When I was 24, I left everything behind to go live in a monastery. I still remember my first night there: alone in my little room, with no distractions, no entertainment, and no people, the silence and solitude were so profound it felt as if they would swallow me whole.
It seemed as if my every insecurity suddenly loomed before me. I seriously doubted my decision to be there, and I felt a loneliness unlike anything I'd ever experienced. That was precisely the moment at which I would have reached for something to take the edge off - a phone call to a friend, a sexual encounter, a TV show - except there was nothing to reach for. I was just stuck with it.
I wish I could say it got easier in the coming days, but it didn't. The simple lifestyle of the monks - basically just an endless cycle of prayer, chanting, meditation, work, and walks in the countryside - left me with nothing but time to face the parts of myself I'd been avoiding all my life. It was brutal. I felt raw and exposed, and I had nothing to console me.
Then something happened. One day, after so many weeks of enduring the seemingly bottomless loneliness and suffering, I felt as if I crossed some threshold that I'd never let myself approach before. Suddenly, the simplicity, silence, and solitude transformed. Suddenly, they were no longer stifling; suddenly, they were illuminating.
I remember chanting with the others one day and realizing what a miracle it was that my voice responded to my will to produce sound. I lifted my hand in front of my eyes and was delighted to see that it responded as well. What an incredible joy to be able to sing and move! As soon as the chant was over, I walked as quickly as I could to the forest next to us, then charged down the path whooping and jumping and delighting in my aliveness. I saw a flower on the path, fell to my knees before it, and wept with joy at its beauty. As if for the first time, I felt the incredible support of the earth under me as I cupped the flower in my hands and laughed with a freedom and expansiveness I'd never known was possible. Some distant part in the back of my mind told me I was being crazy, that one of the monks would see me and think I'd become unhinged, but somehow the idea didn't bother me in the slightest.
And then my attention turned inward to my own wounded self, this self I had avoided, judged, and attacked with a viciousness I would never have inflicted on another. When my attention turned to this precious self, my heart broke for it. And in through that break poured a light and a love abundant enough to embrace the whole world as if it were a tiny babe.
This self was beautiful. This self was so laudable in its earnest attempts to do good, so lovable in its fragilities, so sublime in its vulnerabilities. I saw that this beautiful, vulnerable self was worthy of the most tender love imaginable.
What's more, I saw that this self had been receiving such love all along. Through the shining of the sun, through the imperfect and heartfelt support of my family and friends, through the gentle whisper of a breeze, through the endless cycle of matter and energy through the universe, and through the other ten billion miracles that sustained my life in every single moment, this cosmic love had been there all along.
All the while I thought to myself: how have I never seen any of this before? How have I never realized that I've been in paradise all along? That there is nowhere to go and nothing to become? That everything I could ever want or be I already have and am? How could I have possibly been so blind?
I laughed and realized the wisdom of the monks: beyond our loneliness and our pain, there is an abundance and a oneness so astonishingly beautiful and liberating that it is beyond words. It's just that, in our busy-ness and our distraction, most of us never get the chance to glimpse it. Those monks had removed everything that prevented them from being able to see, they had endured the painful silence and loneliness that came first, and they had entered into the paradise that lay beyond it. They had designed an entire lifestyle around dwelling in that paradise, a lifestyle that seems dreadfully boring and isolating to those of us who have never lived it.
Though I'd been interested in monastic life for several years, a part of me had always pitied the strange folk who voluntarily lived a life of simplicity, silence, and solitude. What a poor life they live, I'd thought to myself. Then I discovered their secret and realized that they were wealthy beyond comprehension.
Since leaving the monastery to come back into the world, I have enjoyed many successes that, according to the conventional wisdom, lead to happiness. And yet, my heart has always yearned for the days when I was, by the standards of the world, a nobody. The days when a simple sunset moved me to tears, when the expansion and contraction of my breath filled me with joy and gratitude, when the depths of my silence and solitude tendered me and connected me to the hearts and souls of my fellow humans.
And then COVID-19 happened. Here in my little apartment, with my meditation cushion, my yoga mat, my books, and the meandering river down the street, I feel as if I've returned to the monastery.
Without seeking it out, we are all suddenly faced with the boredom and loneliness of solitude and simplicity. I don't get to tell you how to spend these next few weeks or months, but I do want to tell you that out beyond boredom and loneliness, out beyond insecurity and suffering, there is a oneness so beautiful and friendly that it will transform everything without changing anything.
May the boredom and loneliness so many of us are feeling be only the precursors to an awakening so profound that we fall on our knees at the beauty of it all.