Okay, the word "motivation" is key here. Think about it. What was your favorite subject in school? Whatever it was, everyone kind of had their own favorite. Did you get more stimulated in that classroom than you did in the ones you didn't like? Yeah, it's pretty obvious. I mean, I was great in Math; I was all ears, eyes and everything. Put me into English class and I was half asleep. So this is important. When you actually like something, when you enjoy something, when you see some sort of benefit in something, you get more interested, you get more energy, you have more motivation.
So, to stimulate your motivation in the practice, you can ask yourself, what are you here for? Are you here to fall asleep? Or are you here to grow and develop? So, if you are starting to get sleepiness that arises due to boredom, to get that energy going, you could try to remind yourself why you are here and why you want to do this practice.
Now interesting, this particular sleepiness is arising because of boredom and then also from a lack of motivation. So I just talked a little bit about motivation. Now let's talk about boredom. Boredom means you don't like the moment; you want something else. You have aversion to the moment. You're wanting something else. Boredom is actually an aversion to the present moment. Is there anything you can learn in this present moment? Yeah. Is there any moment in your entire life that you have where you could not possibly learn something? No. Every single moment of your entire life, you have the opportunity to learn something. So should you hate that moment? It's a gift.
Here, learn something. What do most people learn in their first retreat? Here's one thing that everyone learns in their first retreat. The afternoons here are four hours and fifteen minutes long. Yeah, oh my gosh. And does boredom come up? Nearly every single brand new meditator will have some bit of boredom come up during that four hours and fifteen minutes. Okay, fine, but can you learn something during those moments, can you see your aversion arising towards the "fours hours and fifteen minutes?" Can you see the desire for the fruit salad? Anytime you are bored, you have stuff to look at. The minute you look at something, are you bored? When you want to investigate something that's not boredom, investigation and boredom don't go together. So the minute you think you're bored and you start looking at the boredom - What are you having aversion towards? What are you having desire for? - the minute you look at the boredom, the boredom's gone away. There's no such thing as boredom in this practice for anyone who wants to take every moment to try to understand what's going on. So, if you'd like to get rid of boredom, just take that moment, have the motivation combined in there, see that moment as a precious gift to learn something, to grow in some way.