According to Osho, boredom is a uniquely human by-product of intelligence: the clear-sighted sense that life, as ordinarily lived, yields no lasting meaning or imprint. Animals don't feel it; idiots and the rare enlightened are free of it. Boredom arises when the question of why we are here remains unanswered, as days pass, death nears, and our hands feel empty of real creativity.
Boredom is what smart humans feel when life seems pointless and nothing we do feels truly meaningful.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: OSHO, WHAT IS BOREDOM? ARE YOU NEVER BORED WITH LIFE? IT is one of the most significant questions to be asked, because it is only man's privilege to be bored. No other animal has the capacity. Why has man the capacity to be bored? It is a by-product of intelligence. Nothing is wrong about it. Only idiots are not bored -- or the enlightened ones, but they are few and far between. The major part of humanity between these two poles of idiots and the enlightened ones feels more or less bored. Boredom means that you are intelligent enough to see that life is meaningless, that it is just futile to go on living: nothing comes out of it.
What exactly is boredom? If I don't do something, even something needless, a panic arises, a huge fear. What is it that causes this frenzy of movement? Why am I so uncomfortable with this feeling? The frustration of boredom increases when I think that what I would do is equally a meaningless frenzy. I feel caught.
ABHA, BOREDOM IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN HUMAN LIFE. Only man is capable of boredom; no other animal is capable of being bored. Boredom exists only when mind starts coming closer and closer to enlightenment. Boredom is just the polar opposite of enlightenment. Animals cannot become enlightened, hence they cannot become bored either. Boredom simply shows that you are becoming aware of the futility of life, its constant repetitive wheel. You have done all those things before -- nothing happens. You have been into all those trips before -- nothing comes out of it. Boredom is the first indication that a great understanding is arising in you about the futility, meaninglessness, of life and its ways. Now, you can respond to boredom in two ways. one is what is ordinarily done: escape from it, avoid it, don't look eye to eye into it, don't encounter it. Keep…
Osho, I never feared anything and never chose to escape in my life. There is only one thing that scared me and gave me an unbearable feeling to escape -- boredom. Why am I so afraid of boredom? What am I trying to escape really?
The intelligent person becomes aware very soon that "All this is an exercise is sheer futility. Nothing on the outside can ever give me an inner fulfillment, an inner sense of significance." And unless that is experienced, boredom will remain and will become heavier every day. Now there are two possibilities. One is the western possibility. If you look only through reason then you will never find any meaning in life; then boredom will become more and more acute, chronic. It will pervade your whole existence, it will permeate each moment of your life. It will not allow you to live at all. It will become such a burden that suicide will seem to be the only possible way out. That's what Fyodor Dostoevsky says: that "If I can meet God, the only thing I am going to say to him is, 'Why you created me? For what? And without…
Please explain the nature of the experiences we call boredom and restlessness.
No woman can believe that her husband is attracted to other women. There is the whole point, the whole crux. If he is not attracted to other women, how can she expect that he will be attracted to herself? If he is attracted to other women only then can he be attracted to her, because she is also a woman. The wife wants him to be attracted to her and not attracted to anybody else. Now this is asking something absurd. It is as if you are saying, 'You are allowed to breathe only in my presence and when you go near somebody else, you are not allowed to breathe. How dare you breathe anywhere else?' Just breathe when the wife is there, just breathe when the husband is there, and don't breathe anywhere else. Of course, if you do that you will be dead and you will not be…
Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into heart and there permeates the cosmos.
KIND DEVI, ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND BELOW YOUR FORM. What is entering? He is so overflowing with his energy.... And whosoever is at peace with himself is always overflooded, because his energy is not wasted in unnecessary nonsense in which you are wasting your energy. He is always overflooded, and whosoever comes can take. Jesus says, `Come unto me. If you are heavily burdened, come unto me. I will unburden you.' Really he is not doing anything; it is just his presence. It is said that whenever a god-man, a teerthankara, an avatar, a Christ, moves on the earth, around him a particular milieu is created. Jain yogis have even measured it. They say it is twenty-four miles. Twenty-four miles is the radius around a teerthankara, and for twenty-four miles in the whole radius everyone is flooded with his energy: knowing, not knowing, friend or enemy, following…