Ultimate Peak – In Gita Verse 7.16 O best among the Bhāratas, four kinds of pious men begin to render devotional service unto Me – the distressed, the desirer of wealth, the inquisitive, and he who is searching for knowledge of the Absolute.
Krishna describes there are four kinds person’s searching for themselves. Because all four kinds of people have created boredom to its ultimate peak.
WHAT EXACTLY IS BOREDOM?
A great spiritual phenomenon. That’s why buffaloes are not bored; they look perfectly happy and enjoy themselves. Only men are bored. And in man, also, only the people who are very talented, intelligent are bored. The stupid people are not bored. They are perfectly happy doing their jobs, earning money, making a bigger bank balance, raising their children, reproducing, eating, sitting in the movie, going to the hotel, participating in this and that. They are enjoying themselves! They are not bored. They are the lowest types; they really belong to the world of buffaloes. They are not yet human.
A man becomes human when he starts feeling bored. You can see it: the most intelligent child will be the most bored child – because nothing can keep his interest for long. Sooner or later he stumbles upon the fact and asks, “Now what? What next? This is finished. I have seen this toy, I have looked into it, I have opened it, I have analyzed it, now I am finished – what is next?” SOON he starts finishing things. By the time he becomes young, he is already bored.
Buddha was utterly bored. He left his kingdom when he was only twenty-nine, at the peak of his youth. He was utterly bored – with women, with wine, with wealth, with kingdom, with everything.
He had seen all, he had seen through and through. He was bored. He renounced the world NOT because the world is wrong, remember. Traditionally it is said he renounced the world because the world is bad – that is absolute nonsense. He renounced the world because he became so BORED with it.
It is not bad, neither is it good. If you are intelligent, it is – boredom. If you are stupid, you can go on. Then it is a merry-go-round; then you move from one sensation to another. You are interested in trivia and you go on repeating and you are not conscious enough to see the repetition – that yesterday also you had been doing this, and today also you are doing, and again you are imagining tomorrow to do the same thing again. You must be really unintelligent. How can intelligence avoid boredom? It is impossible. Intelligence means seeing things as they are.
Buddha left the world out of boredom; utterly bored, he ran away from the world. And what was he doing for six years sitting in those forests? He was getting more and more bored. What can you do, sitting in a forest? – Watching your breath, looking at your navel, day in, day out, year in, year out. He created that boredom to its ultimate peak, and one night it disappeared. It disappears of its own accord.
If you reach the peak… the turn comes. It comes. And with that turn of the tide, light enters into your being – you disappear, only light remains. And with light comes delight You are full of joy – you ARE NOT, but full of joy – for no reason at all. Joy simply bubbles up in your being.
The ordinary person is joyous for a reason – he has fallen in love with a new woman or a new man and he is joyous. His joy is momentary. Tomorrow he will be fed up with this woman and he will start looking for another. The ordinary man is joyous because he has got a new car; tomorrow he will have to look for another car. It goes on and on… and he never sees the point of it, that always, finally, you are bored. Do whatsoever – finally you are bored. Every act brings boredom.
The intelligent person sees it. The sooner you see, the more intelligence you show. Then what is left? Then only boredom is left, and one has to meditate over it. There is no way to escape from it.
Then go into it. See where it leads. And if you can keep going into it, it leads to enlightenment.
Only man is capable of boredom, and only man is capable of enlightenment.
Krishna is encouraging us to pass through the experience of BOREDOM, and you will be dissolved in Me. Dissolving in oneself and becoming whole is devotional service. As man is the only animal that is bored. Boredom is the symbol of humanity.
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