Jason Tseng

Pali/Theravada Texts
May 16, 2016

Solitude and Loneliness via the Mechanisms of the Pali Canon

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal

What is really going on with me when I am by myself and find myself feeling lonely?

This situation is an area ripe for examination for myself since I often find myself feeling restless

and needing to go out to keep busy. Of similar critical value, it is a topic that I have heard many

other people encountering, sometimes veering into depression or into compulsive behavior. By

trying to apply some theoretical mental frameworks articulated in the Pali Canon, I hope to gain

some insights to pull myself out of this pattern of behavior.

Here is a description of a typical occurrence of solitude and loneliness: I find myself

sitting alone, apart from pressing tasks to complete, people to interact, no striking or immediate

sense objects are occurring across my sense horizon. This situation would be how I define

solitude. From the perspective of inner reflection and psychological observation, this moment of

quiet solitude is a very good psychological place to familiarize and examine because it is a

neutral environment, since it removes much of the confounding, extraneous variables of people,

activities, and stimuli in my immediate experience.

From this solitude, there arises this sense of loneliness. Sometimes, that movement is so

quick, I could even conflate the moment of solitude with loneliness. First comes solitude, and

without external events, activities, or new sensory objects arising, I feel this sense of

nothingness. Sense data registers in our consciousness through the perception of difference, for
example, like a change of color which delineates a shape in our visual field, a change in pressure

upon touch, a change in a pitch of a sound. An example one can do is to listen to a monotone

tone in the same pitch for a long period of time, and then all of a sudden, hearing a different

elevated pitch tone. Indeed, no novel sense objects can be felt as nothingness.

Although the movement is quick and I am accessing the experience through memory and

interpretation, rather than direct experience, if I pay closer attention to what is initially coming

up and trace it from there, from the initial nothingness, I feel this nothing as a painful, unpleasant

feeling. To borrow another Blaise Pascal quote: The eternal silence of infinite spaces fills me

with dread.

What is my discomfort with nothingness? This strange unsettledness, compulsion, and

pressure that push me toward doing something or going out to get some sense pleasure whether it

is a short-term task like opening the refrigerator to eat something or the urge to be on the internet

to keep up with all the information so I can convince myself that I need to keep up with job

skills. There is growing agitation, sometimes it is felt in my body and sometimes felt in my mind.

And it builds up almost like a fever. The Buddha made this point in the following passage, But

these people who are not free from lust for sensual pleasures, who are devoured by craving for

sensual pleasures, who burn with the fever of sensual pleasures, have faculties that are impaired;

thus, though sensual pleasures are actually painful to touch, they acquire a mistaken perception

of them as pleasant (205).

I yearn to fill the emptiness with something so I draw on my previous memories of what

gave me sense pleasure. Various suttas explain this as my recollection of past gratifications of

sensual pleasures (assda). In the past, I had a series of previous pleasant feelings from contacts

with a sense object of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas of the mind and I want to
repeat it. According to the Buddha, While experiencing painful feeling, he [the uninstructed

worldling] seeks delight in sensual pleasure. For what reason? Because the uninstructed

worldling does not know of any escape from painful feeling other than sensual pleasure. When

he seeks delight in sensual pleasure, the underlying tendency to lust for pleasant feeling lies

behind this (31). In my gratification of the senses, I develop a habit of always going out of my

senses instead of being patient with the emptiness or discomfort and be okay. I notice that when I

try to repeat past experiences, or relive the memories, for example, going through my old movie

collections, listening to some songs from my old song list, or even accidentally eating chicken

after I became vegetarian for a long time, I could never get the same satisfaction again. It is

unrepeatablebecause I have changed and I am always changing.

I will use the Four Noble Truth mechanism to frame this movement from solitude in

which I am okay to a feeling of loneliness. Basically, I am okay but I have this compulsion to do

something. I have all these compulsions that I am not even aware of and which I cannot control,

even if I wanted to. Even if I want to be happy by myself, I cannot. This is what the Buddha

called Dukkha.

The reason why I cannot be happy is because these pleasures have planted roots of

craving and grasping which the Buddha points to as the source of our suffering in the Second

Noble Truth.

Through the Buddhist teachings, I know that there is a possibility that I can be okay and

happy in that solitude, even if I do feel that pain of loneliness. This corresponds with the Third

Noble Truth. In fact, if I do feel that pain of loneliness, I do not react to disliking it, wanting to

run away from it, and then to desperately compensate with various activities to fill that

emptiness. Indeed, the Buddha instructs, while experiencing that same painful feeling, he [the
instructed noble disciple] harbors no aversion toward it. Since he harbors no aversion toward

painful feeling, the underlying tendency to aversion toward painful feeling does not lie behind

this. While experiencing painful feeling, he does not seek delight in sensual pleasure. For what

reason? Because the instructed noble disciple knows of an escape from painful feeling other than

sensual pleasure. (32).

In the Fourth Noble Truth, the way to really realize that possibility is to practice the

Noble Eightfold Path, which can be re-encapsulated as the threefold division of precepts,

concentration, and wisdom. I hold myself to remain in mental and physical stability in solitude.

And by not getting spooked by the negative aversion arising, I can recollect direct experience of

being okay and happy in that solitude, especially from previous direct experiences of practice

from the seven-day retreats (Guan Yin retreats), in which we actually spent a lot of time in

solitude, even amongst people. My practices of reciting, meditating, and holding precepts all aid

in helping me hold that space of solitude with awareness of what is possible and awareness of

what is actually arising in my mind. This enables me to directly know that I can be okay and

happy in solitude. And that direct knowledge can then be referenced in the next and future

moments. By being able to be still in solitude, I can live out those moments more and more, as it

becomes natural. I would be able to live and experience solitude as my natural state and

loneliness is the aberration.

When in solitude, if I can understand the weird discomfort that arises as past

gratifications and cravings of sense pleasures and practice stillness upon the arising aversions,

then loneliness need not accompany solitude. By being able to then see where my sensual

pleasures are coming from, how they change, and how they do not last, their power and pressure

upon me lessen, and I become less enamored with them. Ultimately, I can replicate the
Buddhas experience of being completely free from the hold of sensual pleasures: On a later

occasion, having understood as they really are the origin, the passing away, the gratification, the

danger, and the escape in the case of sensual pleasures, I abandoned craving for sensual

pleasures, I removed the fever of sensual pleasures, and I dwell without thirst, with a mind

inwardly at peace (202)