1. If Loneliness is the Dharma, then what?

In this inaugural podcast episode, Rev. Syd Yang introduces the podcast and invites the listener into possibility. They delve deep into the topic of loneliness, exploring its complexities through personal experiences and contemplative practices that touch into both Buddhist and other theological perspectives. Syd emphasizes the multifaceted nature of loneliness encompassing biological, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. The discussion proposes loneliness not as a problem to be fixed but rather, an integral part of the human experience capable of fostering deeper self-understanding and connections with others. Themes such as liberation, ecological connection, and the impact of societal disconnection are explored, inviting listeners to view loneliness as a pathway towards greater empathy, love, and collective healing.

• Personal Reflections on Loneliness
• Defining Loneliness
• Spiritual and Embodied Connections
• Engaged Inquiry and Buddhist Practice
• The Role of Loneliness in Liberation Practice
• Personal Writings on Loneliness
• Exploring Different Types of Loneliness
• Conclusion: The Path Forward

Book a free spiritual care discovery call here

Connect with Syd:

Email: bluejaguarlove@gmail.com

Website: www.bluejaguarhealingarts.com

Join Substack: revsydyang.substack.com

Instagram: @bodyliberationchaplain

Buy Me A Boba Tea: Venmo @bluejaguarlove

Produced by Wowow Podcasts

Music by Lee Frisari

Transcript

Rev Syd 0:01

Welcome to the Dharma of Loneliness, a podcast where we reimagine the experience of loneliness as a sacred and welcome container that cradles the love and connection we long for. I'm your host, Rev Sidd, a Buddhist chaplain and spiritual counselor, and I invite you in as we examine this question. If your loneliness is something more than what you have been told, then what? Each month, I invite in a guest to explore a new assertion of what that something more might be. To play with the possibilities that touch at the heart of what it means to be human. We'll listen deeply and reflect courageously as we uncover the wisdom and perhaps the love that loneliness is longing to teach. So let's begin. Why talk about loneliness? Loneliness has been a question that I've been sitting with, grappling with, um, tussling with, fighting with, confronting, engaging, bowing before for many, many years. And probably one would say my entire life. But it really became a contemplation for me and my practice in the last six, seven years. And it really started for me in 2018 when I was going through a series of just like back-to-back losses. And it raised in me this question of all of this disconnection, all of this loss, all of this grief is for what? And it just exacerbated that residence loneliness that I held within my body. And it just came surging back in these ways that felt untenable, these ways that felt thoroughly uncomfortable. And as I do in my practice is to sit and be with what is. And so this is what was arising: loneliness. This really fun feeling and emotion of loneliness. And I began to sit and I began to be in dialogue with this loneliness. And over the years, this practice has led to new ways of being with myself, with my loneliness, with my grief, with my longings. And I'm curious in all of this to be in more dialogue with others, with other spiritual leaders, with other artists, with other care providers who are also engaging this question of what is loneliness? How might loneliness be something more than what we've been taught? And what can we learn from each other? So let's begin with the definition, right? So there's a couple of definitions out there, and I'm gonna name two. One is let's start with the Oxford Dictionary, right? It's gonna be simple, it's gonna be direct. Um, but it's supposedly it has legitimacy, right? Because it's the Oxford Dictionary. But what the Oxford Dictionary defines loneliness as is brief. It is, quote, sadness because one has no friends or company, end quote. That seems so bleak and dire. Um, but it also doesn't define loneliness. It says it's a loneliness because of this, but it doesn't really speak to the loneliness. So let's look a little further. And um, according to psychology today, so let's look within the psychiatry or psychology sector. According to Psychology Today, quote, loneliness is the state of distress or discomfort that results when one perceives a gap between one's desires for social connection and actual experiences of it. Even some people who are surrounded by others throughout the day or are in a long-lasting marriage or relationship still experience a deep and pervasive loneliness. Research suggests that loneliness poses serious threats to well-being as well as long-term physical health. Okay. And so this is important because what we're seeing in this time since COVID decided to introduce itself is this increased discourse around loneliness as a public health crisis, right? That there are impacts of loneliness on our bodies, on our temperaments, on our experiences of connection, our experiences of social interaction, and our experiences of ourself, right? But then let's go a little further. So there's this quote by Tara Brock, who is a Buddhist mindfulness teacher. And I like how she reframes or speaks to loneliness as a part of longing. She says, quote, longing, fully felt, carries us to belonging. The more times we traverse this path, feeling the loneliness or craving and inhabiting its immensity, the more that longing for love becomes a gateway into love itself. And here, this is where we're going on this podcast: this connection or this potentiality, if you will, of loneliness as a line into an experience of love or a thread that pulls us into a sense of being loved or a remembrance that we are not alone, that we are in fact deeply loved. So, my work as a spiritual care provider, as a spiritual counselor, but also my existence as a human being centers in the contemplation of this question. What does it mean to live in a body? And so my work engages and meets people at a number of different places, specifically around eating disorders and eating disorder recovery, around self-harm, substance use, about sex and sex as a way that we tease towards or tease out connection with each other. So also looking at the ways sex and sexual behavior is used as conquest and not as connection, the practices of over or excessive exercising. But also in this question of what does it mean to live in a body, where I enter into that question is also around queer desire, around being trans, around understanding transgressiveness or transgressive gender or desire or gender queerness. And also at the those intersections of racial realities, of gendered realities, of class realities, for myself being Taiwanese and mixed race, and having been ensigned and being socialized as female from birth. It is biological and physiological, like we're talking about. It is social and political. And the psychological includes both the philosophical and the emotional. And at the core of what we're talking about here, and we'll be exploring more on this podcast, is it is spiritual. So it is bio, psycho, social, spiritual. Loneliness is a core part of being in a body. It is experienced in all four of these domains in all of our bodies. So if loneliness is supposed to be there, and if it is an inherent part of being alive and being and living in a body, which it is, then how can it be a problem? Because our bodies, our existence, is not a problem. Which then led me to this question: if my loneliness is not something to fix, then what? So a couple of years ago, um, in a recent encounter with a client or a careseeker, we were discussing how to navigate that threshold between reality and illusion as these arise within their lived experiences of anxiety. And so as we were talking, they began to peel back layers and pull apart their seemingly fixed beliefs about themselves and the world. And what began to emerge is an awareness of what if nothing is ever fixed? And this awareness flowed in in our conversation as a calming stream in which this client was able to connect to ease in their body. There was space to practice and experiment with new ideas, as well as opportunities to more appropriately align the present moment with their lived identities. Over the past few years, this approach of detaching from a fixed thought, this is how it always is or will be, into one of curiosity with and of the unknown, which may sound like what might be possible this time, has completely transformed this person's relationship and my own with anxiety. The anxiety hasn't gone away, but their trust in themselves to be with that anxiety has grown. And this is similar to how we will be approaching and engaging loneliness in our conversations in this podcast. So a little bit more. In his piece on critical synergy, Mark Uno reflects on Buddhist thought as informed by the practice of Buddhism rather than solely relying on ideas and philosophy. This shape of Buddhist theology calls upon an engaged inquiry. I love that term. And it's one that I use deeply in my practice, that spiritual care and Buddhist practice and mindfulness is a practice of engaged inquiry, right? So if we're considering Buddhist theology in this shape that we're talking about, as an engaged inquiry of the self within the practice, which is an ongoing inquiry that eschews the presence of an objective truth. There's no one singular truth, then it is the subjective presence or the subjective present that one seeks. So as a chaplain, my role is not to locate the fixed truths for the other to cling to, right? These only exist in the realm of illusion, anyways. Rather, my presence as a chaplain, as a spiritual care provider, as a spiritual counselor, is shaped in ways that guides the other, the client, into and through an exploration of their continually evolving self. I view this as an external representation of contemplation with one's own mind. By sitting with the impermanence of our thoughts in repeated practice, right? We practice daily, over and over and over, we are able to discover and observe as meaning shifts and evolves like the turns of a kaleidoscope. No view ever remains the same. So what if every experience and interaction with loneliness is never the same thing? It is also always shifting and evolving and becoming. Right, this has demonstrated to me how critical and tenuous the webs of human connection actually are. And yet, the threads between connection and the points of intersection within this web are where we meet each other, where I long to meet you. So these questions then arise. How might I be holding my own loneliness in tandem with collective experiences of separation and abandonment? Right? And I'm talking not just in the individual, but also in the collective. How might my own personal longings for belonging that Tara Brach spoke about, find traveling companions with both similar and divergent longings in others? How might my presence and maybe these conversations in this podcast contribute to the breaking or dismantling of illusion in a world that perpetuates suffering by clinging to fixed ideas of self? So the question then, after all of these questions, arises if loneliness and being with my loneliness is a practice of liberation, what becomes possible through that lens, right? So loneliness and I'm gonna say this many, many, many times here and in later episodes, loneliness is not the problem. Feeling lonely or alone is not something to fix. What has been broken are our connections to others, ourselves, the earth, and the cosmos. That through collective responses to fear and many other things, right, over the centuries, we human beings have all experienced many different forms of disconnection, individually, collectively, spiritually, philosophically, right? These are disconnections which are a severing of our beingness with who we are, who we know ourselves to be, and who we are is each other, our bodies, the earth, and the cosmos. None of that is separate. If we focus just on this idea that the response to loneliness is to just make more friends, right? If we go back to the Oxford Dictionary definition, which is sadness because one has no friends or company, so have more friends, surround yourself by more people, then we actually then bypass the experience of loneliness and what loneliness can teach us. In Chinese mythology, we talk about the celestials, right? So it's the category or pantheon of gods and goddesses and other divine or more than human beings. And I like to think of, as human beings, our sacredness as a celestial calling or a celestial remembering. In that perhaps in our lived human existence in each lifetime, that we have forgotten perhaps that we are more than human. Are we not celestials? Right? And I believe that our wholeness, our getting free, insists on us remembering this. So, what do I mean by getting free and liberation? Right? I named this idea that what if loneliness is a practice of liberation? So, what do I actually mean by getting free or by liberation? And in some ways, I am talking about enlightenment from a Buddhist lens, but also not, right? Yes, because that is my orientation to understanding liberation. And no, because it's not everyone's understanding of liberation, right? There is no one definition or one way of contemplating liberation. Liberation, as I speak to it and imagine it, is so much more than a singular religious teaching. I believe it is a part of each one of us. It is a deep knowing in the cells of our being that predates religion. You know, because religion hasn't always been here. Liberation knows. That this is not all that is, right? This what we are living, what we are experiencing, this loneliness, even, is not all there is. I don't know how many of you remember this. And this is absolutely dating me. But in the mid-90s, I think it was early 90s, mid-90s, maybe early 90s, PJ Harvey put out a song. And in that song, she sings, Is This All There Is? Over and over, right? And I remember listening to that song. I was in living in New Orleans at the time. And in my angsty, dramatic emo self, I would lie on my floor in my bedroom and put on my headphones and listen to this song. Right. A dear friend of mine at the time had made me a mixtape. Yeah, I know. I am that old. And that mixtape had this song on it. And I would play it in my Walkman, right? And, you know, with the, because it's a tape. So I'd have to stop it with a button, rewind it, play it again. And so I would listen to that song and that refrain over and over and over again. Is this all there is? And I don't remember now what else was on that tape, but I can still hear PJ Harvey's voice begging me to be in that question with her. Is this all there is? And in that unraveling of that question, is this all there is? Right? I encountered a devastating loneliness that I realized had been with me since I was. Well, and since as long as I could remember. It was probably even there before this current lifetime. And that this loneliness was more than just mine. It was and it is inherited. It was passed on to me through my ancestors. And it continues to invite me to touch into and reconnect with the loneliness of the earth itself. And so what has arose out of that, or what has emerged or bloomed from that unraveling, is that loneliness is a form of love. Loneliness invites me and begs of me to remember that I am loved. That I am love. That I love you. That you are loved. And the often most difficult part of this for me to connect to is that you love me. So I'm gonna read a couple of things now about loneliness, and some of this are writings over the last couple of years around how I defined loneliness or how I experienced loneliness. So here's something from I believe this was 2020. I carry loneliness in my bones, bones that creak daily as I remember what it used to feel like to sink into the embrace of someone I loved. I spit tears in the shower as my skin sloughs off layers of grief piled on from the past several years, of friends and family members dying, cats passing, the intentional but complicated severing of my relationship with my parents, political systems failing the communities I love, and a seven-year marriage crumbling apart. The loss of a companion my heart is still trying to fully comprehend. My body curls into the crevices of my bed sheets on these hot summer nights and sweats out rivulets of rage that threaten to drown me in my sleep. I have also swaddled myself in freedom by shaving off all of my hair, activating ancient rituals of spiritual surrender as I kneel before the divine, both within me and without. I have learned how to speak with the wind as she moves through the trees above me, and I now understand the wisdom whispered in a growing fig that grows on a branch just beyond my reach. In this pandemic world, this emergent world, this deconstructing world, this uncertain world, I have also fallen deeply and madly in love with myself. Okay. Another piece on loneliness that I wrote. This one, I believe, is 2021. Recently, I've been noticing the ways that I have gotten comfortable with not needing, with the ways that I have learned how to push away longing to pretend that I am okay. Recently, I felt my arms crumble, hands drawn to the sides of my body, fallen branches from a tree torn asunder by unexpected winds. Recently, I lay down on the warm earth, my back spreading out into the expanse of grass and soil and dirt beneath me, the edges of my shoulder blades reaching for the softness of rock, believing that if I could just shift enough to the right, I would find what I was looking for, for never, ever needing to ask for help. Recently, my feet waded out into cold waters, toes sinking into sand, the skin along the edges of my calves tightening to say, we're good, we're good. We don't need anyone else. If I had the earth, how could I be alone? If I am surrounded by ancestors, am I to be lonely as the earth holds me? Is this not enough? Recently, I began to wonder what it would feel like to be both enough and not enough at the same time. I began to wonder what wholeness and partner could look like, and what that might be like at the same time, to be both whole and partnered, to be both the wholeness and the partner at the same time. What if there is no distinction between enough and not enough? What if there's no difference between isolation and companionship? What if there is no difference because being alone and being together are both simply illusions? What if this is both happening and not happening at the same time? There is another reality on the other side of loneliness. There is another world yet to be discovered, yet to be uncovered on the other side of alone. What if my obsession with my loneliness has been a distraction all along? What if I've been holding the new world at bay for fear of losing the crumbs of my not enoughness that I cling to out of habit because I once was told that that is all that I deserve. Okay. And here's something I wrote from 2022. These past few years have been a weaving together and an unraveling at the same time. A contemplation on loneliness of what it means now to be on my own. It has been a rising up, a sun salutation at dawn, and a burrowing deep into the roots of trees in the middle of a sleepless night. In this loneliness, a familiar, though unwelcome face began to poke its head around corners and leave little love notes for me in the spaces where I'd like to rest. What if you let me back in? She proposed, red ink dripping off a white parchment scrap, torn at a random angle as if in haste. My eating disorder decided that her exile was no longer amenable, that somehow my loneliness demanded her return, that for her to come back would be a gift I could not refuse. But let me tell you, addiction is not a gift. But recovery is. But no, my loneliness is not the problem. Loneliness is the gift I've been finding. An invitation to experience that I am in fact never alone. Loneliness taught me that I don't have to be erased. I get to show up and be present with myself every day. I get to strengthen my no and reinforce my boundaries as my eating disorder insists that her presence is more powerful than my own. In this time, I encountered the loneliness of grief itself, the sap that leaks out of careless nicks carved into the tattered bark of a fallen tree, the echo of an echo that lodges against my left ear and refuses to let go. Loneliness has become a superpower. I am learning how to wheel. One that reminds me that on my own, there is unlimited space and permission to love, to be loved, and to absolutely get free. And so this is what this podcast is about. What is the experience of loneliness? The actual lived and living experience of it. How is it being a teacher? How is it the Dharma? Right? And where is it inviting us or asking us to go? Some of what we will talk about and explore on this podcast are different types of loneliness. And here are a few that I've written down that we will explore. So loneliness of the unknown, looking into shadows, places without light, corners that I can't see around, the experience of being alone in a wide open space, or loneliness is punishment, loneliness because we have refused to or did not know how to play by the rules, of not being good enough, of choosing oneself over the other. Right. Loneliness in partnership. Loneliness that is felt when I am not alone, when I am surrounded by others, in a relationship, and yet still disconnected, unseen, and alone. Loneliness as an ecological expression. The loss of connection with the earth, with nature, with living systems, with ecosystems, with the cycles of life, the loneliness that we may be experiencing or facing because of irreversible climate change, and the disconnection from a linear ongoing history. Loneliness as illusion and the loneliness of illusion. The loneliness of questioning, that existential quest that we are all on. Who am I? What am I? Loneliness that we encounter in the process of self-knowing. Loneliness in social realms, comparing oneself to others, believing perception as reality, the loneliness that arises when one or the collective is politically and historically erased. Loneliness as a creative force, to call into being that which has yet to exist, loneliness as fuel, as life force, as curiosity, as playfulness, loneliness as an expression of grief or a byproduct of grief. Loneliness as a practice. Yes, we will talk about loneliness as suffering. And in every conversation, we will absolutely talk about loneliness and experience loneliness as liberation. I'm really excited for what is to become. And this is just what I've shared with you today: the beginnings, the crumbs that are teasing you forward into what I believe will be some rich and edifying and transformative conversations and experiences of loneliness that I hope will meet you in your own practice, in your own dialogue, in your own relationship as it's forming and deepening with the loneliness that you carry within you. For this month's conversation, I hope it has offered you some space to slow down, to get curious, and to touch into the wonder and magnificence of all of who you are. Until next time, may you find the cadence of your longing and the wisdom of your heart as you meet your loneliness as a teacher, a friend, and when possible, a lover.