{"id":252815,"date":"2024-01-29T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=252815"},"modified":"2024-01-24T06:40:53","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T06:40:53","slug":"the-art-of-solitude-buddhist-scholar-and-teacher-stephen-batchelor-on-contemplative-practice-and-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/01\/the-art-of-solitude-buddhist-scholar-and-teacher-stephen-batchelor-on-contemplative-practice-and-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Solitude: Buddhist Scholar and Teacher Stephen Batchelor on Contemplative Practice and Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cGive me solitude,\u201d Whitman demanded in his ode to the eternal tension between city and soul<\/a>, \u201cgive me again O Nature your primal sanities!\u201d In those primal sanities, we come to discover that \u201cthere is no place more intimate than the spirit alone,\u201d as May Sarton wrote in her stunning 1938 ode to solitude<\/a> \u2014 her hard-earned testimony to solitude as the seedbed of self-discovery<\/a>, for it is in that intimate place that we see most clearly what our animating spirit is made of. Solitude, Kahlil Gibran knew, summons of us the courage to know ourselves<\/a>. Elizabeth Bishop believed \u2014 a belief I can attest to with my own life \u2014 that everyone must experience at least one long period of solitude in life<\/a> in order to know what we are made of and what we can make of our gifts. \u201cThere is only one solitude, and it is large and not easy to bear,\u201d Rilke wrote in contemplating the relationship between solitude, love, and creativity<\/a>, \u201cbut\u2026 we must hold ourselves to the difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

The visionary poets knew \u2014 as do the visionaries of scientist<\/a>, as do all persons engaged in lives of creativity or contemplation, which are often one life \u2014 how this solitary self-discovery becomes the wellspring of all the meaning-making that makes life worth living, whether we call it art or love. From solitude\u2019s promontory, we peer out into the expanse of existence and train our eyes to look with wide-eyed wonder at the improbable fact of it all. Solitude, so conceived, is not merely the state of being alone but the art of becoming fully ourselves \u2014 an art acquired, like every art, by apprenticeship and painstaking devotion to dwelling in the often lonesome inner light of our singular and sovereign being.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Solitude by Maria Popova<\/p><\/div>\n

TO CONTINUE READING PLEASE Go to Original – themarginalian.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cGive me solitude,\u201d Whitman demanded in his ode to the eternal tension between city and soul, \u201cgive me again O Nature your primal sanities!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":106597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[1198,1630,1177,3215],"class_list":["post-252815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational","tag-buddhism","tag-creativity","tag-inspirational","tag-solitude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252815"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252820,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252815\/revisions\/252820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}