ALONE IS NOT ALONE

"Ah, alone at last," you might say, or "Oh, no, I'm all alone," or you might even say, "Leave me alone."  But alas, you are never alone, not truly.  You can be alone relatively, but not finally.  As Swami Prabhavananda stated many times, "there is never one moment in your life when God is not with you."  In the same way, Jesus said, "the kingdom of God is within you," so you are never alone.

There are Christian monastics who choose to be alone, even if only somewhat so, and they are called anchorites.  An anchorite is one who lives alone, usually in a cell, for purposes of spiritual discipline, silence, and prayer.  He is a type of religious hermit.  Thomas Merton, the well-known Trappist monk, lived alone as a hermit in a tiny cottage a half-mile or so from his monastery, the Abbey of Gethsemani.

But what about Buddhists?  They do not believe in God and therefore would not believe that He is with them always.  When they are alone, they must surely feel that they are completely alone.

But feeling alone is the point for them, for when you are alone you are only aware of your breathing, of the steady beating of your heart, and of the constant parade of thoughts through your mind, until they settle, and then of the background consciousness that in Vedanta is called the Atman.  There is no Atman in Buddhism, but there is pure consciousness, the meditation on which leads a Buddhist ultimately to Nirvana.

But Nirvana is not nothing, so alone is still not alone.  You are never alone.