Loneliness

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

In Kathmandu, Nepal, there is a custom where a young girl is selected as the representative of a Hindu goddess and kept in a palace, unable to go outside. All her needs are taken care of, but her hair is never cut and her feet are not allowed to touch the ground. She is finally released from this prison when she begins to menstruate - the "curse" becoming her saviour - and another luckless victim takes her place. People believe these little girls are fortunate, but my godless Buddhist mind is saddened by thinking of the isolation and loneliness they are forced to experience.

Some think that being a celibate Buddhist monk is an equally perverse situation. When I finished work, and was about to leave Australia to become ordained, I followed the hospital tradition and went to the local pub with many of the doctors for a farewell drink. There I was, the prospective Buddhist monk, sitting at a table with a cigar in my mouth, a jug of beer in front of me, and my arms around two young lady doctors ... and one of them asked, "but, won't you feel lonely?"

"I don't know," I replied, "but I am determined to give it a go."

Loneliness was no stranger to me. A few years before, I had left my love in Australia and gone to England for further experience and post-graduate study in medicine, and, let's face it, for adventure. I found it all - adventure, friends, interesting work and study - but when her letters came, and memories invaded my mind, swinging London became the loneliest place in the world. I yearned for her to be with me and share my happiness.

My willingness to risk such loneliness and become a monk was based on the inspiring example of the Lamas, and on insights I had gained into the Buddha's teachings. Nobody I had ever met could even approach the level of sanity, happiness, and humour of the Lamas, and I knew that, in London, when I was not thinking of my girlfriend, I was not lonely. If the loneliness were due to her absence, I should have felt it all the time, but I did not. Therefore, it seemed reasonable to presume that loneliness comes from the mind. I had seen the intense loneliness of my father when my mother died at a relatively young age, and I knew that having a close friend only sets one up for a terrible loneliness when the inevitable separation occurs. If I could learn how my mind functioned, I could gain control over it and abandon unhappiness and its causes, and that is what Buddhism is all about.

We all experience loneliness in varying degrees throughout our lives, and we tend to blame the non-caring attitude of other people or society in general for our isolation. It is true that external conditions for loneliness exist, but the primary cause of loneliness is that we lock ourselves in palaces of our own creation. A working definition of neurotics is people who build castles in the air, and of psychotics is people who live in castles in the air. With our self-centred attitude that craves to be loved, recognised, and appreciated, we are all verging upon a loneliness-producing neurosis.

I have mentioned before that mothers are so important in our lives because, when we are babies, they nourish our bodies with milk from their breasts and our minds with love from their hearts. We are weaned from the breast, but mothers do not wean us from their love. As we grow older we feel the need to be independent and so we distance ourselves from maternal concern, and we even blame our mothers for our troubles. The fault, however, is in our own minds, in our craving for the lost love of our mothers.

Our emotions are so terribly unstable; we are elevated to the greatest heights of happiness by the words, "I love you," and we can be driven to the depths of despair, even suicide, or murder, by the words, "I do not love you," or, "I hate you."

As long as we feel the need to be loved, recognised, and appreciated, we are always in danger of loneliness, and the more we demand these of others, the more likely they will be to withdraw their affection. This need is dreadfully exploited by the commercial world interested only in our money, by sexual predators interested only in their pleasure, and by religions interested only in their numbers of adherents and their coffers.

I am not saying we should reject love and so on, we should receive and give them equally, savouring the happiness of the moment and not solidifying our castle in the air with the impossible thought, "This must remain forever."

The best happiness in life comes from giving love, rather than from receiving it, and, paradoxically, giving love without wanting anything in return makes others love, recognise, and appreciate us more than anything else.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.