Gil Fronsdal

Seclusion is an invaluable support for meditation. The types of seclusion emphasized in

Buddhism are those associated with inner freedom, wholeness, and peace. While the

word can have negative connotations in other usages, in Buddhist practice “seclusion”

has positive meanings; it refers to being apart from things that are stressful enough to

interfere with deepening meditation practice and with realizing greater inner freedom.

Meditative seclusion occurs together with feelings of satisfaction, safety, and

contentment. To dip into the fullness of seclusion in meditation is to tap into feelings of

mental health and harmony.

The Buddhist word for seclusion is viveka, which etymologically means to “separate

apart.” In addition to “seclusion”, viveka refers to the mindful separating apart or

distinguishing of different aspects of our experience. By seeing the difference between

healthy and unhealthy impulses, meditators have a better chance of avoiding getting

involved with the unhealthy ones, i.e., they can remain secluded from them. By

distinguishing mental freedom from mental attachments, one can discover how

choosing freedom provides beneficial seclusion from attachments.

The most basic seclusion useful for meditation is physical seclusion, meditating in a

place and time away from the distracting activities of daily life. Some meditators will go

to a quiet room, a relatively empty or uncluttered place, or somewhere outdoors

removed from ordinary hustle and bustle. Some find a wonderful seclusion by

meditating early in the morning when there is quiet and stillness. Such physical

solitude allows for a greater focus on one’s meditation practice. Connecting to the

immediacy of one’s experience is easier when one is surrounded by quiet and stillness

rather than people talking or busy with activity. Meditation can also be easier when we

are removed from — i.e., secluded from — beckoning smartphones, tempting TV shows,

and pinging emails.

One form of physical seclusion is meditation retreats. Retreating from everyday life is

not meant to be an escape or rejection of this life. Rather, it is a way to heal the

fragmentation and self-alienation many people experience in the midst of a busy

everyday life. Meditation retreats are a time to get back in touch with oneself, to become

whole again. One dictionary definition for viveka is “singleness of heart.” I understand

this to be a description of our deepest inner life becoming unified, whole, and available

for wisdom and love. In this sense, meditation retreats are a retreating back to a more

authentic way of being. It is a seclusion which allows for a reconnecting to aspects of

ourselves lost in a life of distraction and preoccupation.

The inner unification and “singleness of heart” possible in meditation is supported by a

reduced mental involvement with sense experience. While this is sometimes described

as seclusion from sense experience, it is more accurately a seclusion from any

preoccupation with what can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and, in deep meditation,

felt in the body. As the mind settles into a sense of peace, contentment and safety, it

does not look toward sense experience for pleasure, fulfillment, or improvement. When

there is less mental involvement with reacting, adjusting, and thinking about physical

sensations, it is easier to let go of common preoccupations of the mind. The process of

sensory seclusion is not a rejection or avoiding of sense experience. Rather it is a

natural consequence of the mind becoming increasingly settled in itself without

awareness actively directed outward through the five senses.

As meditation deepens, the mind tends to lose interest in discursive thinking, i.e.,

ongoing thinking that involves talking to oneself, carrying on conversations with others,

or providing commentary about something. Such thinking starts to be seen as a kind of

outward-directed attention by which one loses a deeper sense of wholeness or

connection to oneself. As thinking quiets during meditation, a meditator can experience

mental seclusion from discursive thinking. When this includes no longer thinking about

the past or the future, being settled in the present allows for increasing degrees of

clarity and peace. In such mental seclusion, there may be quieter and more subtle

thinking about the meditation experience itself that does not disconnect us from the

settling process of meditation.

An important form of seclusion is seclusion from the hindrances. Often occurring with

discursive thinking, the hindrances are powerful preoccupations with desire, aversion,

sloth, impatience, regrets, and doubts. These are usually outward directed fixations of

the mind. A big part of meditation practice is to first learn to recognize the hindrances

and then to learn how little value there is in being preoccupied with them. Much more

valuable is separating oneself from involvement with them so that one can have a

deeper intimacy with one’s immediate, direct experience.

These various forms of seclusion contribute to a greater clarity of awareness. When

attention is not crowded with hindrances, thinking, and fixation with sense experience,

awareness can become steady and clear enough for insight. One primary insight is

seeing how the mind clings and what it clings to. In the Buddhist analysis of the mind,

clinging is understood to be all the ways the mind gets attached, strains, resists, pushes

away, shuts down, or pretends what is not true to be true.

When this is seen clearly enough, the meditative mind begins a process of relaxing and

letting go of clinging. This leads to two forms of seclusion from clinging. The first is

temporary, the second is permanent. In meditation, the temporary seclusion of mind is

when a meditator is settled deeply enough into the meditation that there is no

involvement with or tendency to cling. To have a significant experience of temporary

seclusion from clinging can be transformative. A person can then know that clinging is

optional and that the mind does have the capacity to be free of clinging. In addition,

one’s hope, expectation, and heavy investment in clinging can be questioned: does

clinging ever live up to the promise that seems to accompany it?

The permanent seclusion from clinging is what Buddhism refers to as awakening. Often

described as an “uprooting”, this is an ending of one’s tendency to cling. Small

awakenings can do away with minor clinging; fuller awakenings uproot major

attachments. The seclusion that follows from this uprooting is not a retreating or

avoiding of the world; it allows a person to be in the middle of the world without clinging

to any of it (and therefore, not entangled in it).

Understanding the usefulness of the various forms of seclusion — physical seclusion,

sensory seclusion, and seclusion from discursive thinking, hindrances and

attachments — can lead a meditator to value experiences of seclusion as they occur. As

they are recognized and appreciated, it can be easier to avoid getting involved with

concerns that cause one to lose the seclusion. Through recognition, the mind is more

likely to settle into a wholesome and beneficial seclusion. With recognition, we can also

guide the mind toward further freedom from attachments. Wise seclusion is a stepping

stone to freedom and a form of freedom in itself. With the help of seclusion, meditation

is a path to fuller and fuller experiences of freedom.