BORE DOM

What is boredom? When there is no interest, when you don’t like or love, that is boredom. Isn’t it? Suppose if you have to sing a song and if you don’t like it or if you have to sing it several times you get bored. Suppose you like a song, love a song , then it doesn’t bore you. You can sing the song the whole day. How many of you have had this experience?

Boredom is lack of interest and love. If you keep doing all your practices again and again, that creates boredom. Right?

What is the purpose of practice? Boredom is the repetition of the same thing. Repetition of anything to the extent that it surpasses liking is boredom; to the extent that it surpasses liking and interest is boredom. What is the purpose of practise? Practise means doing the same thing like japa or any other sadhana. Their purpose is to destroy boredom. The purpose of sadhana is to first bring up boredom and then destroy the boredom.

The self is all love. If the self is all love then how can you bored with your self? Not possible you are bored with your mind, not with yourself. Mind always wants change. It is bored without a change and practise is doing the same thing, repeating the same thing without changing so that the mind gets thoroughly bored and bored and bored. Got it?

You keep saying ‘Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya’ and you get bored and bored and the boredom becomes so much that nothing else can really bore you. So the value of sadhana is to bore you so much that you cannot get bored at all.

When you cannot get bored with yourself, you cannot get bored with anything else in the world or with anything. If you have to say the same thing over and over again you will say it with the same enthusiasm.

Have you noticed a child? A child never gets bored. It says the same thing again and again. If a child asks a question it keeps asking the same thing and it goes on non-stop. You get bored but the child does’nt get bored. Isn’t it? The child is not bored opening the same book several times. There is nothing new in the book, but it opens and closes, opens and closes. That is why mothers have time. They give some toy to the child, the beads in a string. They go on stringing the beads from this side to that side.

If you take children to an exhibition and they see the roller coaster or merry go round go round and they want to sit on it. You try to convince them, “don’t sit on it, your head will turn. Not today, we will come again tomorrow”. After listening to all that you say, at the end of it they, “daddy I want to sit on it. Mama, I want to sit on it”. Repetition is children’s nature.

You get bored listening to the same thing repeatedly, Now, all of you come for satsang once a week and listen to all that we say. If we were to say the same thing every day and you would have to listen to it everyday, none of you would have been here. All of you would have vanished.

Why? We need something new. What is the nature of the mind? It needs something new constantly, every minute. It wants something today, something else tomorrow or an entirely different thing the day after tomorrow. You get bored if you have to eat the same vegetable everyday. You want different vegetables every day. Isn’t it? You want to different varieties of food every day. Why? Mind wants something new, new and new.

But tell me how much new can exist? The wanting for new has to stop some where. Isn’t it? When nothing can be got, the mind gets bored and the cause of boredom is repetition.

There is no boredom in love. There is repetition in love and this is known as practise. The goal of practise is to root away the boredom within us. Are you getting this?

Now when we eat rice everyday, only the vegetables served are different, but the rice is the same. People who are used to eating rice everyday never get bored with it and will feel different if there is no rice for one day.

Whatever the mind gets used to something because of practise, it never gets bored with it. If you are used to your husband’s grumbling everyday, then you don’t feel that there is anything new about it. If you are used to somebody shouting at you all the time, you get so used to it that you just let them shout however long they want to and you continue with your work. When you are used to anger, the heat of anger does not affect you. So there is a close relationship between practise and love. How? There is repetition in love and there is repetition in practise.

If you write a letter to somebody, you write love, love, love, love all over. If you go to a college hostel where a boy is in love with the girl, then you can see that their names are written all over the wall. Their names are written in every page of their note book. Why? They never get bored of it. As you keep repeating and doing your practices again and again, the boredom vanishes and love rises.

So what do we feel when we do the same practices everyday? You do the same thing like say Ram, Ram, Ram or Shiva, Shiva, Shiva and bore the mind thoroughly. Only when you penetrate this boredom does love arises. Isn’t it? Is that ringing a bell? Why everyday pranayam? “We feel bored Guruji. Practise is boring”. That is the purpose of it. You see that?

Sometimes you hum a line of a movie song, bhajan or traditional music which suddenly flashes to you while bathing. You later realise that you would have hummed the whole day, the same line. How many of you have had this experience? This is because love and practise has happened. So sit for half an hour every day and say something, Ram, Ram, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva or atleast keep groaning and moaning, doesn’t matter. But so some practise for half an hour.