All of this is finally getting me around to the topic I really wanted to talk about—solitude. It seems like such an odd thing to talk about—who of us here really has much solitude in our lives? Solitude—it seems like a very large word, very solemn. It comes from the word “self”—isolated and alone. It also is related to the word “secret”—the secret that can only be found in seclusion and isolation. Solitude is the province of monks and nuns—the Buddha recommended it for meditation. You would go out by yourself and sit far away in the forest at the root of a tree. The early Christian monastics were hermits, living alone in their cells in the middle of the Egyptian desert.

Of course when you think of solitude, of aloneness, you can’t help but remember the Buddha’s first words. According to the legend, pointing to the heavens above and the earth below the talented baby exclaimed, “I alone am the World Honored One!” This may sound like the supreme arrogance—or narcissism at the very least. But I think not. In the light of the Mind Only teachings it means that there is only one thing in this world, Mind itself. Buddha, in being Buddha, had completely merged with and identified with that, so what he said was really true for him. He alone was the World Honored One, sharing one big life with all that is. The same is true for us too—we are all alone, truly alone, and in that aloneness joined with everything in an intimacy that is liberating and warm.

Many people don’t enjoy being alone. They want to turn on the television or pick up the telephone immediately. But many others do enjoy it. I love to be alone; it nurtures and soothes me. There is a certain sense I can have of my life when I am alone that just doesn’t exist at other times—a sense of the weight, the density of living—the strangeness, the mystery or secret of it all. I am sure that this is why I like to read and write and do practice because at those times I am alone and my life is enriched. To me a perfect day is one in which I don’t see or talk to anyone, I just putter around on my own, washing dishes or reading or writing or maybe walking. Not looking at any clocks so that time seems just to melt away, as if every moment were just one moment, and there was no passage of time, no duration. Luckily once in a while I can spend a day like that, or part of a day.

I really feel as if I have a taste for the hermit life. When I was young I actually spent several years like that, alone almost all the time, day after day. It wasn’t always easy and pleasant, but I loved it. I knew at the time that it would be hard to keep on living like that, and I knew also that it was a time in my life that was terribly important for me, even though nothing came of it, nothing at all. I just lived; time went by.

It may seem odd that I am extolling the virtues of solitude—me, a married person with children and probably hundreds of close friends with whom I am always in touch. It seems like a contradiction, but I suppose no more a contradiction than the rest of my life. The fact is, as I see it, my love of solitude and my loving other people depend on each other. In my solitude I find an inner richness that seems to include everyone and everything, and there wells up in me a kind of abundance that wants to flow out to others. I am sure that I wouldn’t appreciate my family and friends nearly as much as I do if I weren’t given to solitude. And when I really feel love for my family and friends—which is frequent—there is a quality to that love that is very close to solitude. It somehow touches me at the same source and feels in many ways the same. It is as if Big Mind is manifesting more strongly when I feel love, just as it does when I am alone and feel the love that being alone fosters.

The truth is, spiritual practice is the practice of solitude. Meditation and prayer are supremely solitary acts. Of course there is communal prayer and meditation too: ceremonies, rituals that involve joining our voices together, and some form of teamwork. But when you really get down to it, the basis of all of that is the quiet that we feel that opens us out, empties our lives and lets reality flow in. Even though we might practice meditation all together in a room, each one of us is really sitting alone. . . .

I’ve been thinking about this because lately I have finished reading a volume of Thomas Merton’s journals called Learning to Love. These were written in 1966-67, just a year before his untimely death. It’s very interesting what happens to Merton in that year. Maybe you know that for many years before this Merton had been becoming increasingly restless living in Gethsemani Abbey. He was at odds with his abbot and getting more and more disgusted with the trivialities of the life there. It was all a little complicated of course—he recognized that part of the problem was his own restless heart, that in a way the abbot was fine, and that even if he weren’t, if he, Merton, were truly alive spiritually the abbot’s character wouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did. He also knew that all the monks were sincere and wonderful people. Yet at the same time the endless details of monastic life, all the interpersonal hassles and rules and regulations and inevitable small-mindedness drove him up a wall.

So he fixed on the idea of being a hermit. The Rule of St. Benedict, which is the monastic rule for all of Christian monasticism, says that being a hermit is the highest form of spiritual endeavor. But it is advanced practice. Monastic life, the rule says, is set up to train monks to eventually become hermits. “A simple rule for beginners” is what Benedict called his text. But for probably a thousand years there had been almost no hermit tradition in the Church, and Merton, who was very much involved in monastic renewal, wanted to change this. He wanted to be an example, a modern hermit. He agitated with his abbot for years over this question. Finally he had a hermitage built near the monastery and he was allowed to go there once in a while, then over the years gradually a little more, and finally, in late 1966, he was able to live there full time. He was ecstatic about it.

About six months after he moved in he had a terrible back injury and had to have an operation. He went to a hospital in Louisville for the procedure, and, to shorten the story, he fell in love with the young nurse who was taking care of him. Really in love with her, immensely in love. Although the relationship was definitely in part based on physical attraction, Merton apparently kept his monastic vows, although it does seems there was a certain amount of kissing and hugging involved. He considered leaving the church and marrying her but felt that that was impossible. They’d meet secretly, exchange letters and phone calls, until eventually they were found out and the abbot gently clamped down and Merton could no longer have any contact with her.

The interesting thing about this is that throughout his struggle with this affair Merton never felt that he was drawing away from his lifelong desire for solitude. He felt as though his falling in love with M (this is how she is identified in the dairies) was somehow a mysterious completion of his solitude, a bringing out of its most profound implications. There were times of course when he doubted this, and doubted himself and his path—doubted his own self-scrutiny. But mostly he affirmed their love, even though he came to realize that they could never live it out in the way people ordinarily do. Here is a passage from the diary he wrote for her:

What is my life? My solitude? The determination to be lucid and quiet and to wait, and to nourish the unspeakable hope of deep love which is beyond analysis and is so far down it has no voice left. Down there we are one voice: the voice of your womanness blends with the man I am, and we are one being, completing each other, though we can no longer express it by taking each other in our arms. How deeply can we believe this? I think our capacity to believe it is inexhaustible.

Merton’s writing about solitude and its meaning is clear and serious. It was his lifetime’s contemplation: What does it mean to be truly alone, which to Merton meant, What does it mean to live a life in union with God? Here is a passage that represents his last understanding of solitude. With this passage I will end my talk:

Solitude as act: the reason no one really understands solitude, or bothers to try to understand it, is that it appears to be nothing but a condition. Something one elects to undergo, like standing under a cold shower. Actually, solitude is a realization, an actualization, even a kind of creation, as well as a liberation of active forces within us, forces that are more than our own, and yet more ours than what appears to be “ours.” As a mere condition, solitude can be passive, inert, and basically unreal: a kind of permanent coma. One has to work at it to keep out of this condition. . . .

Hence the need for discipline, for some kind of technique of integration that keeps body and soul together, harmonizes their powers, brings them out into one deep resonance, orients the whole body toward the root of being. The need for a “way.” Presence, invocation, mantram, concentration, emptiness. All these are aspects of a realized solitude. Mere being alone is nothing. Or at least it is only a potential. Sooner or later he who is merely alone either rots or escapes.

The “active life” can in fact be that which is most passive: one is simply driven, carried, batted around, moved. The most desperate illusion and the most common one is just to fling oneself into the mass that is in movement and be carried along with it: to be part of the stream of traffic going nowhere but with a great sense of phony purpose. It is against this that I revolt.