The Monk Talks: What Would Buddha Do When Bored?
(Alvin’s Note: Our dear fellow Life Coach, and passionate personal development extraodinaire, Paiboon Busayarak, has embarked on a 3 month initiation into Buddhist monkhood in his native Thailand. He just sent me this post via email sharing the conversations he’s had with his teacher. The words are his, the grammer tweaking is mine
Enjoy!)
If you find one thing boring,
You’ll find everything boring.
Dogen, “Guidelines for Studying the Way”
Boredom lies in our character, not in the world. “If you’re bored,” I’ve heard it said “you’re boring”. Think about this.
When you’re bored, you tend to bore others. Conversely, when you’re bored, it is because you are boring: you are the one who engages in the act of boring. It’s not the world that is boring you; it is you who are boring the world. This is the Buddha’s meaning.
So, when you are boring, stop doing it. Look inside and ask yourself, “Why am I draining the life from this moment?” Answering this question restores you and the world to life. Boredom becomes impossible.
Thank you for the article, Alvin. That’s beautiful.
Hi Alvin, just wanted to introduce my self. I think I found my way over here from Andrew Wee’s blog, but I could be wrong. I absolutely love what and how you wrote about this experience in Thailand. Very inspiring. I never even thought about what meditations could really do until I recently listen to the audio book of “Autobiography of a Yogi” which I really enjoyed. Thanks again for this post. I look forward to reading more in the future.
Thanks guys, I’m glad you found my post of value
I can’t wait to try Vipassana meditation myself. Meditation for me consists of me doing Yoga for twenty minutes then Shavasana for ten. I need to step up my meditation to a new level.
Thanks for the push!
Are you still anticipating in Vipassana every now and then? I do it everyday now, makes my life much smoother than before. Glad to see people who actually care for the goods of others