Appreciating boredom

In a world where the mind is often overstimulated, it is easy to encounter boredom in the practice of meditation. Through meditation we familiarize ourselves with our habitual patterns of mind and discover how we typically relate to the world. If we find the practice boring, chances are we have a tendency to blame the experience and identify with our desire to get away from it. However, the boredom is not with what we are attending to. It is fabricated by our mind and its evolutionary wiring to seek the pleasant stimuli to help us survive: food, shelter, social interaction.

The good news is that mindful meditation itself offers a remedy, because it invites us to be interested in all aspects of life, even those that are often labelled as “boring”. If we manage to stay with them, to reverse any patterns of reactivity that take our attention away from the present, and become interested in what our boredom feels like, it disappears by definition. Of course this does not happen from one day to the next: it is necessary to gradually develop this capacity for ongoing curiosity. In fact, in Eastern traditions practitioners sit in meditation staring at blank walls (imagine!).

So if you feel bored in your meditation, but you’re willing to invite your interest to it with an attitude of friendly curiosity, you’re on the right track!

“When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.”

— Jon Kabat-Zinn

Thoughts are real, but not true

Sometimes I get ruminative thoughts that spin around and around in my head. I create all possible scenarios of failure and tragedy. And I believe they will come true.

Worry is a very real kind of mental suffering. I know because I come from a lineage of worriers myself. My mother used to joke that when not much was happening it was time to worry. “It is my way of making sure nothing goes wrong,” she says.

And these thoughts can be very convincing, holding us back by making us believe they are actually true. But an incredibly liberating realization is that we don’t actually have to believe our thoughts. They are there, they keep coming, they are real. But as one of my teachers says: they are real, but not true.

So what can we do to wake ourselves from the suffering of worry and the anxiety that goes with it? Experts suggest to explore with curiosity: what am I believing right now? Once you start questioning your thoughts you can start to gain distance from them. But of course this is not a quick fix: it’s a practice. It’s a matter of questioning time and time again, on and off the cushion. 

Sitting in the sun

When I started meditating I used to think that I could only practice on the cushion. And while there is great benefit in practicing regularly in your habitual meditation space, it does not mean that you cannot practice anywhere else. 

Today I found a sunny spot and I sat there (with sunscreen!). I noticed the sensations of sunlight on the body, the contact of the breeze with the skin, the changing light through the eyelids as the clouds passed.

At the end of my practice I dedicated a moment of gratitude. I used to take the sun for granted when I was living in Spain - things are very different here... I was grateful for its presence and what it does for us every day: nourishing plants, animals, and ourselves. And I remembered Mary Oliver’s poem:

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?