Autumn sees Nature winding down and moving towards a fallow period, a period of rest, a time when seeds lie buried deep in the earth, and growth happens in a different way. This helps us to see that times when things are not exciting or noticeable – neither markedly pleasant or unpleasant – are an integral part of life. There are significant parts of each day when our experience is not strongly flavoured in one way or another. We have periods when little happens, when we rest or stand still. This is normal, and it doesn’t mean that our lives have lost their focus. If we have a tendency to interpret these periods as if something is wrong,we can generate significant suffering as we are going against a fundamental aspect of human nature itself. As always, the practice is simply to be aware of the feelings as neutral, to not run a storyline around them, and to rest in them, letting them become calm and peaceful.
If we do not cultivate mindfulness, and we feel a neutral feeling, it can turn into an unpleasant feeling because of its association with boredom. We will feel that nothing special is happening – nothing specially good, nothing specially bad, and from that we will often generate painful stories about being a boring person, having a boring life, the world being boring and actually end up in a painful place. Sometimes it seems that we prefer to have painful feelings because they are somewhat exciting and we seem to feel more alive in them than with neutral feelings that we equate with non-existence.
Martine Batchelor, The Spirit of the Buddha
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