IN THE ONTIC HUMAN CENTRE

SOLITARINESS OVERCOME BY SOLITUDE

Abstract

Systems of metaphysics, irrespective of their advocacy of permanence or change as the stuff of reality, have generally overlooked their corollary viz. things are alone. Collectivity of similar things under a generic name is, to be sure, a practical necessity in human discourse, but things are ontically alone. None grasped this truth more perceptively than Buddha: Things are unique particulars (sva/ak§ava) •, subjected to the inexorable law of momentariness, they undergo change-but alone. Likewise, to some other systems, the immutable substances, material or spiritual, remain immutable in all their aloneness. It is not only the inorganic, but also the organic, world that is lonely: Every living creature is born alone, grows alone and dies alone. Its so called gregarious, or social, development is nothing other than the following of a pattern of nurture in accordance with a definite set of laws of nature. In all the phases of development that the living creatures pass through, they do not at any time cease to be solitary, even when they happen to be male and female living together; or when certain species of them are said to be particularly gregarious or 'colonized.' Man too here is solitary. No doubt, he is said to be social but he is solitary in society. Insofar as he is 'concorporated,• he is also separated from other bodies and, being thus separated is at once being solitary. But there is something special about man's being solitary: He alone experiences solitariness. In the course of this essay I address myself to two distinct, but closely related, questions: What is the source of human solitariness ? Can it ever be overcome? While the title of the essay directly answers the first question, the subtitle is indeed suggestive of an answer to the second question, however paradoxical it may seem. Between the answers to these two questions, I shall explicate the many human faces of solitariness. My perspective however is that of Christianity, a different perspective should be equally possible though.