 What is boredom? What is boredom? Boredom is like a state of monotony where the mind has fallen asleep and forgotten its natural state and then it's become addicted to change and then as it becomes deeper wound into this addition to change it seems to look for an external solution, kind of like a variety of the spice of life and the more intense it just keeps discovering it doesn't really solve the problem so the problem is change and boredom is a sense of just being kind of caught up in a judgment against repetition and patterns of the world so they just repeat over and over and over and the mind kind of like, kind of shuts off it just kind of shuts down because it feels, in one sense it's like a version of a depression boredom is just a sense of apathy, of just a sense of stuckness and repetition and it's underneath it that it's just an addiction that has to be exposed before it can pop out of that you might say that the cure for boredom is spontaneity but spontaneity is very different from impulsivity the ego will sponsor its own version of breaking the boredom with being impulsive and it just leads to more of a sense of frustration and guilt because it's just like there's these ego impulses to try to gratify and satisfy through stimulation, through images and sights and sounds and so forth and it doesn't work, it's just part of the same game, it's part of the same system so it can kind of lead back to a state of depression when it doesn't seem to work whereas spontaneity, true spontaneity is when you become highly intuitive and literally inspired or in the spirit and you connect with what you could call inner guidance and that inner guidance is always for the moment it always is bringing you into the presence and to living in the moment not anticipating the future, not recalling the past or regretting or lamenting the past it just keeps you, it's like if you were surfing and you catch the big wave it keeps you right on the edge of the wave and to me that's why life in tune with the spirit, in tune with the flow is very inspirational and really is truly an adventure because it doesn't really involve any kind of escapism not trying to run away from something or try to reach a goal in the future it's like you just are flowing with what feels completely 100% intuitive in the present moment and it's a great vitality and aliveness in that and that's really what the cure for boredom is so how would you apply that say if you were washing dishes or digging holes 8 hours a day yeah we get that a lot at the monastery, there's a lot of things to work on like that I repeat the question here saying how do you apply that to something like spontaneity of doing the dishes or digging a hole or something like that yeah for me it came down to the central question what is it for in the sense that when you just freeze it down into like an activity like doing the dishes or digging a hole it has to be a deeper purpose underneath that is part of the flow so it's not seen as just as an activity anymore or just a task but it's seen in a larger context for example like here at Kalani why do people come from all over the world to be a volunteer here to pay to be a volunteer here or whatever it's because there's a tremendous opportunity for spiritual growth and healing and there's a draw to that just to come you know trail around the world to come up to an island to do dishes and dig a hole you know it would be like well what's the point of that you know do that anywhere but you might say that Kalani presents an experience of it's like a cauldron, a huge opportunity with lots of mirroring, lots of reflecting going on a sense of openness to safely explore the depth of one's own spirituality and that's the purpose behind the doing the dishes or behind the digging the holes we have people that come to the monastery as well from all over the world they're very focused on healing, on self-realization on opening their mind up to the experience of enlightenment and if you sat down and you interviewed them they would tell you one by one that's their whole purpose in life you know they really have a very single focus and so they come kind of in a sense of letting go of a lot of their past ego pursuits and ego goals and so forth just come to practice the presence to practice the peace and everyone is working at the same thing and therefore there's not like a lot of idle chatter and talking about things and gossiping and so on and so forth even the communications become more and more deeply purposeful so that there's not a wasted moment, not a wasted second even in terms of direct communication you know it's so encouraged to speak and to go very directly into the communication so there's not a sense of wasted motion of having to redo things or having multiple people working on the same thing when it could be done by one person so there's much more of a focus but the purpose behind the action is really where the presence can be found and I know a lot of times people they do enjoy sometimes very simple tasks because the focus becomes so strong that they're not we could say multitasking with their mind they actually enjoy something like mowing the grass or cleaning the dishes because it's kind of just they relax into that presence and it's more like the spirit is washing the dishes through them or mowing the grass through them or digging the dish through them much like an athlete feels that same thing at times when they're in the zone or an opera singer when they feel that they get themselves out of the way completely and they're sung through so the goal of spirituality is to be so immersed in the presence that the doer disappears the small eye, the one that seems to be the one on the timeline just completely dissolves away and disappears and I think many people have that experience where they just feel like there's such a presence flowing through them that they let go of this doer that is doing something for the future doing something for somebody else doing something for itself that's the highest you can reach is when you come into that presence and the doer disappears so it's something we do talk about at the monastery a lot and we really encourage questions so it's not like the old days just do it because I told you to do it it's more of really tuning into that sheer purpose and then feeling the synergy of how easily things get done when everybody is working together it's just an amazing synergy that occurs and I think probably much like Kalani there's just lots of lightness, of joy, of laughter of song and dance and music and art and all different kinds of expressions that come forward huge amounts of collaborations like when you get a group of musicians together and they start jamming together well people are jamming together on all kinds of projects not just music they really can feel the collaboration and they feel like it's just swept up in it and amazing things amazing kind of fruits of the spirit come through in that collaborative state of mind and still there are those tasks that seem to be very important like you were just mentioning dishes are still important and the overall functioning and landscaping, maintenance and so on and so forth but it's like a dance it's the only way I can describe it thank you