Thanks bro 
I understand little but I guess its better than
nothing.
Do you feel bored after enlightenment? When all is peaceful.
Joan Tollifson just wrote this:
Responding to my last post, someone wrote that when
he drops into simply being present, at first what he finds “seems
to be flat and ordinary. There is breathing, there are noises. So
what?” And then he describes that when he stays with it, there is
often a sudden shift: “thinking stops and everything becomes deep
and interesting.” He comments that there seem to be “two radically
different modes of experiencing the now,” the flat
and boring one and the deep and interesting one, and then he
describes being in the flat place trying to get to the deep place.
He notices that this shift from flatness to depth happens by
itself, not by trying to make it happen, and he describes this
shift as being at once “radical and subtle.” These are wonderful
observations, and I wanted to comment further on all of this.
The present moment seems flat and ordinary when we’re experiencing
it through the smog of mental ideas, thoughts and stories about it.
When we’re not really seeing what’s in front of us deeply and
openly, then it can indeed seem very boring. Breathing, traffic
noises…and the mind asking, “So what? Been there, done that. What
does this do for me? Who cares?” Boredom is an interesting
experience to explore. What does it feel like in the body? What
thoughts accompany or trigger it? And what is under that
superficial, all-purpose label we call boredom? Is it restlessness,
anxiety, fear, sorrow, disappointment, regret, unease? I’m not
talking about merely coming up with more labels, but rather,
exploring and feeling this thing called boredom nonconceptually,
somatically, as sensation and energy in the body. It may turn out
to be much less boring than we thought!
If we look at our kitchen table through the smog of
conceptualization, we don’t really see it at all. We see an image
on a map. Thought tells us that it’s just our same old kitchen
table. We think we’ve seen it before. Thought tells us that it’s
something ordinary, mundane, unimportant, meaningless, and
therefore uninteresting and boring. What can our kitchen table do
for us aside from holding up the plates during meals? Not much, we
think. If we’re steeped in a certain variety of eastern religion,
thought may even tell us that our kitchen table is nothing but an
illusion, that it’s only the phenomenal manifestation, that it’s
not the real deal. But when we really look at our kitchen table
with the eyes of a very little child or with the eyes of an artist
or with open and awakened eyes, we see something we’ve never seen
before, something that is new in every moment. We see light and
color and shape and gesture, a happening that no words can contain.
We may even see something extraordinary and marvelous.
Of course, “extraordinary and marvelous” are dangerous words,
because we may hear that and immediately begin evaluating whether
our present experience is “extraordinary and marvelous,” and then
we’re immediately lost in another conceptual spin. From that
conceptual place, chances are, our present experience will fall
short of seeming extraordinary and marvelous, and then we’ll begin
wondering what we’re doing wrong. And of course, when we get caught
up in trying to see something marvelous all the time, it is a
losing endeavor guaranteed to end in disappointment. Evaluating and
judging our experience, taking it personally, seeking a better
experience, clinging to the good stuff when we find it, resisting
what we don’t like—this is our human suffering in a nutshell.
To some degree, of course, chasing pleasure and fleeing pain is a
natural survival instinct, part of our animal nature, and it serves
an intelligent purpose. But in humans, it gets carried off into
some very bizarre places that have nothing to do with intelligence
or actual survival. No other animal smokes or drinks itself to
death or goes broke sitting in front of a slot machine. Humans are
susceptible to unique forms of suffering due to our complex brains
and our subsequent ability to think and self-reflect in ways other
animals cannot. So in a way, what we are doing in all of this
meditation and awakening work is learning how to function more
intelligently with these complex brains.
As this person noted, the shift from boring to marvelous, from
flatness to depth, happens by itself. We cannot make it happen. All
we can do is get out of the way and allow it. We do that by being
aware of all the ways we obstruct it—seeing those obstructions for
what they are as they arise. Trying to make this shift or this
seeing happen is one of the ways we obstruct it. And we can’t make
ourselves stop trying. We can’t force these habits of obstruction
to go away through an act of will, on command. But in the light of
awareness, by allowing them and seeing them clearly and feeling
them as pure sensation and energy, these conditioned habits lose
their power, their allure, their credibility, their ability to hook
us. So all we can do is start where we are in this very moment, by
being aware of the trying, or being aware of the boredom. Simply
see it, feel how it feels, see the accompanying thoughts as
thoughts, give it space and allow it all to be as it is.
And can this happen without seeking a result? Is it possible to
approach unwanted or uncomfortable states of mind such as boredom,
loneliness, anxiety, seeking, resisting, and so on with open
curiosity, interest and wonder, in the same way we might approach a
beautiful flower or the face of our beloved? Can we explore these
uncomfortable states and conditioned habits of the bodymind with
love and without expectation or judgment? And if expectation or
judgment arises, if we notice that we’re doing all this for a
result, can we simply start right here with that? Notice that
desire for a result, that expectation. See it. Feel it. Be aware of
it. Allow it to be. Don’t try to get rid of it, because trying not
to try just adds more trying (more seeking and resisting) to the
mix.
And that’s the golden key right there to the subtle and radical
shift from flatness to depth, from samsara to nirvana, from
delusion to enlightenment. What actually invites this shift is very
counter-intuitive. Instead of an infinite regression of trying not
to try, what actually works is to simply allow the trying to be as
it is. See it, feel it, be awake to it. Give it all the space it
needs. Be curious about it. Embrace it. And needless to say, if
we’re doing all that in a goal-oriented way, in order to make the
trying go away and achieve a result, then we’re not really allowing
it to be as it is. It requires complete surrender to what is,
complete acceptance, complete effortless presence. The thinking
mind tells us this is dangerous, that if we do this, the bad stuff
will never end. But in fact, counter-intuitively, quite the
opposite is true.
That shift to complete openness without an agenda happens instantly
when it happens, but it may take considerable time to get to that
point when the grasping, goal-oriented, seeking mind finally
relaxes and lets go. And even when that shift finally does happen,
the habit may return a moment later. Certain habitual patterns may
take decades to completely unwind and dissolve, and some may
persist over an entire lifetime. We can’t force this kind of
transformation, this kind of undoing. But when we really understand
that none of it is personal, that all of it is a happening of life,
then we are willing to give it however much time and space it
needs. It’s not about me anymore. And we can enjoy the journey in
all its various twists and turns.
So are we willing to be bored? Is there a willingness to meet what
seems to be the same old habit, or the same old kitchen table, or
the same old depression anew in this moment, to see it freshly with
open eyes, with love and curiosity? In fact, in the dance of
existence, there is endless variation: cloudy days, sunny days,
warm days, cold days, sickness, health, happy, sad, and so on. Grey
and flat is an experience that we all have sometimes. Every moment
isn’t going to be a moment of extraordinary bliss and magnificence.
But the more we look and feel deeply and closely and openly into
what at first seems grey and boring, or painful and bleak, the more
we discover the jewel at the core of every experience.
The jewel is the awaring presence, not the object being seen.
That’s why we can be bored and disappointed while gazing at the
Swiss Alps and ecstatic and blissed out over a crumpled cigarette
package in the gutter. The beauty is in the quality of the seeing,
the awareness, the presence, not in the object being seen.
A single thought pops up unbidden out of conditioned habit: “Oh no,
it’s raining again,” or “Is this all there is?” or “So what?” If
that thought isn’t instantly seen for what it is, then we’re no
longer awake and present. And before we know it, we’re lost in a
whole story about how, “Nothing works, everything is hopeless, life
is a mess, I’m a loser, I’m doomed, there’s no way out, it’s
another miserable day,” and so on, accompanied by queasy feelings
in the gut, an ache in the chest, a lump in the throat, an
over-powering feeling of exhaustion, a feeling of stuckness. And
then more thoughts, more stories, more disturbing sensations, more
emotions—an endless feedback loop of emotion-thought that spirals
into more and more despair or discouragement or irritation or
whatever it is. And next thing we know, we light a cigarette, start
a fight with our wife, drop a bomb on our neighbors, drink
ourselves to death, shoot ourselves in the foot, or whatever it is
we do. This is our human suffering and we can see it playing out at
every level from the personal to the global.
So how do we meet this sinking feeling in the gut, this
overwhelming exhaustion, this frightening sense of anxiety,
uneasiness, disappointment, depression? Do we go to war with it? Do
we try desperately to find the bliss in it? Do we rush to the
liquor cabinet or light up a cigarette or grab for a spiritual
book? Or maybe, just maybe, does it occur to us to turn toward it
and actually meet it with open minds, open hearts, open eyes, open
arms…and to see what it really and truly is. That is waking up. Not
once and for all, not forever after, but moment to moment, now. And
it’s not about perfection. Sometimes we don’t wake up, sometimes
the old conditioning overpowers the ability to open, sometimes
delusion happens. No one is beyond this. But the amazing thing is,
we can always start anew right where we are, right here, right
now.
