BOREDOM IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN HUMAN LIFE. Only man is capable of boredom; no other animal is capable of being bored. Boredom simply shows that you are becoming aware of the futility of life, its constant repetitive wheel. You have done all those things before – nothing happens. You have been into all those trips before – nothing comes out of it. Boredom is the first indication that a great understanding is arising in you about the futility, meaninglessness, of life and its ways.

Now, you can respond to boredom in two ways. one is what is ordinarily done: escape from it, avoid it, don’t look eye to eye into it, don’t encounter it. Keep it at your back; and run away; run into things which can occupy you, which can become obsessions; which take you so far away from the realities of life that you never see boredom arising again .

That’s why people have invented alcohol, drugs. They are ways to escape from boredom. But you cannot really escape; you can only avoid for a while. Again and again the boredom will be coming, and again and again it will be more and more loud. You can escape in sex, in eating too much, in music – in a thousand and one kinds of things you can escape. But again and again the boredom will arise. It is not something that can be avoided; it is part of human growth. It has to be faced.

The other response is to face it, to meditate on it, to be with it, to be it. That’s what Buddha was doing under the Bodhi Tree – that’s what all Zen people have been doing down the ages. What exactly is meditation? Facing boredom is meditation. What does a meditator go on doing? Sitting silently, looking at his own navel, or watching his breathing, do you think he is being entertained by these things? He is utterly bored! That’s why the Zen master moves with a stick in his hand – because those bored people are bound to fall asleep. There is no other escape, so only one escape is left: at Least they can fall asleep.

If you go on looking into boredom without escaping the explosion comes. One day, suddenly, looking deep into boredom, you penetrate your own nothingness. Boredom is just the cover, the container in which is contained your inner nothingness. If you escape from boredom, you are escaping from your own nothingness. If you don’t escape from boredom, if you start living with it, if you start accepting it, welcoming it…. That’s what meditation is all about: welcoming boredom, going into it on one’s own; not waiting for it to come but searching for it.