Bored

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

This morning I would like to talk about being bored. There are times in all of our lives, I am sure, when we just are not excited about the view in our lives. Often these times come as we transition from something, but are not yet caught up in something else. Or when the something else is either not clear or not very interesting or something we really do not want to engage.

I am in that place just now.

As I moved away from being the leader of our local Zen Center, I had a sense of wanting something different in my life. I looked at streetZen, a lonely effort, but necessary one. I looked at Zen Judaism and renewed my study of Judaism itself, explored Jewish Spirituality, Jewish History, and even delved into Hebrew and began a study of kabbalistic texts. Recently, I was elected to the Board of Directors at our Temple.

All of these efforts are wonderful experiences. Yet here I am this morning feeling bored.

Life is like that. We cannot always be flying high. Its in these times, the lower times, that the real work gets done.

Disciplined spiritual practice means digging in and doing the practice regardless of the feeling we have at the moment. The Zen of life is the willingness to do and experience. Zen is the willingness to open to all experience, good, bad, and indifferent.

What is this practice? Zazen in both the most narrow and most expansive sense.

In its most narrow sense it is sitting upright facing a wall and being completely present. In its most expansive sense, it is being completely awake through each moment of each day even when those moments are taxing, boring, or just plain evil. In truth it is we who add those assessments to situations. It is our own minds which imagine how things should otherwise be; images on a comparative screen: reality v dream.

Live in reality.

Be well.