Watashi-wa spent most of the last lockdown in the Swiss mountains. It is a place I love, and this winter was particularly beautiful. And yet I often felt tense and ill at ease. That didn’t use to happen to me, even when I spent long periods there by myself.
One way or another, I have spent a lot of time by myself during my adult life. I have pretty much lived by myself since my early 20s, and have seldom had a serious girlfriend. But I have found that useful and mostly desirable. The solitude made it easier to observe myself and to see what is really going on. There have been fewer distractions, fewer variables. It is also a long time since I have had a television, or a busy social life. However, I now feel that I am coming towards the end of this very solitary period. I will always need solitude from time to time, but I no longer think that it is helping me grow.
And now that I have started to think this way, I find confirmation in many different places:
‘I sought my God and my God I could not find;
I sought my soul and my soul eluded me;
I sought to serve my brother in his need, and I found all three;
My God, my soul, and thee.
– William Blake
‘Only a Buddha together with a Buddha can fully understand the true character of all things.’
– Lotus Sutra, chapter 2.
‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.’
– Matthew 18:20
How exactly this will pan out, who knows. Monastic communal life? Married life? Some other form of cohabitation? The boss of bosses will know best. But no caves, I don’t think, at least not for the foreseeable future.
watashi-wa in the snow 