Find Your Heart in Loneliness

BY CHGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE| APRIL 4, 2016

In this talk from his teachings on the Tibetan yogi Milarepa, Chgyam Trungpa
Rinpoche describes the experience of desolateness. Like Milarepa when he meditated in
his cave, when we are alone, we may begin a love affair with sadness.
The first meeting with oneself, with aloneness, is meeting ones real ego without clothingnaked ego,
assertive, distinct, clear, definite ego. The experience of loneliness is from egos perspective: ego has no one
to comfort itself, no one to act as moral support. This kind of aloneness is simply the feeling of being
nowhere, lost. There is tremendous sadness that theres nothing around you that you can hang onto. But it
is your own ego acting as the voice of sadness, loneliness, so you cannot blame anybody or even get angry.
That starting point is very useful and valuable. It was the inspiration to go into retreat in Milarepas case,
and in our case as well.
Taking part in a retreat is a way to express aloneness, loneliness, desolation. We might experience fear in
retreat, but that fear is purely an expression of that loneliness. We are trying to entertain ourselves, so we
manufacture fear. We might go back to our mental notes of the past, or our scrap books, but that becomes
boring. We are back to square one constantly. Cooking, sleeping or walking might become a source of
entertainment. There is so little to do, we are thankful there is something to do. But even that comes back
to square one. We tend to get disillusioned with that, too.
Such experiences of being in retreat are not exactly wretched. There is a very faint, subtle sense that you
are falling in love with something. You begin to appreciate the desolation. A subtle romanticism is
happening completely. Because there is nothing to entertain you, everything comes back to you. The songs
of Milarepa, at the early stage of his being in retreat, are love songs. They praise the terrain, the mountains,
his cave, his desolateness, his solitude, and the memory of his guru. Those are his love songs.
In retreat you begin to find that the sadness and desolateness has a sense of the romantic. There is
something to hang ontosomewhat. There is something to latch onto, but if you go too far it disappears. So
it is a very subtle love affair.
But obviously, it is definitely a romantic one.
At that point you see the value of guru. The guru becomes precious to you. You not only fall in love with the
environment and with your aloneness, as such, but you also feel that your guru has a lot to do with it. You
begin to appreciate his fatherhood and his genius as a matchmaker, that he married you and this desolate
place. So we could say that sadness also provokes spiritual romanticism. Although it is materialistic in
style, fundamentally it is spiritual, or evenif we could be brave enough to say such a thingmystical.
There is a tone of mystical experience.
Sadness brings up tremendous artistic talent in oneself, as it did in Milarepa. Milarepa composed songs
and began to see the colors and sights and happenings around him become very real, extremely real. The
way the sun shines, the way the moon sets, the way the clouds move. The wind breaking, the sounds of
owls hooting at night. Mosquitoes landing on you. Everything you see becomes completely, totally, a

gigantic world of romanticismcolorful and fantastic. At the beginning you are irritated by the insects
around you, but at some point you begin to find that you wish you could invite them for a party or for
dinner.
We could say that this whole thing is unreal, an expression of your being spaced out or even tripping out.
But it has a valid reason; you cant regard it as unpleasant or a side-track on the path. It is very valuable,
because we have not seen our ego alone for a long timenever. For the first time we begin to see that our
ego is naked. We are not exactly without egothere is egobut that ego is a naked one. And it begins to
explore the world around it.
So going into retreat, we could say, is an introduction to egos nakedness and the subtle appreciation of
aloneness, loneliness. Being in retreat, free from any kind of security, even from your guru, you have to pull
up your own resources constantly.
Retreat does not only mean going into retreat in the physical sense, in a cabinretreat means that you are
left with nobody. Your guru has told you just to work on yourself, that it is not necessary to extend further
information to you. You have to find your way.
In our case, you would like to find out something, you are hoping for new experience, so you decide to go
on retreat. You consult your guru, and both he and you agree that this is a project you should get into. Then
the process of retreat begins, and the experience becomes identical with Milarepas. Obviously, you could
step out of it. You could run into the city and eat ice cream and go to the movies, you could do all kinds of
things.
Nevertheless, even if you do those things, they become part of the whole experienceyou cannot actually
escape. You are never out of retreat, once you decide to do it. You could be in Grand Central Station, but
nevertheless, there is a sense of desolateness.
So, in fact, you are not going into retreat, but retreat is coming to you. That loneliness is always there. I
wouldnt say that loneliness is only Milarepas experiencewe all have that sense of loneliness, particularly
on the spiritual journey and in relating with a guru, but also in relating with a family and our case history
of the past. The sense of loneliness is always there, even if you are entertaining yourself and you have lots
of company and lots of friends to keep you occupied. Still, behind that, the sense of loneliness becomes
prominent. Always you are back to square one. It is inevitable.

From talk five of The Message of Milarepa, a seminar given at Karme-Choling Meditation Center,
Barnet, Vermont, in July, 1973. 1998 Diana J. Mukpo