Solitude or withdrawal (pañisallàna, pavivakà or viveka) is the state of being secluded or separate from others. A person can choose to be solitary or be forced into it by others or by circumstances. When solitude is unwanted, forced, it can result in loneliness, anxiety or fear. When used at the right time, when you choose solitude, and in the right manner, it can have an important role in spiritual development.
Before his enlightenment the Buddha too spent extended periods alone in the forests. Reminiscing on this time many years later he said: “Such was my seclusion that I would plunge into some forest and live there. If I saw a cowherd, shepherd, grass-cutter, wood-gatherer or forester, I would flee so that they would not see me or me them” (M.I,79). Even after attaining enlightenment he would occasionally go into solitude. In the Saüyutta Nikàya he is recorded as saying: “I wish to go into solitude for half a month. No one is to come to see me except the one who brings my food” (S.V,12).
For him, psychological solitude meant isolating the mind from negative thoughts and emotions. He recognized that people can choose to be physical solitary for a variety of reasons, some positive, others less so. Some wish to isolate themselves from others, he said, out of foolishness or confusion, for some evil purpose, because they are mad or mentally unstable, or simply because he praised it. 2 Even if one seeks prolonged physical solitude for the right reasons one still needs to monitor oneself carefully and intelligently. The joy of aloneness (pavivekasukka, A.IV,341) can subtly deteriorate into a shirking of one's responsibilities. Likewise, one can overdo it, over-reach oneself and end up straining the mind. Hence the Buddha's caution: `One who goes into solitude will either sink to the bottom or rise to the top'(A.V,202).
The more appropriate reasons why one might seek solitude, the Buddha said, included because one's wants are modest (appicchataü), for contentment (santuññhiü), so as to examine oneself, reflection (sallekhü), out of an appreciation for aloneness (pavivekaü) and because it can be helpful for spiritual growth (aññhitam, A.III,219). It is certainly true that regular periods of solitude and even occasional extended periods, can be psychologically refreshing. It can teach one independence, rest the mind, enhance an appreciation of silence, and give one the opportunity to have a good look at oneself - reflection. But the most important benefit of the practice of solitude is in dissolving of one’s attachments. As the Buddha said: “Apply yourself to solitude. One who does so will see things as they are” (S.III15). The entire edifice of Buddhism, with all its myriad institutions and conceptual systems, rests on a single insight - Suffering. This is the first of the Four Noble Truths enunciated by the Buddha in the Suttas: Birth is attended with pain, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful. Union with the unpleasant is painful, painful is separation from the pleasant; and any craving that is unsatisfied, that too is painful. Our lives are full of pain and suffering. The story of the life of Gautama, the man who became the Buddha, is a story usually taken to deny the view that one need have tasted suffering in childhood and youth in order to recognize the sad truths of the Buddhist doctrine of suffering, actually supports it. Most people know that in order to prevent just the sort of things that eventually happened, Gautama’s royal father shielded him from every misfortune and provided him with every pleasure throughout his boyhood; but that on being exposed as a young man to the evidence of suffering represented by a sick person, an old person, and a corpse, he nonetheless intuited the impermanence of life and fled his palace to seek salvation. What is less often noted, though it is always included in every version of the story, is that far from having escaped every sorrow, Gautama had begun life by suffering perhaps the greatest one imaginable: his mother died when he was a week old, so that he was raised by her sister. Thus, even the Buddha himself conforms to my generalization that early traumatic loss may be a determining precondition for a frame of mind prepared to find the transience of life and love intolerable.
THE POWER OF ZEN STORY
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