Boredom is important because boredom is anti-credential.
Credentials are entertaining, always bringing you
something new, something lively, something fantastic, all kinds of
solutions. When you take away the idea of credentials, then there
is boredom...
...similarly, boredom is important in meditation practice; it
increases the psychological sophistication of the practitioners.
They begin to appreciate boredom and they develop their
sophistication until the boredom begins to become cool boredom,
like a mountain river. It flows and flows and flows, methodically
and repetitiously, but it is very cooling, very refreshing.
Mountains never get tired of being mountains and waterfalls
never get tired of being waterfalls... It is a good feeling to be
bored, constantly sitting and sitting. First gong, second gong,
third gong, more gongs yet to come. Sit, sit, sit, sit. Cut through
the artery until the boredom becomes extraordinarily powerful. We
have to work hard at it. At this point, we cannot really study the
vajrayana or, for that matter, even the mahayana. We are not up to
it because we have not actually made a relationship with boredom
yet. To begin with we have to relate with the hinayana. If we are
to save ourselves from spiritual materialism and from buddha-dharma
with credentials, if we are to become the dharma without
credentials, the introduction of boredom and repetitiousness is
extremely important. Without it, we have no hope. It is true -- no
hope.
There are definite styles of boredom. The Zen tradition in Japan
creates a definite style of boredom in its monasteries. Sit, cook,
eat. Sit zazen and do your walking meditation and so on. But to an
American novice who goes to Japan or take part in tradtional
Japanese practice in this country, the message of boredom is not
communicated properly. Instead, if I may say so, it turns into a
militant appreciation of rigidity, or an aesthetic appreciation of
simplicity, rather than actually being bored, which is strange.
Actually it was not designed to be that way. To the Japanese, Zen
practice is an ordinary Japanese life-situation in which you just
do your daily work and sit a lot of zazen. But Americans appreciate
the little details -- how you use your bowl and how you eat
consciously in zazen posture. This is only supposed to create a
feeling of boredom, but to American students it is a work of art.
Cleaning your bowl, washing it out, folding your white napkin and
so forth, becomes living theater. The black cushion is supposed to
suggest no color, complete boredom. But for Americans it inspires a
mentality of militant blackness, straightforwardness .
The tradition is trying to bring out boredom, which is a
necessary aspect of the narrow path of discipline, but instead the
practice turns out to be an archeological, sociological survey of
interesting things to do, something you could tell your friends
about: "Last year I spent the whole fal sitting in a Zen monastery
for six months. I watched autumn turn into winter and I did my
zazen practice and everything was so precise and beautiful. I
learned how to sit and I even learned how to walk and eat. It was a
wonderful experience and I did not get bored at all." You tell your
friends, "Go, it's great fun," and you collect another credential.
The attempt to destroy credentials creates another
credential.
The first point in destroying ego's game is the strict
discipline of sitting meditation practice. No intellectual
speculation, no philosophizing. Just sit and do it. That is the
first strategy in developing buddha-dharma without credentials.