"Zen is Boring!"

Cloud

A friend sent me this link, and after reading the webpage, I think it's worth sharing:

http://homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/boring.html

It really seems to ring true. We're all looking for something special, something extraordinary, and missing this moment while we're at it. Comments welcome, but make sure to read it all!

EDIT: I copy/pasted the text from the website a couple posts down, so if you're having trouble viewing the site, just scroll down this thread! All you'll be missing is a pic of a Buddha statue with the caption "Boooring!".

Talisman

my work browser doesnt show the site, can you post an excerpt?

DaltheJigsaw

A friend sent me this link, and after reading the webpage, I think it's worth sharing:

http://homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/boring.html

It really seems to ring true. We're all looking for something special, something extraordinary, and missing this moment while we're at it. Comments welcome, but make sure to read it all!

Read it and I love it!:)

Cloud

ZEN IS BORING

Let's face it. Zen is boring. You couldn't find a duller, more tedious practice than Zazen. The philosophy is dry and unexciting. It's amazing to me anyone reads this page at all. Don't you people know you could be playing Tetris, right now? That there are a million free porno sites out there? Get a life, why don't you?!

Joshu Sasaki, a Zen teacher from the Rinzai Sect, once said that Buddhist teachers always try to make students long for the Buddha World, but that if the students knew how really dry and tasteless the Buddha World actually was, they'd never want to go. He's right. Look at Zen teachers. Not a one of them has any sense of fashion. They sit around staring at blank walls. Ask them about levitation, they won't tell you. Ask them about life after death, they change the subject. Ask them about miracles and they start spouting nonsense about carrying buckets of water and chopping up fire wood. They go to bed early and wake up early. Zen is a philosophy for nerds.

Boredom is important. Most of your life is dull, tasteless and boring. If you practice Zazen, you learn a lot about boredom. I remember the first time I sat Zazen, I was real excited. I figured I'd be seeing visions of four armed Krishnas descending from the Heavens, or I'd be fading into The Void just like the old Beatles song, or reach Nirvana (whatever that was) or some great wonderful thing. But the clock just ticked away, my legs started aching, and stupid thoughts kept drifting by. Maybe I wasn't doing it right, I thought. But no, year after year it was the same. Boring, boring, boring. After almost 20 years it's still boring as Hell.

People hate their ordinary lives. We want something better. This, our day to day life of drudgery and work, is boring, dull and ordinary, we think. But someday, someday... There's an episode of The Monkees* where Mike Nesmith says that when he was in high school he used to walk out on the school's empty stage with a guitar in his hands thinking "Someday, someday." Then he said that now (now being 1967, at the height of the Monkees fame) he walks out on stage in front of thousands of fans and thinks "Someday, someday." That's the way life is. It's never going to be perfect. Whatever "someday" you imagine, it will ever come. Never. No matter what it is. No matter how well you build your fantasy or how carefully you follow all the steps necessary to achieve it. Even if it comes true exactly the way you planned, you'll end up just like Mike Nesmith. Someday, someday... I guarantee you.

Your life will change. That's for sure. But it won't get any better and it won't get any worse. How can you compare now to the past? What do you know about the past? You don't have a clue! You have no idea at all what yesterday was really like, let alone last week or ten years ago. The future? Forget about it...

People long for big thrills. Peak experiences. Some people come to Zen expecting that Enlightenment will be the Ultimate Peak Experience. The Mother of All Peak Experiences. But real enlightenment is the most ordinary of the ordinary. Once I had an amazing vision. I saw myself transported through time and space. Millions, no, billions, trillions, Godzillions of years passed. Not figuratively, but literally. Whizzed by. I found myself at the very rim of time and space, a vast giant being composed of the living minds and bodies of every thing that ever was. It was an incredibly moving experience. Exhilarating. I was high for weeks. Finally I told Nishijima Sensei about it . He said it was nonsense. Just my imagination. I can't tell you how that made me feel. Imagination? This was as real an experience as any I've ever had. I just about cried. Later on that day I was eating a tangerine. I noticed how incredibly lovely a thing it was. So delicate. So amazingly orange. So very tasty. So I told Nishijima about that. That experience, he said, was enlightenment.

You need a teacher like that. The world needs lots more teachers like that. Countless teachers would have interpreted my experience as a merging of my Atman with God, as a portent of great and wonderful things, would have praised my spiritual growth and given me pointers on how to go even further. And I would have been suckered right in to that, let me tell you! Woulda fallen for it hook line and sinker, boy howdy. If a teacher doesn't shatter your illusions he's doing you no favors at all.

Boredom is what you need. Merging with the Mind of God at the Edge of the Universe, that's excitement. That's what we're all into this Zen thing for, right? Eating tangerines? Come on, dude! What could be more boring than eating a tangerine?

Some years ago some psychologists did a study in which they sat some Buddhists monks and some regular folks in a room and wired them up to EEG machines to record their brain activity. They told everyone to relax, then introduced a repetitive stimulus, a loudly ticking clock, into the room. The normal folks' EEG showed that their brains stopped reacting the stimulus after a few seconds. But the Buddhists just kept on mentally registering the tick every time it happened. Psychologists and journalists never quite know how to interpret that finding, though it's often cited. It's a simple matter. Buddhists pay attention to their lives. Ordinary folks figure they have better things to think about.

If you really take a look at your ordinary boring life, you'll discover something truly wonderful. Our regular old pointless lives are incredibly joyful -- amazingly, astoundingly, relentlessly, mercilessly joyful. You don't need to do a damned thing to experience such joy either. People think they need big experiences, interesting experiences. And it's true that gigantic, traumatic experiences sometimes bring people, for a fleeting moment, into a kind of enlightened state. That's why such experiences are so desired. But it wears off fast and you're right back out there looking for the next thrill. You don't need to take drugs, blow up buildings, win the Indy 500 or walk on the moon. You don't need to go hang-gliding over the Himalayas, you don't need to screw your luscious and oh-so-willing secretary or party all night with the beautiful people. You don't need visions of merging with the totality of the Universe. Just be what you are, where you are. Clean the toilet. Walk the dog. Do your work. That's the most magical thing there is. If you really want to merge with God, that's the way to do it. This moment. You sitting there with your hand in your underwear and potato chip crumbs on your chin, scrolling down your computer screen thinking "This guy's out of his mind." This very moment is Enlightenment. This moment has never come before and once it's gone, it's gone forever. You are this moment. This moment is you. This very moment is you merging with the total Universe, with God Himself.

The life you're living right now has joys even God will never know.

FOOTNOTE

*For those of you not up on old US pop culture, The Monkees was a TV comedy show about a rock and roll band that ran from 1967-68 and was rerun throughout the 70s. The Monkees were supposed to be just like The Beatles. Mike Nesmith was the "leader" of the band, the John Lennon character. To everyone's surprise, when The Monkees, a fake rock band, went on tour they attracted almost as many squealing teenage fans as The Beatles had a few years before.

taiyaki

Lol I love this. Drinking my coke and reading this makes me feel good.

Roger

We got stuck in these bodies when a teeny tiny prick of Infinite Mind jumped into the fertilized egg. Stuck in these biological forms with powerful collective memories and culture, of course somebody was spurred to write the essay above. Probably been written or thought ten thousand times a day. Lovely reminder. Nice work. Thank you.

seeker242

My teacher says similar things. One of his favorites is: "Well, this is bullshit. Why am I not at home watching the game!?!?!"

DaltheJigsaw

My teacher says similar things. One of his favorites is: "Well, this is bullshit. Why am I not at home watching the game!?!?!"

Lol!
For real!

Vincenzi

considering Zen in the end means Jhana, how could it be not boring for someone with no access to jhana?!

Cloud

Jhana's boring too. That's not the point.

Roger

I had a university professor say to us once, "There is no such thing as boredom."

Many years later, as much as I've tried, I can't, IMHO, find a satisfactory disproof.

Glow

It doesn't say on the page (or, at least, I couldn't find it), but it reads like something Brad Warner would write. If you like this, you'd enjoy his book Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and the Truth About Reality.

Vincenzi

@Cloud
jhanas are not boring!

Cloud

@Vincenzi, They're boring to me anyway. One can think they're great, of course, but then you forget what you're supposed to be doing. They're just an experience, nothing special, you learn from them and let them go.

Glow

@Cloud
jhanas are not boring!

Not at first, maybe, but after a while, you become disaffected with each jhana. That's how you move into the next jhana. Then when you've had enough of that, you move onto the next. At least, that's how they've manifested for me and how most teachers have described the progression.

Cloud

Anyway we're moving off-topic with the jhanas. That's not at all about what this "Zen is Boring!" article/webpage is about! Soooo think again, if that's what you're thinking.

Dakini

HAHA! Caught you going off-topic, Cloud!!

Cloud

Hey I got pulled off-topic, trying to steer it back now. Think the webpage is pretty well-explained, myself. Our minds are looking for the extraordinary, but reality is just this. Normal. Boring. Ordinary. Of course when we start looking at reality we can be anything but bored with it, but that's after we stop dreaming and start being present!

Glow

Okay, I'm not going insane. It is indeed Brad Warner: his old webpage. Parts of this are verbatim from Hardcore Zen.

As for the actual content, although taking a slightly different bent, Jack Kornfield (a student of Ajahn Chah) made a similar point in his book A Path With Heart:

While I hadn't necessarily expected the monks to levitate as they did in T. Lobsang Rampa's stories, I had hoped for special effects from the meditation - happiness, special states of rapture, extraordinary experiences. But that was not primarily what my teacher offered. He offered a way of life, a lifelong path of awakening, attention, surrender, and commitment. He offered a happiness that was not dependent on any of the changing conditions of the world but came out of one's own difficult and conscious inner transformation. In joining the monastery, I had hoped to leave behind the pain of my family life and the difficulties of the world, but of course they followed me. It took many years for me to realize that these difficulties were part of my practice. ...

My own practice has been a journey downward, in contrast to the way we usually think of our spiritual experiences. Over these years I've found myself working my way down the chakras (the spiritual energy centers of the body) rather than up. My first ten years of systematic spiritual practice were primarily conducted through my mind. I studied, read, and then meditated and lived as a monk, always using the power of my mind to gain understanding. I developed concentration and samadhi (deep levels of mental absorption), and many kinds of insights came. I had visions, revelations, and a variety of deep awakenings. The whole way I understood myself in the world was turned upside down as my practice developed and I saw things in a new and wiser way. I thought that this insight was the point of practice and felt satisfied with my new understandings.

But alas, when I returned to the U.S. as a monk, all of that fell apart. In the weeks after Elizabeth Arden's, I disrobed, enrolled in graduate school, got a job driving a taxi, and worked nights at a mental hospital in Boston. I also became involved in an intimate relationship. Although I had arrived back from the monastery clear, spacious, and high, in short order I discovered, through my relationship, in the communal household where I lived, and in my graduate work, that my meditation had helped me very little with my human relationships.

The title of another one of his books is After the Ecstacy, the Laundry, which embodies this "kitchen-sink level" approach to spiritual life. The Buddha's life path isn't about transcendence, but about immersion into the stream of life.

Roger

Dear Fellow Adventurers,

I understand fatigue, I understand preoccupation, I understand lazy (I think), but "boredom?"

Not sure how a human being can become bored. All it takes is a teeny shift in perception and :poof! Whatever it was ["boredom"] can't be detected. Shifts in perception won't get rid of fatigue or laziness.

Dakini

Boredom is the result of lack of imagination. Period.

Vincenzi

maybe seeing samsara as boring can be helpful...

Cloud

I think boredom is a lack of seeing what is present; what is here now. In not seeing that everything you're looking for is right here, the mind goes off in la-la land thinking of anything other than what is here. This is also how we get bored with our practice, such as zazen for Zen practitioners. We're seeking something else, something special, something out of reach... failing to see that everything is in reach, if only we open our minds.

Dakini

Unfortunately, samsara is far from boring. Painful, yes. Boring, no. Sadly.

Glow

Boring is one possible experience. Not to mix different schools, but the Buddha described experience as characterized by three feeling-tones (vedanas): pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. The pitfall of the pleasant is clinging/attachment (greed). The pitfall of the unpleasant is aversion (hatred). The pitfall of the neutral is inattentiveness (and thus, delusion). Be mindful of the pitfalls of all three.

Daozen

There is the saying: only boring people get bored.

Jeffrey

Trungpa Rinpoche said boredom had a virtue in that it removes the hubub about spiritual credentials. There is nothing to gain. Fighting over a rotten apple.

federica

*yawn*.....

Cinorjer

I had a university professor say to us once, "There is no such thing as boredom."

Many years later, as much as I've tried, I can't, IMHO, find a satisfactory disproof.

"That's because you don't have to sit and listen to you teach!"

I was known as quite a smartass in school. Most teachers had no appreciation for my wit.

JamesW

Most of the time I'm awake, I'm bored. In the past, I've washed dishes to wash dishes, and it was amazing. Now how do I do school work to do school work?

seeker242

Dear Fellow Adventurers,

I understand fatigue, I understand preoccupation, I understand lazy (I think), but "boredom?"

Not sure how a human being can become bored. All it takes is a teeny shift in perception and :poof! Whatever it was ["boredom"] can't be detected. Shifts in perception won't get rid of fatigue or laziness.

Throw away your TV, Computer, phone, etc. and lock yourself in a empty room for 30 days (or a cave in the mountains or whatever) and sit there and do nothing except breathe in and out, for the next 30 days. I'll bet $100 that most everyone would become very familiar with boredom by doing this.

GuyC

What a boring thread...

Roger

Throw away your TV, Computer, phone, etc. and lock yourself in a empty room for 30 days (or a cave in the mountains or whatever) and sit there and do nothing except breathe in and out, for the next 30 days. I'll bet $100 that most everyone would become very familiar with boredom by doing this.

Human beings are not supposed to live empty, sterile, vacant lives; in so doing "boredom" still is not a threat, insanity is.

I think ATTACHMENT is what leads to suffering (obviously). Getting suddenly ripped away from our little habits would be painful; then again for many of us drawn to a place like newbuddhist.com having such a 30 day "hardship," in the form of an "official" retreat, might open the way for better living.

So, as far as the $100? Everybody who participates in the excellent experiment you suggest should go on the honor system and throw $100 into the pot if they benefitted from the experience (did not experience boredom) and take $100 if they were totally bored by it.

I bet there'd be a surplus of $100 bills in the pot which you and I could split 50-50!

Then again I'm usually wrong 49% of the time.

Talisman

The author is being facetious guys ...