What is Boredom?
Boredom is the subjective feeling that nothing interesting is happening in our current environment. It is a lack of stimulation that triggers negative thoughts and low mood. Feeling bored is unpleasant, and it is understandable that we would want to escape it.
A Buddhist Understanding of Boredom
From the Buddhist perspective, boredom arises due to the habit of the mind to label the experience as either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This labelling is referred to in Buddhism as ‘vedana’ or feeling tone. Boredom arises when we are in any situation where the most obvious feeling tone is neutral.
It is important to stress that there never is anything inherently boring in anything we are experiencing. It is just the feeling tone that is being currently triggered. The label the mind chooses in any given situation depends a lot on our conditioning. For example, some people will see a football match on TV, and the feeling tone will be pleasant, for other people the feeling tone will be neutral or even unpleasant.
A Buddhist Response to Boredom
To be able to overcome boredom, we need to see beyond the conditioned feeling tone. We do this by becoming more interested in what we are experiencing at this moment. Curiosity is the key here – it forces the brain to reevaluate its application of the ‘neutral’ label. Over time, we begin to see that anything we give our full attention to appears interesting. Even something as simple as the breathing becomes a wonderous experience when we approach it with curiosity.
The key to beating boredom it to not talk yourself into the fact you are bored.
If you are sitting around with nothing to do, it is quite easy to talk yourself into being bored. Instead, get up and find something that will stimulate your interest. It might be as simple as going outside and looking closely at things you take for granted.
Go to a market, or shop, or anywhere that people watching will stimulate your thoughts.
Challenge yourself to do things you have never done.
Be bored can be solved with little effort if you do not talk yourself into it.
There is always something going on and something to do, somewhere near by.
Seek these things out and enjoy!