TITLE:
Boredom as a Possible Point of Departure for Meditation: Silence, Attention and Access to Being in Pablo D’Ors
AUTHORS:
Javier S. Castresana
KEYWORDS:
Boredom, Silence, Attention, Perception, Meditation, Contemplation, Being, Poverty, Love, Truth
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Philosophy,
Vol.12 No.1,
February
10,
2022
ABSTRACT: Boredom is a characteristic of today’s society. At the individual level
and at the social level, the Western countries suffer from boredom. There are
extrinsic and intrinsic causes that can lead
to boredom. In general, the state of boredom is reached when there are
no problems to solve, when the profession does not demand our actions, or when
we feel disappointed in realizing that the achievements of life do not give us
sustained satisfaction over time. Boredom, especially if it becomes chronic,
can be considered a negative thing. But it can also have something positive.
The silence, stillness and inaction that define boredom are also
characteristics that define the initial state of the person before meditation.
This study aims to reflect the possibility of getting out of boredom through
meditation. We can abandon boredom if we start a path of personal growth
through increasing attention and perception; coming out of ourselves, leaving
our own reflections and thoughts, reaching personal emptying and a voluntary impoverishment of our exteriority, which opens the
door to us to encounter with being.