A Solitary Practice?

The sage calls a person who knows how to dwell in mindfulness night and day, one who knows the better way to live alone.

This sutra made me question the nature of spiritual journey.  What does alone mean?  Why do monastics choose to live celibate lifestyles yet still find strength in sangha?  Can we truly practice alone or do we need others to grow and learn?  My truth is that we are living a human experience and humans are social creatures.  Our survival depends upon relationships.  We need others to thrive.  So why is the path to enlightenment so often considered a solitary one?

Tich Nhat Hanh wrote about the constraints that relationships can put on one’s spiritual path.  He states; “How could we continue to live if we were changeless?  We must perish again and again in the storms that make life possible.  I cannot be a spiritual being and at the same time be an unchanging object of love or hatred, annoyance or devotion.”  This explains the dangers of relationships.  They tend to place us into labeled boxes that prevent us from constant transformation.  A spiritual journey requires the constant death of who we are.  We lose our identity over and over in the process of disassociating from ego.  If we are held to being the object of someone else’s love or hatred or devotion then we are not free to evolve.

If relationship is not rigidified, then it can be a great source of evolution and growth.  Relationship can be a powerful teacher.  In Tantric practices it is believed that reaching a state of non-duality requires a balance between feminine and masculine energies.  They believe that we are all made up of male and female principles and that they must be activated and integrated in practice.  When sharing our unique principles with another we learn to develop sides of ourselves that would otherwise have gone untouched.  Relationship awakens parts of our heart and soul that would be much more difficult to reach alone.  When we embrace what makes us different we can learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the other and they can learn from ours.  

Relationships can contribute to our growth because they point out what we are struggling with and allow us to work through it.  Every emotion triggered by someone else’s actions was present in us already, that person just brought it to the surface.  We should be thanking them rather than blaming them.  When practicing alone, it may take us much longer to identify all of these internal struggles.

Relationship also allows us to soften in areas that we may be holding too tightly.  Our heart is opened when we are aware of the suffering of the other.  We develop acceptance and compassion in unconditional love.  Being a partner or a parent is a direct experience with selfless love.

In order for relationships to be a source of growth rather than a hindrance both partners must be open to the idea of non-self.  One cannot hold the other to a specific identity.  Both partners must be open to re-meeting the other everyday, never holding one another to previous actions or beliefs.  Every moment is a new opportunity to get to know the other for who they are today.  The role of the relationship will be to encourage and nourish each other through this process of constant death and rebirth of self.

A pure bond will encourage the expansion of the spirit past the boundaries that limit you to a specific form of self.