Boredom and Buddhism

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Boredom and Buddhism ~ Jim Podolske. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Jim Podolske at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 11, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Boredom and Buddhism

Good evening, everyone. As you know, we'll be sitting for half an hour from 7:15 to 7:45, and then at that time, I'll give a talk. I'll ring the bell and give a talk. So, I look forward to seeing you at the end of the sitting.

Introduction

Well, good evening, everyone. Welcome. Last week, Diana asked if I would give a talk this evening as she's away. And so I thought I would continue with some of the themes that she started three weeks ago about bringing the quality of curiosity to our mindfulness practice.

Sometimes after taking a course on mindfulness, you may find yourself just following the patterns that are laid out around noting what's going on. And it is possible that over time it may become a little bit dry, a little bit mechanical, or kind of like going through the steps without a lot of energy or engagement. So, curiosity actually combines three of the Seven Factors of Awakening^[1]: mindfulness, investigation, and energy.

When I looked up curiosity on the web for definitions, there are things like "eager to learn," "desire to investigate," "exciting attention," and "strongly desirous to see what is novel or discover what is not known." Bringing an energy and an engagement to mindfulness can make it a lot more vital, more alive—you might say more interesting—than just trying to follow simple instructions for mindfulness.

What to Be Curious About

At the end of her talk three weeks ago, somebody in the audience asked, "Well, what should I be curious about?" And she gave a very succinct answer, which was: everything. Anything that arises in your awareness, anything that presents itself to you is fair game to pay attention to, to be curious about, to investigate. And that's an important part of mindfulness practice—that nothing has to be excluded. There's nothing that arrives in our awareness that we have to say, "Well, no, not that. I'm not going to pay attention to that."

I realized it's also important to make a distinction between bringing awareness to something and choosing what we want to feed, cultivate, or nurture. There are qualities—things like generosity, ethics, renunciation, loving-kindness—that we really want to nourish, cultivate, and let grow. That takes some wisdom along those lines. But in terms of just paying attention, getting to know, and allowing to be seen, that can be anything. That can be anything that arises in our awareness.

When I heard Diana's answer, I thought, "Well, yeah, that's great. It's a great answer." But I imagined the person who asked the question may have also been thinking, "But give us a hint. What might we look for? If I'm sitting there with my eyes closed and it doesn't seem like anything's happening, where might I proactively look?"

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness as Seeds

It reminded me of cloud physics. How do clouds form? Having been an atmospheric scientist, I've spent many hours flying through clouds with an instrument for measuring gas-phase water. It turns out that clouds just don't spontaneously form. Most of the time, when you look inside a droplet of either rain or snow, there's a little nucleus. There's something called a cloud condensation nucleus that was there for the water to glom onto, to coagulate around. So, I thought talking about the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[2] may give you some of these little condensation nuclei—what your mindfulness might want to collect around.

You've probably heard about cloud seeding, where when conditions are right, they drop silver iodide crystals into that part of the atmosphere and it will actually start to rain. Bringing to mind some of these foundations of mindfulness might be a little bit like cloud seeding. Hopefully, that analogy is useful. I like to think in terms of clouds, so that's what came to my mind.

I'll just very briefly mention the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. First, there's mindfulness of the body. We can use our body—the sensations in our body—as things to bring our awareness to.

Second is the feeling tone of our experience, whether it's pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. That quality is something that we can bring our awareness to, bring our mindfulness to, and bring our curiosity to.

Third is mind states—what's the mood of the mind? What's the weather in the mind? Is it clear or is it cloudy? Is it windy or is it calm? Is the mind clear and bright, or is it kind of dull? Learning to recognize and appreciate what the state of your mind is at any particular time is a useful thing to pay attention to.

And then the fourth one is mindfulness of mind objects or mental activities. That's a very, very broad realm. In fact, it's so broad that they often break it down into five separate sub-lists: the Five Hindrances^[3], the Five Aggregates^[4], the Six Sense Doors^[5], the Seven Factors of Awakening, and the Four Noble Truths^[6]. I'm not going to go through all of that tonight, although I will talk about the Five Hindrances a little later.

As I mentioned two weeks ago, there's a discourse called the Satipatthana Sutta^[7]. This is one particular book that explains it in great detail. There are many other books, but you can see that it's a pretty thick book. There is a lot to be gained from examining that and letting it be a source of seeds for your mindfulness. I also talked about awareness of emotions, which are combinations of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Psychological processes that go on are also combinations of those four. Those are all things that can arise in our awareness, and there's value in being curious about and investigating them.

Investigating Boredom

It occurred to me that that is pretty complete. What is missing is what I decided I wanted to talk about tonight: boredom.

I'd like you to just notice for a minute what happened when you heard the word "boredom." When you heard, "I came here tonight and he's going to give a talk about boredom."

Audience: Lots of boredom. I've got lots of boredom. Yeah.

Great. Well, you came to the right place. Undoubtedly, there might have been some shift in the energy in your body. There might have been some shift in the state of your mind. There may have been thoughts or opinions that arose about it. Some aversion perhaps, like, "Oh my god, I'm getting out of here as soon as he turns his back. I'm getting out of here." [Laughter] I didn't say that!

I started to think back. When I was in high school, I remembered reading a quote that really stuck with me. It was from the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, which was, "The intelligent man is never bored." And I thought, well, then what does that say about me? If I am bored, does that mean I'm not intelligent? It also reinforced some preconceived notion that I had that boredom is bad—something to be avoided at all costs, not investigated, and maybe not even talked about.

There was a similar quote that I found from another science fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke, that said, "A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom." So maybe if you accumulate enough knowledge, enough experiences, enough conversations, enough relationships, your mind will be well-stocked enough that boredom will never arise. Good luck with that. [Laughter]

And then there was a third thing that I came across on the web just in the last week. The philosophy of the Stoics pointed out that if you want to avoid boredom, stop choosing to be bored. So maybe there's some element of choice going on here. But in any case, in all three of those, there's an indication that this is really not someplace that you want to hang out. You don't want to go there.

Boredom on Retreat

About 25 years ago, I sat a retreat with Gil Fronsdal at Hidden Villa. It was a 14-day retreat. If you've ever been on a multi-day retreat, you'll know it takes maybe two to four days for the body to get used to sitting for long periods of time. So there are often aches and pains in the body. The mind doesn't just settle and slow down the minute you get to the retreat. It's still going from before you got to the retreat. It's still planning. It's still worrying. It's usually a lot more active than you thought it was until you sat down and closed your eyes. It often takes a good fraction of the first part of a retreat just for the mind and the body to settle.

After about the first week, I went in to see Gil. We have a one-on-one discussion maybe every two to three days. I told him, "Well, you know, I'm pretty settled. Things are going pretty well. My body's not hurting very much. The mind has kind of slowed down, and I feel settled. And I'm kind of bored. I'm kind of bored with this practice." I thought he'd give me some guidance. I thought he'd say, "Well, here are the things to do to get out of this. You're stuck in the mud. Let me help you get out of this."

Instead, what he said was, "At some point in your practice, you may want to investigate boredom." He didn't say, "Do it right away." He said, "At some point, you may decide you want to investigate boredom."

And so I left and I thought, well, now is a good time to investigate. I mean, here I am. My mind is settled, the body is settled. Boredom is close at hand. [Laughter] I don't have to try to create it. It's right here.

The Five Hindrances

I thought about it. How would I investigate boredom? What came to me was that in some ways, boredom might be related to the Five Hindrances. That's a list that I had gotten to know and study at some length. I'll go through the Five Hindrances in a little bit more detail. The hindrances are considered mental activities that cover over what's really going on with us. They tend to cloud or cover over our experience so that we're not seeing it as clearly and accurately as we might.

The first hindrance is sensual desire. What I noticed was, sitting there feeling bored with the meditation, I was thinking, "My mind really wants to be entertained. It really wants to be stimulated." There have been times when I've done a whole 45-minute sit where all that's happened is I've played movies in my head. Action movies, car chases, things exploding, or dramas with really amazing strong emotions, or romances, or comedies, or sometimes songs. The mind has a strong tendency to want to just be entertained, want to be stimulated, want to be excited. And really, there's none of that on a retreat, other than what you bring to it. [Laughter] They sometimes joke that the only entertainment portion of the retreat are the meals. That's when you actually get to experience something that's undoubtedly going to be pleasant.

Or sometimes thinking, "Well, I've heard about people who have had these meditative experiences where vivid images come up, or colors or sounds, almost like a non-drug-related psychedelic experience." Or, "I've heard about these experiences where people have gotten into states of absorption^[8] where there's strong rapture that just permeates the body, cascading from the head down to the feet. Wow, that sounds really good. That's what I want. I don't want to be paying attention to the itching in my foot. I want something like that. Or an out-of-body experience, leaving the body entirely." So sometimes when there's boredom, there's this sensual desire acting of wanting to have something different than what I'm actually having.

Maybe the flip side of that is the second hindrance, which is aversion and ill will. So maybe there's something happening, like the knee is throbbing. It's like, "Well, yeah, that's not interesting. It's sort of an ignorable experience. I don't really want to pay attention to the little aches and pains in the body. So, I'm just going to go into this bored state."

The third hindrance is usually described as a pair: sloth and torpor, which is dullness of the mind and dullness of the body. It's kind of like a draining of the energy from the body. I'd notice sometimes that I just want to sit there and be comfortably numb. I don't have the energy to really be curious and investigate. Or at least I think I don't have the energy, or I'm not willing to bring it forward.

The fourth hindrance is maybe the flip side of sloth and torpor, which is restlessness. Restlessness in the mind and/or restlessness of the body. I'd find sometimes I'd be sitting in the meditation hall and just feeling, "Oh, I'm just restless. I can't wait till the bell rings so I can go and do walking meditation. Walking meditation is just going to be so much better." And then you get outside and you start walking, and you think, "Well, it's kind of hot. I'm starting to sweat. I really wish I was back in the meditation hall sitting. That would be better." So the mind is restless. It doesn't want to stay with sitting. It doesn't want to stay with walking.

And then the fifth hindrance is skeptical doubt, which is a kind of indecisiveness. The mind flipping back and forth: "Well, should I do this or should I not do that?" Sometimes this skeptical doubt or indecision would be present alongside the boredom.

"If It Isn't Boring, It Isn't Buddhism"

It turned out that that retreat was actually pretty valuable for me to at least start the investigation of boredom, to get to know it better. And wouldn't you know it, that retreat ended on a Saturday, and then on Sunday morning I came here to hear a guest speaker. After the meditation, we all opened our eyes, and there was no speaker. Nobody showed up. [Laughter] It was before cell phones were as popular as they are now. Everyone was looking at each other: "What should we do?" Across the room, somebody looked at me and said, "Jim, why don't you give a dharma talk?" [Laughter]

My first impression was that's the most ludicrous idea I'd ever heard. I had nothing prepared, but I thought, well, maybe this could be like improv. I'll just do an improv dharma talk. I thought I'd tell them about my experience with boredom and see what happens. It was amazing how engaged people were when I started talking about this experience that I had. I really only had about 15 minutes of material to talk about, but then I asked people to get into small groups and talk to each other about it. The room just filled with energy. It was really a hot topic.

Afterwards, we got back together again. There was one of the senior members of the Sangha^[9] who raised his hand and said, "You know, when I was studying Zen back in the late 70s and early 80s in LA, my teacher said, 'If it isn't boring, it isn't Buddhism.'" People laughed and thought, well, yeah, it's kind of true. Some of the things that they tell us to do are really pretty boring or repetitive.

At first, I thought that's just an unfortunate side of the Buddhist teachings. But as I started to think about it more in the last week, I realized there's probably something very important in that phrase. The path and the practices that the Buddha laid out, if you do them right, are going to lead you out of your comfort zone. They're going to take you to places that you have maybe never experienced or examined, or you're unwilling to examine.

This boredom can be a sign of resistance. Your mind, your ego, is resisting going and seeing what's going on at a deeper level. Instead of going there, you just go, "Okay, yeah, I don't want to go there. I'm just going to tune out. I'm going to zone out." But it's worth paying attention to. First of all, get to know the experience of that state of boredom. And also maybe get curious: Is there something past there? Is it sort of acting like one of these hindrances that is keeping me from experiencing or seeing something that the mind doesn't want to see?

The Value of Boredom

As I did some additional research on the web, I found that Albert Einstein said, "The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind." So that, to me, was an indicator that there is some value to that sense of monotony. There may be something gained by not stimulating and entertaining the mind all the time. It might be that you can go to deeper levels of understanding by investigating boredom, and not stopping at that level. Not just saying, "Okay, if boredom's there, that's the end. There's nothing after that."

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, "For thinkers and all sensitive spirits, boredom is that windless calm of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds." Nietzsche saw that there was some value to going through that state of boredom to finding some deeper experience.

The final thing that I found from more recent neuroscientists was that boredom triggers the default mode network, a neural network active during rest, daydreaming, and self-reflection, rather than task-oriented focus. This was really interesting to me when I started reading about what neuroscience says about boredom: that it can be a way for the nervous system, for the neural system, to do a reset. To be disconnected from all the stimulus and things that keep us actively engaged in task-oriented thinking.

I wouldn't at all claim that this is a definitive description of boredom. This is only how far I've gotten so far in my investigations of boredom, and it's taken years to see the value in doing this. I would encourage you all, at some point in your practice, to investigate boredom. Really get to know the signs, how it feels in the body, its feeling tone, what the state of mind is like, what thoughts and hindrances arise, and see whether you can ride through it and maybe find something beyond boredom.

Those are my thoughts. If boredom is interesting to you, I would definitely encourage you to investigate it. Thank you all for listening and not running away, and I'm willing to entertain any questions or comments.

Q&A

Questioner: Great talk. Thanks, Jim. My question is, do you think it's a cultural thing? The fact that maybe Americans or people in the West have a harder time doing nothing, because I know if you travel around the world, you'll see a lot of people doing a whole lot of nothing and being perfectly okay with that. The next question is, is boredom peace?

Jim Podolske: Great questions. Well, first of all, I can't definitively answer your first question because I haven't been to every part of the world. I suspect, though, that with the rise of television—well, I was born in 1952, which is just about when television started taking off. In my life, I've spent a lot of time watching television and listening to the radio. I used to fall asleep listening to the radio, and since then the amount of stimulation from the internet and movies has only increased. I no longer have a television. I suspect that there are places in the world where there is some recognition that getting caught in 24/7 stimulation doesn't lead to happiness.

And I'm trying to remember, what was your second question? Is boredom peace?

I don't think so. I think it might help you see what stands in the way of experiencing peace. Because, again, I'm not the final word on this, but I think it's more like a sign of the mind resisting going to peace. So it's maybe something that you have to pass. I won't say "enduring"—that kind of sounds like you're a Stoic, like you're just muscling through by a force of will. I think instead, it's seeing that this doesn't have to stop you from seeking peace. Hopefully that's helpful.

Questioner: I have a question. In being with boredom, how important is it to do fun things sometimes, like play tennis in the morning, go salsa dancing, or take a creative writing class? I know what Nietzsche and Einstein said is very true, but what about doing fun things as a way to work with boredom?

Jim Podolske: Well, I'm all for fun. [Laughter] I think in some ways, as a culture, we've maybe lost an ability to play, to really engage in playful interactions. I can't speak for all of the culture. I know for me, as I've gotten older, the thing I like to play with is words. So I do like that kind of thing. But in terms of thinking that you're going to use it as a remedy for boredom, that's just more resistance, you know?

Questioner: Not a remedy, just like finding balance, you know? Just having certain things that you do on a regular basis, like playing tennis. Do you think doing things like that helps with boredom? Does it help you understand it better?

Jim Podolske: Well, first of all, I'd say that's a great thing for you to explore. Physical activity can produce endorphins in your mind and give you a sense of well-being. So things like playing tennis may produce endorphins that can help that sense of well-being, so that then boredom may seem less intimidating.

Questioner: Well, I was raised on ballet. What else can I say? I was always active. Always going to ballet lessons, violin lessons, piano lessons, voice lessons, but mostly ballet. And just what you said is what endorphins do, I don't know, something like that. I mean, that worked for me. But then I remember other times—I don't know how old I was exactly, but probably somewhere between eight and 14. And I'd be bored and I'd say, "Mommy, I'm bored to death. What should I do?" And she'd always say, "Why don't you try this? Why don't you try that?" And I would, and then I was no longer bored. [Laughter] It works, being active somehow, getting the mind moving or the body moving, especially getting the body moving, right? But I get bored. I can't do what I used to do because I have balance issues, so I can't really dance anymore. I think that's partially why I get bored.

Jim Podolske: Yeah. Well, it's important to notice when you're engaged in whatever you're doing and when you're not. In preparing for this talk, I went to visit—just on Saturday—a friend of mine who's in a memory care facility. And one of the things he says whenever people come to visit him is how bored he is. I think most of the time people kind of want to humor him or something. I said, "Well, Rich, tell me about it. Tell me what it's like. Are you bored from the moment you wake up to the moment that you go to sleep? Is it at some particular times of the day? What does it feel like?" And in some ways, it really got him out of obsessing about boredom and more getting engaged. We talked for about an hour and a half, and it was very helpful. I think in some ways letting boredom help you become aware of when you're really not engaged in what you're doing. When is it like you're just skating over the surface, maybe would be a way to say it. I encourage you to explore it for yourself.

Questioner: Well, now I have three friends who are in institutions, and two of which are really bored all the time. It's breakfast, lunch, dinner, movie. That's what it is all day. And they don't like the activities that exist. And I don't know what they are because these two people can't even tell me, "What did you do yesterday? What did you do today? What are you going to do tomorrow?" I don't know.

Jim Podolske: You know, I sure hope I do not end up in one of those.

Questioner: Yeah.

Jim Podolske: So, well, now's the time. Now is the time to study it. [Laughter] Not once you're in one of those places, I think it's harder that way. Now is the time to explore how it grabs you and in what ways can you stay engaged in your life.

Questioner: Yeah, I think this is interesting because at first my reaction to the word boredom, I thought, "Oh, I don't get bored." That's the way I think. But then I thought, "Oh yeah, I do disengage and then seek distraction." So maybe I'm just not calling it boredom in my mind. It's more disengaging. But it's interesting. I mean, I've thought about this when it comes up and I feel the need to be kind of numb, and I want to just distract myself with something, entertain myself. It's interesting. I'll look at when it happens and what's there.

Jim Podolske: Yeah. Well, and I want to say I'm not against entertainment. I do like going to movies. [Laughter] It's just that we can get caught up in wanting to be continuously stimulated and continuously entertained. And we may be missing out on something. There may be some deeper experience of peace or contentment that's possible if one isn't a slave to entertainment or a slave to stimulation. So, good. All right. Well, thank you all for coming, and I hope that this gives you something to practice with. See you in the future.