Loneliness is an invitation... a doorway to walk into and through ... We can come to know a different, inviting being-lonely.
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In my more spiritually idealistic days, I agreed with those who taught loneliness is unspiritual, that a spiritual being can experience aloneness but not loneliness. I wrote about this matter, confident of the opinion. How can one feel lonely and connected to everything, after all?
Issa (Japan, 1763-1828), a Zen monk and one of the foremost Haiku poets -
Loneliness already planted with each seed in morning glory beds
Sam Hamill comments on this poem: "Haya sabishi (the loneliness is already there),' Issa says. There is loneliness in the first act, in the seed itself." Loneliness, Issa says, is already there from the start. Hamill notes Issa's "loneliness" is based on the word sabi, a "spiritual sort of loneliness."
Hence, sabi is not the neurotic sense of emotional desolation, always tainted with self-pity. Please keep this in mind reading onward, as much of the "lonely" in Western cultures expresses a collective social neurosis that many cultures have not known, even as the Dalai Lama did not first understand what was meant in the West by "depression." The term "loneliness" in the West, in fact, arrives only in the 16th Century. So, lonely is lonely, but not all lonely is the same. Some is healthy, some not.
Hence, possibly "aloneness" speaks of this, but I find it not helpful. We need to retain "loneliness" as a word pointing to a natural experience, and "aloneness" will not work anymore than "solitude" or "apartness." Thinking "aloneness" for "loneliness" is, yes, easily a way to avoid owning loneliness as a legitimate experience for a person even well on the intimate way. This denial becomes a spiritual bypass.
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You may live to lessen the power of loneliness or to experience it less often, but you are likely never to escape it. This last has been my experience. Earlier in life, I was usually lonely - not healthily so - and its power was prevalent in my life. A thick, wet blanket heavily hanging upon me.
Now, after denying the legitimate place of loneliness in my life, it feels a relief to welcome loneliness, to befriend it, as something that belongs and is part of belonging, not as an egoic trip or neurotic aberration but as a way life expresses itself for us all. Such loneliness is the other side of connection. The loneliness is not absent of connection. The welcome takes the sting out of loneliness or at least diminishes its potency. However, a spiritual practice does not guarantee a stinging loneliness will not visit.
Ryokan (Japanese Zen monk and recluse, b. 1758-1831) -
In the world of dreams I've been dreaming on and on And upon waking up How loneliness pierces me
I take Ryokan to refer to spiritual awakening. A spiritual awakening can awaken one to loneliness, when one has been dreaming in spiritual slumber of connection that is merely illusion. There is much pseudo-communion, possibly more than genuine connection. Ego cannot source or sustain heart-communion.
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Why do few people practice silence? Well, to sit silently is to invite a meeting with your - our - innate solitariness. Silent sitting, or just being quiet, is to invite loneliness. Yet, thankfully, in silence, we can experience times of profound connection - unspeakable communion. When you meditate, you enter welcoming either. You learn intimacy with loneliness and togetherness.
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In this human realm, we live with two inescapable truths. We are connected to everyone and everything: nothing is apart, not you, not me, not your dog or cat, not the fish in the sea, and not a limb on any tree. We are alone. No one was born in our place, lives in our place, will die in our place. Loneliness arises when the "alone" touches us. We can pivot from feeling apart to feeling connected in a single moment and vice versa.
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If you accept the loneliness, you may find a door open. A friendship with our innate solitude, a solitude that includes everything, seen and unseen - the holy communion...
My own drifting along: what is it like? The lone gull on the beach between Heaven and Earth.
-Tu Fu (China, 712-770)
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*(C) 2024, Brian Wilcox
*Sources: Issa Kobayashi. The Spring of My Life: And Selected Haiku. Trans. Sam Hamill; Ryokan. Zen Fool Ryōkan. Trans. Misao Kodama, Hikosaku Yanagishima; Tu Fu cited in Hung Ying-Ming. Master of the Three Ways: Reflections of a Chinese Sage on Living a Satisfying Life. Trans. William Scott Wilson.
