ALONENESS

"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," always. 

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 from his monastery, the Abbey of Gethsemani.

But what about Buddhists?  They do not believe in a God and therefore would not believe that any such thing is with them at all times, or at any time for that matter.  When they are alone therefore, they most certainly feel by themselves.

But aloneness is the whole point for Buddhists, who consider it more the fact of existence.