The Art of Solitude

In the end, the only thing that really matters for me as a meditator is how well or badly I respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by the situation at hand. If my contemplative practice fails to contribute to my flourishing as a person in my relationships with others, then I have to question the purpose of spending months and years p

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be for yourself.

Standing out in this way serves to affirm your existence (ex-[out] + sistere [stand]).

Nirvana is a negative capability. In letting go of—“negating”—reactivity, one discovers a greater capacity—“capability”—to respond to life. To experience nirvana is to experience freedom from those attachments and opinions that prevent your own imaginative response to the situations you face in life. Nirvana is not the end point of the path but its

I find myself utterly incapable of putting what it is I’m experiencing right now into words. I do not know what on earth is going on here. The practice of “What is this?” confronts you with what philosophers call the sheer “facticity” of your existence. This is the inescapable reality of what it’s like to be me, which seems impossible to articulate

That is why it is not enough to remove oneself from people, not enough to go somewhere else. We have to remove ourselves from the habits of the populace that are within us.

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to

“It is familiarity, rather than knowledge, that takes away their strangeness.”

There is something banal and everyday about solitude. Even in company we spend much of our time alone, absorbed in our innermost thoughts and feelings, quietly talking to ourselves. Whether we live in Manhattan or the middle of nowhere, this is our condition.

But for many it provides the time and space to develop the inner calm and autonomy needed to engage effectively and creatively with the world. Moments of quiet contemplation, whether before a work of art or while observing your breath, allow you to rethink what your life is about and reflect on what matters most for you.