"The bitter and lucid joys of solitude."

 

The bitter and lucid joys of solitude. The real desert is this: to face the limitations of one’s own existence and knowledge and not try to manipulate them or disguise them. Not to embellish them with possibilities. To simply set aside all possibilities other than those that are actually present and real, here and now. And then to choose or not, as one wishes, knowing that no choice is a solution to anything but merely a step further into a slightly changed context of other, very few, very limited, very meaningless concrete possibilities. To realize that one’s whole life, eveybody’s life is really like that.

 

But in solitude when accurate limitations are seen and accepted, they then vanish, and a new dimension opens-up. The present is in fact, in itself, unlimited.

 

Thomas Merton, Learning to Love

 

At the core of the yogic disciplines and the wisdom contemplative traditions is the process of involution, drawing the senses of perception inward to steady the mind, open the heart, and calm the body.  It is through this inward journey to the deepest innermost self that we move towards freedom (kaivalya).  This is a freedom from the imprisonment of the ever grasping outwardly focused mind which is attuned primarily to short-term gratification, consumption, productivity, achievement seeking for satisfaction.  Drawing the senses inward purifies them from socially constructed wants and scarcity so we might then perceive the great richness of life coursing through us and everything and choose to live in ways that are truly nourishing and replenishing.

 

Monks have a lot to teach about this process.  The posthumously published journals of Trappist Monk Thomas Merton written over the course of his 27 years in the monastery offer an abundant and intimate portrait of a life lived in commitment to knowing the deepest self through prayer, obedience, poverty, and humility.  For the last few years of his life, he entered an even deeper solitude living as a hermit on the grounds of the monastery.

 

It is hard for me to fathom how living in a monastery could be bearable even as I find myself intrigued by those who choose such intense austerity.  The Trappist monks in Merton’s day rose at 3am to begin a day of prayer and work, together and in solitude, and always in silence – they spoke with hand signals unless they were singing in choir, praying together, or in some study sessions.  They ate a few simple meals a day and sometimes fasted.  Their dormitories were too cold in winter and too hot in summer.  They had few person possessions and little access to records, TV, radio, or newspapers.  There was nothing to plan or look forward to like a vacation to the beach, a concert, a trip downtown or just a Sunday drive in the country.  For the most part, they did not leave the monastery grounds or have visitors. For some, this was the day-to-day life for 10, 20, 30, and 40 or more years. 

 

The rhythms of this community of brothers in silence, prayer, and work were made to break down the ego, the smaller self, so that a new consciousness of God might rise like water filling a well. Merton who had great knowledge of and wrote extensively about history, philosophy, poetry, literature, psychology, theology, and spirituality shows us in the journals what this transformative process was like.  I have only read the final two journals.  At this point he complains a lot about the abbot whom he disagrees with over many things.  He is at the forefront of interfaith dialogue, in support of a larger role for women in the church, a peacemaker in the midst of the Vietnam war.  He wants nothing more than to live in solitude in his hermitage and yet commences a love affair with a women thirty years younger than him until the abbot found out and put an end to it.  Merton abided with this judgement to honor his vows and his deepest longing for solitude even as it tore him apart for some time after. So he was a complicated man.  But with great humility in these journals (which had given permission to be published 20 years after his death) he was always thinking about how this life was shaping him, what he was discovering and learning, how he was failing awfully, but how that did not matter to God, the source of love, presence, life.  And how in the end understanding what God and life was about was ungraspable but not unknowable. 

 

I sometimes get a glimpse of the freedom Merton describes, the kaivalya described in the yoga sutras. This is the freedom of a calm mind with a tender open heart big enough to hold all the joy and sorrow of my life the world. Since the pandemic, my life is more “monk like”, less busy with more nourishing quiet and solitude. It is comforting for me to know that someone like Merton existed, and others like him still do, those who choose solitude, quiet, contemplative lives as a means to freedom.  It is a radically free kind of life that goes against the grain of this fast-paced, productivity driven, consumption mania society.  It is misunderstood as turning away from the world when it is in fact the total opposite.  Living with the inward focus a less busy, quiet, and self-reflective life purifies us in ways that enable us to be more effective in the world not needing to do so much (damage) in service to our egos.  Able to do more in service of the wellbeing of others.