Once it happened in a church that after a very long, dry sermon, the minister announced that there would be a meeting, a brief meeting of the board. Right after the benediction. after the services a stranger approached the minister; he was the first man. The minister thought, " there has been some misunderstanding, " because the man was absolutely a stranger. He did not even look like a christian; his appearance was that of a Mohammedan so the minister said, " it seems you have misunderstood the announcement. there is going to be a meeting of the board".
The stranger said, " so I have also heard - and if there was someone here more bored than me then I would like to meet him".
But this seems to be a situation of every one. Look at the peoples faces, or at your own face in a mirror, and you will feel you are the most bored, and its seems impossible that there can be someone else who is more bored than you. The whole life seems to be a long boredom - dry, dreary, meaningless; somehow you are carrying it as a burden.
Why has this happened? Life is not meant to be boredom. Life is not meant to be a suffering. Life is a festival, a celebration, a peak of joy - but that is only in poetry, in dreams, in philosophies. Sometimes a Buddha, a Krishana appears to be in a deep celebration, but they look like exceptions, really unbelievable; not real, just ideal it seems they never happen. They are our wish fulfillments, myths, dreams and hopes, but not realities. The reality seems to be our face - bored, in anguish, and with suffering impressed on it - and the whole life is just a carrying some how.
Why has this happened? and this must not be the basic reality of life, this cannot be because this happens only to man. The trees, the stars, the animals, the birds...... nowhere else does it happen. Except for man, no one is bored. And even if sometimes pain happens it is momentary, it never becomes an anguish. It never becomes a constant obsession; it is not always on the mind. It is a momentary thing, an accident; it is not carried over.
Animals can be in pain, but they are not in suffering. Pain looks like an accident; they get over it. They don't carry it, it does not become a wound. It is forgotten and forgiven. It goes into the past; it never becomes a part of the future. When pain becomes as constant thing, a wound, not accident but a reality, essential as you cannot exist without it, than it becomes a problem- and that problem has arisen only for the human mind.
