Cultivating Boredom - Part II

Given my fascination with new connections, new thoughts, new conceptualizations I noticed myself getting almost giddy at the thought that something as boring as boredom could actually be a tool to gaining new insights. Before I go on with my own analysis, however, I want to continue a quote from Robert Irwin that I started in Part I, where he was talking about taking several catnaps while engaging in the rather boring activity of sitting and looking at rather minimal paintings for several hours/days at a time. He continues by saying:

“Boredom is a very good tool. Because whenever you play creative games, what you normally do is you bring to the situation all your aspirations, all your assumptions, all your ambitions- all your stuff. And then you pile it up on your painting, reading into the painting all the things you want it to be. I’m sure it’s the same with writing; you load it up with all your illusions about what it is. Boredom’s a great way to break that. You do the same thing over and over and over again, until you’re bored stiff with it. Then all your illusions, aspirations, everything just drains off. And now what you see is what you get. Nothing more. A is A and B is B. A is not plus plus plus all these other things. It’s just A.”

Now, Robert Irwin was after a kind of ultimate objectivity. He was fascinated with pure perception and was troubled with, for example, abstract paintings that people could ‘see’ things in- much the same way that we look at clouds and see shapes that resemble bunnies, or ice cream cones, or whatever. He wanted a pure experience prompted from some thing (the artwork) that was nothing else but what it was.

However, I’ve always felt that the most valuable aspect of art was as an aid to self-reflection. So I also want to point out a side benefit to the process Robert Irwin described above. In seeing ‘A’ for ‘A’ and ‘B’ for ‘B’, I think we’ll also get a clearer picture of all of our ‘stuff’ that previously got in the way. To couch it in my earlier terminology- we’ll be able to see more clearly our Platforms that we’re ‘standing’ on. But we’ll see them not as the veritable truth that we previously hung our hat on but as something that distorted our perceptions- something that could actually be wrong... or even... expendable. Our perspective shifts a little because something as inane as boredom resensitizes us to see truth more clearly- a truth that doesn’t rely on our previous assumptions and aspirations.

So, to all my fellow ‘Dwellers’- I urge you to actively cultivate boredom. When you’re bored with the passage, read it again. If nothing new is coming to you DO NOT make something up- that just loads more ‘stuff’ onto it that obscures insights into truth. Just sit with it, accept ‘nothingness’ if nothing is coming to you, and allow boredom the time it needs to peel the subjective from the objective.

And for any other situation you may face, especially one of uncertainty, unless it is absolutely necessary to make a decision regarding something, you might try just letting the uncertainty float for awhile, until you’re bored stiff with looking at the same options, the same data, the same ‘unclarity’. I’m positive that boredom will prove fruitful, that you will see A and B more clearly, that you will see yourself more clearly, and that you’ll ultimately be better off for it.

To close, ponder one more quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
“He’s interested. ‘What’s it going to be like?’

But there’s a slight ego gleam in his eyes as he asks this and the answer as a result comes out masked.”