Ajahn Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu

If there is ego in the mind, then there cannot be any lasting or real solitude.

But if the mind is void of ego,

Even if we go and sit in the middle of the theatre or stand on a busy street corner, the mind will have solitude.

To get rid of the ego that is in the mind, any ego that arises in the mind, to get rid of it is to experience solitude immediately.

One doesn't have to go up in the mountains and live like a hermit or hang around funeral grounds or anything like that.

To find real solitude, what one has to do is to drop ego, to toss the ego out of the mind.

And then wherever one is, whatever one is doing, there immediately is Viveka.

If you are successful in practicing, in developing Samadhi, which leads to Vipassana insight, through your practice of mindfulness, if you are successful in this,

then the whole world will be a place of solitude and peace for you.

In terms of insight, Vipassana, once the mind is really stable and clear, and then we can see things as they genuinely are,

then we no longer see things through the illusion of positive and negative.

And then the mind gets out of this trap, this illusion of positive and negative.

And when the mind can see things in this way, then the positive and negative have no power over this.

This has a special name in the Pali language.

It is called Atamahita, which means that nothing at all can do anything to the mind.

When nothing can cook up the mind.

When nothing can produce results in the mind.

When nothing can make the mind be like this or like that.

When the mind is in this state, which we can call unconcoctability.

Nothing can mess with it.