Yogi: Awareness is very boring.

Sayadaw: Why are you aware? It is because that’s what the teacher says? 

You don’t have any idea what you’re doing? You’re just following instructions. That’s why you get bored. You can also get bored when you cannot get what you want.

The meditation object is not interesting – normal people cannot find interest in being aware of sensations such as hot or cold, hard or soft. 

Meditators only get interested in meditation when their minds calm down – they want to feel good and enjoy the calmness. This is also greed. 

In the beginning, the mind has no wisdom to be interested in the meditation object, but when the mind gathers more information about the object and sees the mind state improve, the mind slowly becomes interested.

Why do we meditate? Meditation is cultivating good qualities of the mind. This is the basic idea of meditation. Every time we’re mindful, the 5 Indriyas: awareness, samadhi, effort, faith and wisdom – they grow stronger. 

[The vipassana idea is to watch and learn. To be skilful in watching, we need to exercise and develop the 5 Indriyas; when we are skilful in watching, much learning takes place.]