Q: I have been studying Zen and meditation for about 30 years but I tend to lose interest in it from time to time. What am I doing wrong? I know it is very calming and it has great merit but I still lose interest.

A: Well, I don't know that you are doing anything especially "wrong," but not knowing you or your situation very well, it's kind of difficult for me to say one way or the other.  Just about everybody goes through phases where one "loses interest" in meditative practice, so you're not alone in that regard.  Life is a series of yins and yangs, ups and downs, very cyclical kinds of things.  Everyone needs a break now and then, even monks, so perhaps you're just in a phase where things have gotten a bit stale and you have to, in effect, open up the room and let some fresh air in.  In many parts of the Ch'an tradition, monks who stay too long in the monastery are asked to leave, lest their practice gets too stale.  If that can happen to monks, it can surely happen to laypersons, no?

On the other hand, maybe it's an indication that it's time to really ratchet up your practice and put more energy and sincerity behind it .  Sometimes the best cure for staleness is to shake things up a bit and get back down to business.  The ego-mind acts like a trapped animal when we start to close in on it; it will fight, cajole, turn backflips, get sneaky and do whatever it takes to throw us off the scent, as it were.  Perhaps the ego-mind has convinced you that this whole Zen thing is really kind of boring, so what's the use?

I'm sure you've done this before, but I know it helps to sit down and ask yourself just why you got involved with Zen in the first place.  This is very helpful in rooting out possible causes of a slackening in your practice.  Many times we get into Zen with the intent of "getting something out of it," which is really counterproductive when you consider that there's essentially nothing to attain.  But the habitualized mind of expectation is very strong, and when we get caught up in result-oriented thinking we can easily get frustrated, either consciously or subconsciously, when we think that we're not making any "progress."

Other questions which occur to me are, for instance, have you had much experience sitting with a group?  Have you had a one-one-one relationship with a teacher?  Is the style of Zen you are practicing (Soto Zen, Rinzai Zen, Korean Son, Vietnamese Th'ien, Chinese Ch'an, etc.) the best form for you?  Have you explored other forms, other teachers or other disciplines altogether?

Indeed, retreats force you to look at yourself in great detail, and most people are apprehensive or downright resistant to doing this; this is because we hold on to our egocentric view so strongly that it seems like we're giving up too much if we try to see who we really are through deep searching.  But unless we do that deep searching we're going to have a mighty difficult time looking our true nature in the face.  And if we can't do that, we're going to have an even more difficult time rooting out the causes of our own suffering, which is what this is essentially all about.  So it becomes necessary to summon up one's courage, sincerity, effort and patience and use it to our best advantage.

In other words, don't be afraid of looking deeply; it isn't brain surgery, even though the ego-mind might scare us by making us think that it is.  Hey.......all you have to lose is your suffering, and isn't that worth it in the long run?