Buffaloes don't feel it, although they look very much bored.
Donkeys don't feel it, although they too look very much bored.
Except man, nobody feels boredom; and even as far as man is concerned, all men don't feel BOREDOM.
It needs INTELLIGENCE to feel boredom, so very few, the most INTELLIGENT people in the world, feel BOREDOM.
BUDDHA felt it, MAHAVIRA felt it.
The rarest people feel BOREDOM because it needs tremendous INTELLIGENCE to EXPERIENCE it.
So in a way it is not a curse, it is a BLESSING.
It is out of BOREDOM that the inquiry for the meaning of LIFE arises.
Those who have felt bored simply show that whatsoever ordinary meanings LIFE has, are no longer fulfilling for them. There are people who are perfectly happy with money, accumulating more and more money, and they seem to be immensely interested in it, perfectly happy with their search for more.
These are not really developed human beings: they are the most mediocre human being, the lowest kind. Their intelligence has not yet become a flowering; it is still in the seed, only a potential.
Out of this boredom the person starts moving INWARDS; finding everything futile on the outside he turns IN - because there is nowhere else to go. His intelligence is so clear, so transparent that he can see that he can have all the money of the world, still he will be the same person. He can have all the power of the world, still he would not have become a new being through it, he will not be reborn.
He can have all the knowledge that is available, but still he will remain the same stupid person inside; his knowledge will be just parrot like. He will repeat beautiful cliches without exactly knowing their meaning, because their meaning can be known only through experience of one's own. He can talk like Jesus, he can sermonize on the kingdom of God that is within, but he has no GLIMPSE of it. He has learned only mere words.
The feeling of BOREDOM simply shows that you are ready to go for the inner journey; if you don't go you will feel stuck. Now the head cannot fulfill your longing. The heart will give you something, a glimpse, a window will open. You will know something of the sky through the window, something of the stars, something of the moon and the sun and the wind and the rain and the flowers, but only through the window.
You have to come out of the window too, under the sky, because when you look from the window everything is FRAMED - and the FRAME is false. If you look from the window towards the starry sky, it feels as if the sky is framed, as if the sky has a limitation, a boundary.
When you reach to your innermost core, all the boundaries disappear... you have entered the unlimited, the unbounded, the infinite. That infinite is called God.
BOREDOM is a BLESSING. It is a goading for the search. It is a goading towards God, towards Tao. The western approach has failed; it has come to a point that now there is no more to go. The West is stuck, but the eastern approach has not failed and it is never going to fail. But the West can also move towards the East only when its approach fails. Now the time has come that the West can understand the East and the meeting can happen.
I am not against reason. Whatsoever reason can give it has to be used as a means, but one thing is certain: don't ask for things which it cannot give to you. It cannot give meaning, it cannot give significance, it cannot give dignity, it cannot give you your ultimate flowering. That is possible only through MEDITATION, through discovering your innermost self, your ultimate, eternal being which is never born and never dies.
Use BOREDOM as a jumping-stone towards the ultimate and then you will feel grateful, even grateful to the experience of boredom - which is painful, full of anguish. But the wise man can transform even misery into bliss, and the fool goes on destroying all opportunities for bliss and goes on creating misery out of the energy which could have created a paradise within you. The paradise is already there just you have to take a one hundred-eighty-degree turn.
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