Why Solitude Still Matters: Lessons From a Meditation Town Hall

On a Sunday morning in October, a weekly meditation town hall opens the way many online sessions do: a bell, a few words about the weather, and a request to pause and take in the faces on the screen. Guest host Suzanne Woodland, a senior student of Lama Surya Das, is speaking from New Hampshire, where peak foliage is at its height and her neighbors are doing yard work. Within the first ten minutes she moves from a bell and a four-line intention prayer into the real subject of the session, which is why stepping away from screens, obligations and endless projects is a practice rather than an indulgence, and why the masters of the lineage kept saying so. What follows is an unhurried tour through her reasoning, her readings from Patrul Rinpoche, and the guided meditation that closed the hour.

What does a room full of screens have to do with an old Tibetan teaching?

Woodland doesn't begin with theory. She begins with a show of hands. She asks how many people in the Zoom have deliberately set down the phone or tablet for a day, or even half a day. Some hands go up. She then points out that anyone who searches for guidance on screen time will find plenty of recommendations from mental health professionals telling them that a break from devices is wise. Her own gloss is the useful part: taking care of yourself makes it easier to take care of others, and the two don't have to be treated as competing demands.

She also asks how many people have taken a solitary retreat of any length, and sees thumbs go up among the longer-standing members. The session's theme, as she frames it, is "praise and encouragement for a bit of device-free time or ideally some solitary practice." That framing matters. She is not presenting solitude as a luxury for people with time to spare. She is presenting it as a discipline, one her own lineage has been recommending for a long time.

Her opening remarks about her own weekend are a reminder of how ordinary the setup can be. She describes sitting outdoors in a meditation group the day before, getting rained on mid-session, and relocating to a garden shed. Retreat, in her telling, doesn't require a mountain. It requires a place where the usual claims on your attention loosen their grip, even if that place is a shed or a daughter's underused house.

Why open with four aspirations before anything else?

Woodland has the group recite the four measurable aspirations in English, inviting people to chant along or simply take the words in. The prayer is worth slowing down for, because it sets the direction of the whole hour:

"May all beings possess happiness and the inner causes of happiness. May all beings be free from suffering and the inner causes of suffering. May all beings remain undivided from the sacred joy which is free from suffering. May all beings come to rest in great peace and equanimity beyond attachment and aversion to friends, enemies, or strangers."
— Four aspirations, recited at the opening of the Meditation Town Hall, October 18, 2026 (4:01 in the recording's audio flow)

Notice the arc. The first two lines are about causes: not just happiness but its inner causes, not just the end of suffering but its inner roots. The third line asks that beings remain undivided from a joy that is free from suffering. The fourth points toward equanimity, a state in which attachment and aversion no longer sort people into friends, enemies and strangers. Read against the rest of the session, the prayer already contains the argument. If the goal is a mind that rests in equanimity, then the question becomes which conditions help that mind settle, and which keep it churning.

What did Patrul Rinpoche actually say about solitude?

Woodland describes Patrul Rinpoche as "in our lineage" and as a favorite of hers. She reads from three of his writings, and the first is a passage from Yearning for Mountain Solitude:

"Grant your blessings and enable me to settle in the solitude of the mountains somewhere that provides physical and vocal isolation and thereby inspire a true solitude of the mind."
— Patrul Rinpoche, Yearning for Mountain Solitude, as read by Suzanne Woodland (7:49)

The sentence makes a specific claim: physical and vocal isolation are presented as supports for something more interior, a "true solitude of the mind." The outer quiet is not the goal. It is the condition that makes an inner quiet more likely. Woodland then reads a second line from the same master, drawn from The Special Teaching of the Wise and Glorious King:

"Until stability is attained, it is vital to meditate away from all distractions and busyness, practicing in proper meditation sessions."
— Patrul Rinpoche, The Special Teaching of the Wise and Glorious King, as read by Suzanne Woodland

The phrase that deserves attention is "until stability is attained." The instruction is conditional and time-bound. Patrul Rinpoche isn't saying that distraction is always bad or that busy people can't practice. He is saying that while the mind is still learning to be steady, it needs protection from the things that keep pulling it apart. Woodland's own reading of this is modest: it "is in accord with my many years of practice," and she suggests it may resonate for listeners too.

Can advice to yourself be a manual for doing less?

The most striking passage of the hour is the one Woodland clearly enjoys most. She reads from what is usually translated as Advice from Me to Myself, a text in which Patrul Rinpoche speaks directly to his own restless mind. She notes that he is "giving advice to himself, clearly when he's a bit older," and she is amused enough to read it twice for the room.

The text is a catalog of the mind's habits. The mind is "spinning around about carrying out a lot of useless projects." Thinking about "the hundred plans you want to accomplish with never enough time to finish them just weighs down your mind." The projects "never come to an end but keep spreading out more like ripples in water." The advice is blunt: "Don't be a fool for once. Just sit tight."

Then comes the teaching's sharpest turn. Having already heard hundreds of teachings, the speaker asks what the point of more listening is when not a single one has been grasped. The same logic applies to reflection: if the teachings don't come to mind when they are needed, what's the point of more reflection? The text's answer is stark, and Woodland reads it in its raw form, with the phrase "Just sleep, eat, [and] piss" as the translation renders it. "There's nothing else in life that has to be done. Don't get involved with other things. They're not the point. Keep a low profile."

It is easy to hear that as a joke, and Woodland treats it partly as one. But the underlying point is serious. Input can become its own form of busyness. A mind that collects teachings, plans, and projects can mistake accumulation for progress. Patrul Rinpoche's solution is not more effort but less: integrate what you already have, and stop spreading yourself across more of it. Woodland's comment, "we can always do less, at least sometimes," captures the idea without the ruthlessness of the original.

What does letting go look like in an actual sitting?

The guided portion that follows is short, and it translates the readings into posture and attention. Participants are invited to let the weight settle, to find a connection to the earth, and to locate a posture that feels "awake and yet relaxed." Then the instruction shifts to release: let go of roles and projects. Woodland asks a question worth carrying out of the session: "What if everything that needs to be done is actually already done? Nothing more for you to do."

She adds a practical instruction for the moment when a task surfaces mid-sitting. If an afternoon project pops into the mind, you don't need to argue with it or criticize yourself for thinking about it. You can see it, not complicate it, and let it dissolve on its own. This is the working core of the practice. Solitude is not only a matter of where you sit. It is the ongoing refusal to let each thought about a task turn into a new obligation in the middle of stillness.

How did Woodland's own solitary retreat change her view?

Woodland describes a retreat she took the weekend before, and she is candid about what she learned from it. Her point is less about the grandeur of the setting than about the practical conditions that made it work. She says it wasn't simply the act of getting away that mattered, but about being in a setting that was most useful and conducive to practice. She stayed away from family, used a space that was underutilized, and found that being free of ordinary chores let her actually sit. She also acknowledges that it isn't always easy: she has learned to plan, because a retreat that lacks structure can be undone by its own loose ends.

Her advice for people who can't go far is equally grounded. She suggests, if you are not able to get away, at least setting aside some device-free time, even a few hours. Solitude can be built into a Sunday afternoon or an early morning. It doesn't need to be a grand gesture to be real.

Where to go from here

The session is a useful reminder that the older texts were not written for an audience of people with unlimited time. They were written by someone speaking to himself, admitting the pull of projects and the vanity of collecting teachings. If you want to take this further, the practical steps are simple. Set aside one device-free block this week, even half a day. Read Patrul Rinpoche's lines on solitude slowly, one at a time, and notice which of his complaints about your own mind sound familiar. When a project surfaces during sitting, try Woodland's approach: see it, don't complicate it, and let it go.

The Meditation Town Hall is offered free each week with Lama Surya Das, and Woodland's guest hosting is one of the ways the community's teaching circulates among senior students. Registration and dana donations are handled through dzogchen.org. Whether you join live or simply take the advice into your own week, the teaching asks for the same thing Patrul Rinpoche asked of himself: fewer plans, less noise, and a willingness to let the work already done be enough.