Ab­stract

We em­bark on an in­ter­nal jour­ney of bore­dom, at­tempt­ing to stay as bored as pos­si­ble while main­tain­ing aware­ness of the process.  The land­scape is bleak, yet the sub­tle fea­tures of mind pre­sent them­selves to be ex­am­ined and ex­plored.

In­tro­duc­tion

The Bud­dhist phe­nom­e­nol­ogy iden­ti­fies six senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and thought.  Just as sights and sounds bar­rage our eyes and ears, thoughts man­i­fest in our think­ing mind, as sen­sual ex­pe­ri­ences that pass and can­not be owned.  

The bor­ing ex­pe­ri­ence is a tem­po­rary re­lease from en­gage­ment - en­gage­ment with our senses and thoughts.  It is empti­ness and dull­ness with­out depth.  Here, we hy­poth­e­size two main modes of bore­dom.  The first is te­dious and phys­i­cally mis­er­able, often in­duced by wait­ing.  The sec­ond is fer­tile, like the grip­ping pause on top of a cliff, be­fore a big jump into the clear and new.

J. Kr­ish­na­murti writes about see­ing:

"…when you look at a tree or at a cloud of an evening full of light and de­light, do you ac­tu­ally see it, not only with your eyes and in­tel­lec­tu­ally, but to­tally, com­pletely?  Have you ever ex­per­i­mented with look­ing at an ob­jec­tive thing like a tree with­out any of the as­so­ci­a­tions, any of the knowl­edge you have ac­quired about it, with­out any prej­u­dice, any judge­ment, any words form­ing a screen be­tween you and the tree and pre­vent­ing you from see­ing it as it ac­tu­ally is?  Try it and see what ac­tu­ally takes place when you ob­serve the tree with all your being, with the to­tal­ity of your en­ergy."

This type of see­ing - pro­found, deep, and some­times non-dual - often comes from being bored.  To re­ally see a tree, in this way, one sim­ply has to wait out the bore­dom that sets in when we hold our gaze.  This ex­plo­sive move from bore­dom to in­sight may be pleas­ant, but is the main hur­dle to a sus­tained bor­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

This ar­ti­cle de­tails an ad­ven­ture in bore­dom.  We un­der­take to main­tain a state of un­in­ter­rupted bore­dom, turn­ing the bleak­est land­scape into our for­est of dis­cov­ery.  We are si­mul­ta­ne­ously the ob­server (hence­forth the "Wit­ness") and the par­tic­i­pant in this ex­per­i­ment, and, as with all sub­ject/ob­ject du­al­i­ties, this para­dox frames the ex­pe­ri­ence.  In par­tic­u­lar, the ex­per­i­ment is com­pro­mised if the Wit­ness leaves the room; meta-aware­ness must be main­tained at all times, and such meta-aware­ness nec­es­sar­ily in­ter­feres with the think­ing mind's bore­dom.  This re­quires a fur­ther level of meta-meta-aware­ness - the "Au­di­tor" checks in with the Wit­ness oc­ca­sion­ally.  Al­though such lev­els con­tinue in the­ory, in prac­tice these three lev­els have suf­ficed for our crude ex­per­i­ment.

Glos­sary of Terms

These are not uni­ver­sally agreed upon.  We ar­tic­u­late them for the sake of clar­ity within this ar­ti­cle.

Mind - the par­tic­i­pant in the ex­per­i­ment; the think­ing mind and sens­ing mind.

Wit­ness - the ob­server in the ex­per­i­ment; self-re­flec­tion within the Mind.

Au­di­tor - the ob­server of the ob­server; self-re­flec­tion of the Wit­ness.

state of mind - the com­bined states of the Mind, Wit­ness, and Au­di­tor.

in­ter­est, in­ter­ested, in­ter­est­ing - an in­ter­est­ing sen­sa­tion/thought en­gages the Mind and leads it away from bore­dom; trains of thought begin, and must be in­ter­rupted.  Like­wise, in­ter­est­ing meta-thoughts re­gard­ing the Mind may en­gage the Wit­ness too much, and lead away from bore­dom.

look­ing/notic­ing, lis­ten­ing, think­ing - per­cep­tion from sight, sound, and thought.

see­ing, hear­ing, think­ing about - en­gag­ing those per­cep­tions, à la Kr­ish­na­murti, lead­ing to in­ter­est in some ob­ject.

depth - a state of open­ing to an ob­ject or ex­pe­ri­ence, dis­solv­ing the sub­ject/ob­ject du­al­ity and al­low­ing an im­mer­sion in rel­a­tive unity.  The op­po­site of depth is dull­ness.  Depth is be­yond thought, but quickly be­comes in­ter­est­ing, and so the true bored ex­pe­ri­ence has no place for depth.

Ex­per­i­men­tal Setup

The ex­per­i­ment was con­ducted dur­ing a re­cent flight from Boston to Seat­tle - from the At­lantic to the Pa­cific. The au­thor sat still and did noth­ing, for ap­prox­i­mately 5 hours and 45 min­utes.  The first 15 min­utes were de­voted to ana­pana med­i­ta­tion, to calm the Mind, bring focus, and es­tab­lish a strong self-aware Wit­ness.  The last 15 min­utes, dur­ing de­scent, were de­voted to a re­laxed breath-aware­ness, to close out the ex­per­i­ment and re­turn to a more healthy state.  In be­tween, the pri­or­i­ties were as fol­lows:

1. Main­tain the Wit­ness

2. Be as bored as pos­si­ble.  Avoid any in­ter­est­ing sen­sa­tions/thoughts.  If the Wit­ness ob­serves a state of see­ing, hear­ing, or think­ing about, it must dis­en­gage and re­turn the Mind to bore­dom.

3. The Au­di­tor in­ter­venes oc­ca­sion­ally, to ob­serve the Wit­ness and make sure it is not too en­gaged or in­ter­ested.

4. When the state of mind has sta­bi­lized, or is punc­tu­ated, this is doc­u­mented in brief hand-writ­ten notes.

Hy­poth­e­sis

Bore­dom is empti­ness and mean­ing­less­ness, with­out any lib­er­a­tion, in­sight or depth.  It is dull­ness in the abyss.  On its own, bore­dom is empty, but it often re­solves in two ways - one neg­a­tive and one pos­i­tive.  The neg­a­tive is a painful te­dium, a wait­ing, a lonely suf­fer­ing.  The pos­i­tive is an ex­plo­sive re­lease into depth, cre­ativ­ity, or in­sight.  Into the empti­ness, beau­ti­ful thoughts blos­som, new cre­ative ideas are born, sen­si­tiv­ity in­creases, emo­tions sur­face.

Tran­script:

0:00 - plane be­gins to taxi away from the air­port.  begin ana­pana med­i­ta­tion.

0:12 - plane takes off.  stop ana­pana, and begin ex­per­i­ment in bore­dom.

0:15 - the city of Boston was in­ter­est­ing, so I looked away.

0:22 - look­ing at col­ors and shapes, and start­ing to see more, be­com­ing more sen­si­tive.  I dart my eyes, but does this help or hurt the goal of bore­dom?

0:31 - start fid­get­ing.

0:34 - ideas are re­ver­ber­at­ing in the form of phrases.  hear the ideas pull my aware­ness in.  fight it.

0:41 - see­ing so much. flashes of child­hood. feel some drowsi­ness.

0:47 - some fear about what's going to hap­pen in the next five hours.

0:54 - cy­cles of fid­get­ing and star­ing, but of slower fre­quen­cies.  slow­ing down.  feel some peace.

1:05 - the weight be­hind my eyes is gone.  feels like watch­ing a movie. con­cerned that too much low-level breath-aware­ness is putting me into a trance.  how to lose breath-aware­ness?

1:18 - have be­come very sen­si­tive. hard not to be fas­ci­nated by every image, sound, sen­sa­tion. maybe forc­ing aware­ness to move/jump only feeds it with in­ter­est­ing things. maybe need to force it to move to­wards cer­tain things, so the ob­jects are un­in­ter­est­ing.

1:28 - drink a soda.

1:34 - first wave of ni­hilism - empti­ness AND depth, watch­ing the guy hand out snacks.  I want to rel­ish it but don't.  depth not al­lowed.

1:53 - fin­ish soda and snacks.  fid­get­ing stopped. very peace­ful, con­tent.  main­tain­ing the Wit­ness seems to pre­clude the deep lev­els of bore­dom, like I had when rid­ing on the sub­way or wait­ing to board the plane.  should I go for en­durance, not depth of bore­dom?

1:56 - [Au­di­tor steps in.] don't fol­low that last train of thought.  too cu­ri­ous about it.  I am in the ex­per­i­ment, not al­lowed to process the data or alter the course, only ob­serve and doc­u­ment.

2:16 - sec­ond wave - mas­sive - of ni­hilism.  pro­found aware­ness of utter and ab­solute mean­ing­less­ness, when I no­tice woman watch­ing a TV show on jel­ly­fish.  the abyss dis­tracts and com­forts me with sad­ness, fear.  I look away.

2:26 - no­tice her watch­ing a show with Sarah Palin show­shoe­ing across a crevassed glac­ier, roped in and gussied up.  waves of emo­tions and thoughts dis­tract/en­gage me.  not bored, but they're so in­tense they over­whelm the Wit­ness!  I lose con­trol and self-aware­ness.  even­tu­ally the Au­di­tor steps in and re-es­tab­lishes the Wit­ness.

2:41 - came up with a sim­ple way to put the Wit­ness in a less de­mand­ing/en­gag­ing role (else it be­comes too in­ter­ested).  I count.  once the Mind be­comes in­ter­ested in some­thing, I say the next num­ber in my head.  the say­ing is in­ter­est­ing, but af­ter­wards it in­duces a wait­ing-like state of shal­low empti­ness.  once an in­ter­est­ing thought/sen­sa­tion comes up, I say the next num­ber and reset.  seems like maybe I can even make the Wit­ness bored.  By #16 I was VERY sleepy, al­most fell asleep.

3:02 - by #42 I felt a strain from the ef­fort.  the Wit­ness had its arms tied be­hind its back.  was very drowsy and felt a pres­sure in my head.  got wor­ried I might fall asleep.  Switched to a body-scan med­i­ta­tion briefly - mov­ing aware­ness as soon as it en­gaged, but al­low­ing the Wit­ness to be slightly more ac­tive and free in its imag­in­ings.  this woke me up.

3:06 - to bath­room, and walk­ing up and down aisles.  then ate my donut (Boston Creme).

3:42 - in­creas­ing dull­ness until I can't tell if I'm bored or in­ter­ested.  there is no depth of thought, but also no im­pa­tience.  my Mind is dull but the Wit­ness is sharp.  some ex­pan­sive feel­ings of one­ness with the group of us trav­el­ers on the plane - one in con­scious­ness.  but soon it be­comes a thought; I don't pur­sue it.

4:10 - empty with­out depth.  the dull­ness ex­tended to vi­sion, so I just stare with­out any en­gag­ing thoughts aris­ing.  If any depth comes, it has the fla­vor of a sort of out-of-body shar­ing of ex­is­tence - sus­tain­ing the uni­verse - shared with other plane folks.  also, feels like we're close enough to land­ing that wait­ing has kicked in - this fuels the bore­dom.  I've never sus­tained a Wit­ness this long in pub­lic, but I'm not pro­cess­ing that - I let those ob­ser­va­tions go with­out try­ing to learn from them.

4:38 - stared at the tray table for a long time.  "empty, but dull" mantra, works like the count­ing.  noth­ing to re­port.

5:03 - still star­ing.  begin de­scent.

5:19 - my vi­sion is still.  using the sound of the en­gine to gauge when a thought hap­pens.  Wit­ness is more steady.  steady grow­ing urge to think some­thing, read, or move, or hear music.

5:21 - begin to con­clude the ex­per­i­ment.  allow thoughts.  Kr­ish­na­murti-es­que see­ing.  beau­ti­ful.  feel awake, alert.  stun­ning.

5:28 - stare in awe at the lights of Seat­tle.  allow depth - coast to coast, lights fill­ing in the voids.

5:37 - plane lands.  rest with breath aware­ness.

5:45 - con­clude ex­per­i­ment.  leave plane.

Con­clu­sion:

After the fid­get­ing of the first two hours, none of the neg­a­tive ef­fects of bore­dom were felt.  The need to main­tain a Wit­ness seemed to pre­clude the deep­est states of mis­er­able bore­dom.  The chal­lenge was to fight off the see­ing, the in­sight, and the depth.  The Wit­ness rose to the chal­lenge, but then often threat­ened to be­come too in­ter­ested in an­a­lyz­ing the ex­per­i­ment.  Over time, we were able to lull the Mind into bored dull­ness while keep­ing the Wit­ness ac­tive yet un­in­ter­ested.  A pos­si­ble next step would be to at­tempt to sus­tain this state while let­ting the Au­di­tor guide the Wit­ness to ex­plore the one­ness that was glimpsed around time 3:42.  This would leave the realm of bore­dom, to em­bark on a new ad­ven­ture.