Buddhist Scholar and Teacher Stephen Batchelor on Contemplative Practice and Creativity – The Marginalian

“Give me a place to dwell alone,” asked Whitman in his vision of the eternal tension between the city and the soul, “give me also O Nature your precious innocence!” In those first purgatory, we find that “there is no place more intimate than the soul alone,” as May Sarton wrote in her wonderful 1938 book Solitude – her hard-won testimony to solitude as the seedbed of self-discovery, for it is in that intimacy that we see clearly what our spirit is like. Being alone, Kahlil Gibran knew, calls us to the courage to know ourselves. Elizabeth Bishop believed – a belief that I can attest to in my own life – that everyone should have enough time alone in life to know what we are made of and what we can do with our gifts. “There is only solitude, and it is great and unbearable,” wrote Rilke when he reflected on the relationship between solitude, love, and creativity, “but…

Visionary poets know – as do scientific visionaries, as do all people involved in creative or contemplative lives, which are often one life – how this self-discovery becomes the source of all the meaning that makes life worth living, whether we call it art or love. From a solitary vantage point, we peer into the universe of things and train our eyes to gaze with wonder at the impossible truth of it all. Solitude, so conceived, is not just a state of being alone but the art of being fully ourselves – an art acquired, like all arts, through study and a deep commitment to dwelling in the often lonely inner light of our individuality and sovereignty.

Its art, soft and hard, is what the Buddhist scholar and teacher is all about Stephen Batcheror checks in The Art of Being Alone (public library). Celebrating solitude — not your right to escape but your practice against the pressures of the real world — as “a place of independence, wonder, imagination, reflection, inspiration, and care,” she writes:

True solitude is a way of being that needs to be cultivated. You can't turn it on or off at will. Being alone is an art. Mental training is needed to fix and stabilize. When you practice being alone, you devote yourself to taking care of the soul.

Almost forty years after he first combined Western phenomenology and existentialism with Buddhist precepts in his 1983 book. Alone with Others: The Buddhist WayBatchelor draws on the control of his solitary life – directly, through his practice of meditation and frequent retreats, and indirectly, through his immersion in the lives and works of centuries of solitary-virtuosi from Montaigne to Nietzsche to Ingmar Bergman – to create a totality, a totality and a totality of totality. the art of solitude:

Don't expect anything to happen. wait This waiting is a deep acceptance of a time like this. Nietzsche called it love fati – the unquestionable love of whatever made you here. You get to a place where you're just sitting there, asking, “What is this?” – but without interest in the answer. The anticipation of the answer diminishes the power of the question. Can you be content to rest in this confusion, this confusion, in a more focused and integrated way? Just waiting without any expectations?

Ask “What is this?,” and open yourself completely to what you “feel” in the silence that follows. Be open to this question in the same way you would listen to a piece of music. Pay full attention to the polyphony of birds and the wind outside, the occasional plane flying overhead, the rain on the window. Listen carefully, and realize that listening is not just about opening the mind but opening the heart, the important concern or concern for the world, the source of what we call compassion or love.

Echoing Rachel Carson's belief in the solitude of creative work – the only by-product of creative work, natural and necessary, often terrifying and always clarifying – Batchelor adds:

Being alone at your desk or in your studio is not enough. You have to free yourself from the phantoms and inner critics that follow you wherever you go. “When you start working,” said the composer John Cage, “everyone is in your studio – your past, your friends, enemies, the world of art, and above all, your ideas – they are all there. But as you continue to paint, they begin to leave, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even leave.”

[…]

After closing the door, you find yourself alone in front of a canvas, a sheet of paper, a lump of clay, a computer screen. Other tools and materials are lying around, nearby, waiting to be used. You resume your silent conversation with work. This is a two-way process: you create a job and you respond to it. Work can inspire, surprise, and frighten you… The very act of making art involves a powerful, wordless dialogue.

Drawing a link between the Buddhist idea of ​​nirvana and Keats's idea of ​​”bad skill” – that broad willingness to ignore the pull of attachment, reactivity, and fixation, in order to live ambiguously and embrace uncertainty – Batchelor notes that meditative practice trains the ability to see each moment as an opportunity, to continue with ongoing life as an opportunity to reproduce ongoing life. that can be changed. He looks at the essential building blocks and ultimate rewards of the meditation practice:

Integrating a meditation practice into one's life requires more than mastery of meditation techniques. It involves the expansion and refinement of the mind about the essence of your existence—from the deepest moments of grief to the endless suffering of the world. This understanding includes various skills: consideration, curiosity, understanding, collectivity, compassion, equality, care. Each of these can be cultivated and refined in isolation but is of little use if it cannot survive in the company of others. Never be complacent about the practice of meditation; it is always a work in progress. The world is here to surprise us. My most lasting realization happened without the cushion, not on it.

According to poet and philosopher Wendell Berry's life-tested belief that “true solitude is found in wild places,” where one is free of human responsibility,” where “one's inner voice is heard. [and,] as a result, one responds clearly to other lives,” Batchelor adds:

By withdrawing from the world and being alone, you isolate yourself from others. By distinguishing yourself, you can clearly see what separates you from other people. Standing out in this way confirms your presence (e.g-[out] + sister [stand]). Freed from social pressures and restrictions, being alone can help you better understand what kind of person you are and what your life purpose is. This way you are independent from others. You find your own way, your own voice.

[…]

Here is the paradox of being alone. Look long enough and hard enough at yourself alone and suddenly you will see the rest of humanity staring back. Stable solitude brings you to a place of relaxation where the pendulum of life swings you back to others.

He is a completer The Art of Being Alone and Hermann Hesse on solitude, difficulty, and fate, then enjoy Batchelor's open space. In life interview with Krista Tippett.