Reading Archive (Solitude)
For the Traveler
Every time you leave home, Another road takes you Into a world you were never in. New strangers on other paths await. New...
Dropping That Drug
If we really dropped illusions for what others can give us or deprive us of, we would become alert. The consequence of not doing this is...
The Value of Solitude
Loneliness is not the absence of company, it is grief over that absence. The lost sheep is lonely; the shepherd is not lonely. But the...
No Better Place to Meet Yourself
Moussa Ag Assarid (MAA): I don’t know my age. I was born in the Sahara desert, with no papers. I was born in a nomadic camp of...
We Move in Infinite Space
It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished...
The Capacity for Successful Solitude
The capacity to be alone is the capacity to know enough about yourself and who you are, and be comfortable enough with that. That way,...
Learning How To Think
Let’s start with how you don’t learn to think. A study by a team of researchers at Stanford came out a couple of months ago....
The Central Commitment Of The Creative Life
Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always -- these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that...
Hermits in New York
Let's take hermits. People today think being a hermit is a very unhealthy thing to do. Very antisocial, doesn't contribute anything to...
Solitude Is Where Community Begins
Solitude is where community begins. That’s where we listen to God. Sometimes I think of life as a big wagon wheel with many spokes....
Three Kinds of Laziness
The Buddha described three kinds of laziness. First there is the kind of laziness we all know: we don't want to do anything, and...
What I Learned From Trees
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and...
A Strange Predicament
When I stop to consider the facts they astonish me. There you are, couched in your own skin, and Here I am in mine. No matter how close...
The Endless Fertility of Walking
Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in...
Keeping The Smoke Hole Open
In Siberian myth, when you want to hurt someone, you crawl into their tent and close the smoke hole. That way God can’t see...
The Inward Sea
There is in every person an inward sea And in that sea, there is an island And on that island is an altar And standing guard...
How Much Silence Is Too Much?
Ours is a noisy country. We’ve been rebellious, insolent shouters since the beginning. We invent freak shows and circuses and...
Reflections on Life from Death Row
Reggie once told me that we could use these cells like meditation cells used by monks in monasteries. But prison is not a monastery....
Not Loneliness, But Aloneness
Alone is a state of being. Not loneliness, but aloneness. It is something sought rather than avoided. You can find it in just a moment, a...
Anyone Else Suffer From Active Laziness?
I was recently reading a book about a boy who becomes acquainted with philosophy through the need to answer questions about living and...