Making Love with the Ordinary: Crossing the Threshold of Boredom into Sublime

I used to call myself a 'romantic at heart' until I discovered how holding onto this ideal was making me sick. 

I got sick of the constant disappointment when my ideals never measured up with reality.

I saw how my inflated expectations and a distorted perceptions were causing big problems in my life. 

All this wishful thinking wasn’t helping me. It was hurting me, and yet I thought that if I gave up my colourful ideals, my life would be boring. 

I craved emotional highs that manifested as a need for drama and idealized romantic scenarios. I mistook my own passion, intensity and jealousy as signs of devotion. I accepted the pains of longing as the inevitable costs only a true romantic would be willing to pay for “true love”. 

And then the illusion broke.

Was this really what love was supposed to look and feel like?  

I saw how society and mainstream media was constantly curating idealized versions of life.

I could see the gap between real life and these glowing snapshots that were feeding my dissatisfaction and fueling the notion that a magical, perfect love is out there—just not with the reality I was living.

Society was selling the idea that I was missing out on something. Something far more superior and ALIVE than what I was currently experiencing. 

But was I really missing out, or was it simply time to get real? 

The Disenchantment Process

Our consumer culture thrives on keeping our desires alive. It promises to satisfy us but only proliferates more craving; intensifying our obsessions and quickening the time it takes for us to give in to our temptations.

To counterbalance this culture of enchantment, Buddhist doctrine functions as a means of disenchantment.

Sobering up is never fun, and yet anyone who has overcome an addiction will tell you they are better off for it. 

Before I properly understood the teachings of Buddhism, I experienced a great deal of resistance as I thought I was being asked to give up my desires. 

It wasn't that the teachings were unsuitable, but rather I lacked proper comprehension

Understandably, if one is asked to give up joy, pleasure or satisfaction, this would cause substantial resistance. 

Fortunately, I came to discover an important distinction that I will share with you now (get out your highlighter!). 

Pleasure, happiness or any desirable state can never be given up precisely because these states do not inherently belong to a particular object. 

It is not that Buddhist teachings ask you to give up pleasure, but rather it asks you to give up certain pathways to pleasure - pathways where there are notable drawbacks and debts we have to pay. 

The most basic drawback is the deteriation in one’s mental and emotional state when one is unable to access their object of desire. This sends the brain a misleading message, feeding delusion or what buddhist scriptures commonly refer as ignorance (avijjā). 

If being cut off from a source of happiness causes a decline in mood, your brain naturally concludes that happiness is a condition of the object you desire and not a state of mind that can be cultivated. 

Buddhism is not actually trying to stop you from experiencing pleasure, but is helping you to realize that there are pleasures that result in suffering and other pleasures that do not. 

The Buddhist worldview allows you to develop this discernment so that you can choose pathways that lessen your experience of suffering rather than add to it.  

Think of it this way, you can still have the candy but the road to get to the candy store is now closed.

You have to take an alternative route, that in the process of taking, your desire for the candy diminishes.  

In giving up the pathway you once previously took, one encounters a new method that allows for the cultivation of more stable and reliable forms of happiness, naturally diffusing the allure towards more artificial pleasures that only stimulate more cravings. 

The Buddhist pathway known as the Noble Eightfold Path, is not simply following steps in a mechanical sense. It involves first accepting a very basic, yet overlooked truth:

there is a relationship between craving pleasure and suffering. 

Why?

Because you are seeking to find permanence in a realm marked by impermanence. 

It’s both a hopeless cause and an essential insight that once clearly understood, reorganizes the mind in such a way that is liberating. 

Taking this alternative pathway is without a doubt, going against the grain of our materialist society. To someone who does not yet understand this basic truth, moving in this direction seems like an impossible task. 

That is why understanding is paramount because through understanding our efforts are energized by wisdom. Putting in effort is a lot harder when you have not developed discernment to know the true value of your practice. 

Doubt is a major hindrance for anyone who is considering to adopt an alternative worldview because they don’t yet understand its validity. The predicament is that the only way one comes to verify its validity is by starting to practice. 

Starting begins when one’s faith surmounts one’s doubts. 

Managing Expectations

In the same way faith must override doubt in order to get going, we can expect craving for the candy (low grade pleasures) is going to be there until you start tasting something sweeter (refined pleasures). 

So what might be a more refined pleasure?

Since the road to the candy store is now closed, let's imagine the alternative route to the candy store is now a forest path.

Upon taking this forest path, you encounter fragrant flowers and a refreshing atmosphere that reminds you of the wonder and beauty of such natural delights. By the time this path opens up to the candy store, its artificial contents pales in comparison to what you have just experienced.

You don’t have to put in effort to abstain from the candy - the craving simply does not exist anymore. 

This is the effect of establishing a more refined and natural source of pleasure that can emerge from the fruits of our spiritual practice. 

But let’s be honest. 

In the beginning stages of meditation, most of us are far from dwelling in a forest of fragrant flowers or an environment to this effect. 

Meditation is boring. 

We are watching the breath and then before too long we are lost in thoughts before we abruptly come to terms with our inability to stay with the simple-not-so-simple task of staying present for 2 minutes. 

Then the doubt returns.

Why sit here watching our thoughts when we can watch netflix? 

Attachment to Mind States 

Each of us seeks a state of mind that we consider to be ideal. 

For most people, being bored isn’t one of them. 

And yet boredom is a threshold that seekers of truth must cross in order to be free from it. 

Being disciplined enough to be a free spirit is the great paradox of spiritual practice.

As long as we are chasing the ideal, we are avoiding the ordinary.

Until the ideal becomes the ordinary, we will be our own source of misery. 

Being Easily Satisfied: The Most Ideal State

Ordinariness only threatens experience when experience is built entirely upon the fuel of fantasy, delusion or misapprehension of the ways things should be. When security is established through being easily satisfied (rather than constantly stimulated), the ordinary becomes the very anchor that keeps experience alive and sublime. 

Realizing that happiness, pleasure and satisfaction can arise without the requirement of mental and bodily stimulants is one of the most liberating possibilities worth discovering for oneself. 

Through taking this path, the misleading power of fantasies and ungrounded idealism are seen more clearly. Insight and ongoing awareness into the often violent oscillations of living through the push and pull of our desires can be the very deterrent we need to lessen the impulse to follow our cravings.

If you have formed a habit of romanticising your suffering, imbuing it with poetic meaning and artistic sensibilities, the grip around your desires will inevitably be tighter.  

Emotional highs imply emotional lows. Instead of choosing to subject yourself to these swings, consider opting for a steady and balanced state of mind. 

This is not a reduction of pleasure, but a reorinetation in the type of pleasures that truly satisfy.

Cultivating a stable mind requires crossing the threshold of boredom. It involves waning off need for continual stimulus and redirecting it to what reality is so generously offering.  

You don’t have to give up your desires, but perhaps consider desiring the ordinary.

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