recommend saying cheerfully, "What will you do to entertain yourself?"

    Check out my ThePowerOfBoredom.com if you please.

    Lovely landscape on your site.

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  2. Wow! Were you (feeling) bored when you wrote that :)
    What a brilliant expose on a subject which could have been fairly boring to read!!!! Only joking. I think it was really well thought out and have often thought about how many different ways one can fill the 'gap' with activities and never hear, see, smell, taste and feel life. Please carry on blogging. I really look forward to reading you and finding out what's coming next - espeically after the brilliant entry to do with the sniffing of molehills. I tried sniffing these French mountain ones (copycat!) and they smelt a bit like dust I thought.

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  3. I just tried to re read it to polish my brilliant expose badge. But nope. Couldn't do it. Got bored halfway through.

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  4. My name is Nitin from Toronto. I am interested in your writing. Some of your posting are good, I can say, best. Can you please tell me how to subscribe to your blog post online?

    ReplyDelete