What is boredom? There is boredom when there is no interest

*Chapter 3 - Boredom*

From Waves of emotions

What is boredom? There is boredom when there is no interest, when you don't like or love. Suppose you have to sing a song and you don't like it or if you have to sing it several times, then you get bored.

Suppose you like a song, then it doesn't bore you. You can sing that song the whole day. Boredom is lack of interest and love. 

There is boredom if you keep doing all your practices again and again. What is a practice? It is repetition of the same thing. Repetition of anything to the extent that it surpasses interest is boredom.

What is the purpose of practice? It is to destroy boredom. The purpose of sadhana is to first bring up boredom and then destroy it. 

The self is all love. If the self is all love then how can you be bored with your self? It is not possible. You are bored with your mind and not with yourself. 

Mind always wants a change. It is bored without a change. Practice is repeating the same thing without any change so that the mind gets thoroughly bored.

You keep saying 'Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya.' You get bored and the boredom becomes so much that nothing else can really bore you. 

So the purpose 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. 

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? It never gets bored. It says the same thing again and

again. 

A child keeps asking a question

again and again. You get bored but the child doesn't. The child is not bored of opening the same book several times.

There is nothing new in the book, but he opens and closes it again and again. This is how mothers get time to do their work.

They give a toy to the child e.g. beads in a string and the child goes on stringing the beads from one side to the other while the mothers work.

If you take children to an fair and they see a roller coaster or merry-go-round, they want to try it. 

You try to convince them not to go on it, that their heads will spin, but even after all your talk they will continue to repeat that they want to go on it. 

Repetition is children's nature.

You get bored listening to the same thin repeatedly. 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 time, then none of you would come. We need something new. What is the nature of the mind? 

It constantly needs something new. It wants something today, something else tomorrow and an entirely different thing the next day. 

You get bored if you have to eat the same vegetable everyday. You want different vegetables. You want to eat different varieties of food every day. 

The mind wants something new, new and new. But tell me how much new can exist? The wanting for new has to stop somewhere.

When nothing new can be got, the mind gets bored. The cause of boredom is repetition. There is no boredom in love. 

There is repetition in love and this is known as practice. The goal of practice is to root away the boredom within us.

In our food only the vegetables served are different, but the rice is the same. People who are used to eating rice everyday never get bored of it and will feel odd if it is not there for even a day.

The mind never gets bored of what it gets used to because of practice. If you are used to your husband's grumbling, then you don't feel that there is anything new about it. 

If you are used to somebody shouting at you all the time, then you will let him go on as long he wants to and you will 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 practice and love. 

There is repetition in love and there is repetition in practice. A boy may write a letter to a girl with love' written all over it. In college hostels the names of loved ones are written all over the place. 

Their names are written in every page of note books. They never get bored of it. As you keep repeating and doing your practices again and again, the boredom vanishes and love rises. 

What do you feel when you do the same practices everyday? You recite the same thing like ‘Ram, Ram, Ram' or 'Shiva, Shiva, Shiva' and bore your mind thoroughly. 

Only when you penetrate this boredom does love arises. Why do you do pranayama everyday when you feel bored doing it. Practice is boring. 

That is the purpose of it. 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 have hummed the same line whole day. This is because there is love and practice. 

So sit for half an hour every day and say something - Ram, Ram, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva - or at least keep groaning and moaning. 

It doesn't matter. But do some practise for half an hour. Patanjali said, 'Wherever your mind goes meditate on that’s If your mind is very much drawn towards your grandchild then meditate on your grandchild. 

See God in your grandchild and worship the child. Do whatever pleases you. At least let your mind get used to that half an hour of practice. Do whatever pleases you the most.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji