Some kind of John Muir-esque situation at an abandoned Russian research station in the Far East. "This is the world atheists want". Or at least animal rights activists. Or no? :P
For *whatever strange reason* I asked the AI this question. The question (or the quest?) might be more interesting than the answer, frankly...
That’s a profound question, and the way you framed it (“contemplating God/the Divine in solitude + studying scripture, without ritual or institutions”) immediately brings to mind a few traditions that have, historically, specialized in that kind of solitary, contemplative pursuit.
Let me sketch some options across different religious landscapes, so you can see which resonates most with you:
Core idea: Direct, interior prayer of the heart (“the prayer of Jesus”), seeking union with God in stillness.
Why it fits: Hesychast monks often withdrew into solitude, practiced ceaseless prayer, and studied scripture (Bible + Patristics) quietly.
Rituals? Minimal — the essence is silent prayer, watchfulness, and scripture reading.
Institutional dependence? Historically monastic, but the practice can be adapted privately.
Downside: Orthodox tradition is tied to sacraments, but as a solitary discipline it can stand independently.
Core idea: Solitary remembrance (dhikr) of God and contemplation, sometimes in extended retreat.
Why it fits: Some Sufi lineages emphasize withdrawing from society and focusing on God alone; Qur’an study in solitude complements this.
Rituals? Dhikr can be as simple as silent invocation; you could practice it without institutional ties.
Downside: Traditionally requires guidance from a shaykh; going entirely solo could risk losing the depth of the tradition.
Core idea: Solitary contemplation of Brahman (the Absolute) and scriptural study (Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Shankara’s works).
Why it fits: Historically, many Advaitin monks renounced ritual and temple life to live as solitary forest ascetics focused purely on study and meditation.
Rituals? Optional; many Advaitins dismiss ritual as secondary.
Downside: It requires a tolerance for metaphysics rather than a personal-God focus (though you can approach Brahman as Saguna — personal).
Core idea: Solitary sitting meditation (zazen) and study of sutras or Zen texts.
Why it fits: Zen hermits in China and Japan withdrew to mountains, living almost entirely in contemplation and occasional scripture reading.
Rituals? Zen has rituals in monastery life, but hermit-Zen can be stripped down to pure sitting + reading.
Downside: No “God” in the theistic sense; the Divine is encountered as Emptiness or Buddha-Nature.
Think of people like Meister Eckhart, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, or modern solitary contemplatives.
Core idea: Silent contemplation of God beyond images, “unknowing” prayer, private scripture reading.
Why it fits: Entirely doable without institutional life.
Rituals? Can be reduced to none.
Downside: Some tension with official church structures if done totally outside them, but the spirit is very aligned.
In almost every religion, there is a “hermit” sub-tradition:
Hindu sannyasins
Christian desert fathers
Buddhist forest monks
Sufi dervishes in khalwa
All share: solitude, scripture, contemplation, little to no ritual.
If you want theistic, God-centered contemplation in solitude, the best fit would be:
Christian Hesychasm / apophatic mysticism (God as personal Beloved, deep silence, scripture focus).
Or Advaita Vedānta’s jñāna-yoga path (if you lean more toward philosophy/metaphysics and don’t mind a less personal God).
If you don’t mind non-theistic framing, Zen hermit practice is probably the purest model of what you describe.
👉 Question for you: Do you want your contemplation to focus on a personal God (someone you address), or on the impersonal Absolute (pure consciousness/Being)? That will narrow this down very sharply.
That’s a very fruitful refinement. Contemplation of a pantheist or panentheist kind — where creation itself is experienced as the Divine or as a direct manifestation of God — has deep roots in multiple traditions. It’s a middle ground between strict theism (“God as wholly other”) and impersonal nondualism (“Brahman = consciousness only”).
Here are some traditions that explicitly encourage solitary contemplation of the Divine as manifest in nature and creation:
Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart, and later poets like Thomas Traherne all saw creation as a transparent sign of God.
In contemplative solitude, scripture and nature are both “books” revealing God.
Eckhart especially: “Every creature is a word of God.”
Ritual is not necessary — one can simply read scripture, then contemplate creation as God’s presence.
Spinoza equated God with Nature (Deus sive Natura).
His “intellectual love of God” (amor Dei intellectualis) is basically contemplative study + recognition that all finite things are expressions of the one infinite substance.
No ritual, no institution needed: just reflection and study.
This influenced modern pantheist spirituality, often practiced in solitude.
In Advaita proper, the world is Maya (appearance), but in Kashmir Shaivism and Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita, creation is the body of God.
Thus, contemplating nature is literally contemplating Śiva/Viṣṇu.
Scriptures (Upanishads, Shaiva Agamas, Gita) often encourage solitary meditation on the universe as divine expression.
Ibn ʿArabi and poets like Rumi saw all creation as the self-disclosure (tajallī) of God.
Solitary contemplation of the natural world, poetry, and Qur’anic verses was seen as encountering God in every form.
Again, ritual not strictly necessary — the heart’s gaze is the real “practice.”
Thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (“Walden”) championed solitary immersion in nature as a direct way of experiencing the divine.
Inspired partly by Vedānta and Sufism.
Very close to pantheist contemplation without formal religion.
If you want explicit pantheism: Spinoza’s line, or modern Pantheist/Panentheist contemplative currents.
If you want personal-God-but-in-all-things: Sufism, Vishishtadvaita Vedānta, or Christian mysticism (Franciscan/Eckhartian).
If you want nondual but creation-affirming: Kashmir Shaivism is uniquely rich here — it affirms the Divine play (līlā) in every aspect of creation.
✅ Summary:
The richest traditions for pantheist-style solitary contemplation are:
Christian mysticism (Eckhart, Francis, Traherne)
Sufi mysticism (Ibn Arabi, Rumi)
Kashmir Shaivism / Vishishtadvaita Vedānta
Spinoza + Romantic/Transcendentalist lineage in philosophy/literature
All of them let you bypass ritual and institutions while immersing yourself in scripture + creation as direct experience of God.
Would you like me to suggest a “contemplative reading list” — scripture and texts (from different traditions) that explicitly teach this vision of God-in-creation, suitable for solitary study?
This is a somewhat bizarre article from Live Science, arguing that a recent and sharp increase in bear attacks in Japan can be attributed to a lack of acorns. Apparently, if teddy doesn´t get his favorite snack, he beheads Japanese fishermen instead and munches on their tender flesh?!
Not being a scientist specializing in the feeding frenzies of Nipponid ursids, I can´t really say, but surely there could be other explanations? Maybe somebody´s population has exploded lately (ursid or Mongoloid hominid), maybe some bears are improperly habituated, or maybe it´s just a co-incidence?
Or maybe, just maybe we see the beginnings of John Muir´s war...
John Muir said that if humans and bears would ever wage a war, he would feel obliged to support the bears...
Are all religions essentially the same? Do they all lead to the same goal? The YouTube channel Doug´s Dharma says "no", which is interesting, since Doug is a very modernist and secular Buddhist! On this point, however, he is something of an "exclusivist".
Doug traces the idea that all religions are really the same to 19th century American Transcendentalism, and regard it as an attempt to save religion from scientific criticism, by making its essence identical to ineffable mystical experiences, forever beyond the horizons of science or materialism. The main problem with this view is that religious practitioners themselves (including many mystics) disagree with it. They insist that their respective paths are indeed different. Also, the "universalist" or "perennialist" perspective isn´t really universal, but based on a hidden hierarchy, with Advaita Vedanta in top position. He and his source are not the only people to have noticed this!
As for Buddhism, the Buddha often polemicized with other teachers (often unnamed), whose paths in his opinion didn´t lead to the cessation of suffering. Despite all this, Doug believes that "universalism" can be a "skillful mean" to draw people closer to the truth, train your own compassion, avoid religious strife in society, and so on.
An interesting little piece.
"The Making of Buddhist Modernism" is a book by David L McMahan, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the United States. The book was published in 2008. It comes across as a hybrid between a historical overview, a scholarly analysis and the author´s own essay-like reflections.
The topic is the often radical re-interpretations of Buddhism which has gained traction in the Western world since the 19th century. While McMahan believes that modern Buddhism is a "hybrid" rather than a fake, many of the new takes on the Buddha´s message have remarkably little in common with the original formulations. McMahan´s book isn´t an all-out polemic: he does believe that there is often *some* connection between the themes found in modernist Buddhism and the "original" message. But even then, modernist Buddhism reframes the issues in a way typical of modernity, not tradition. Somewhat ironically, even traditional Buddhism can be "modern" in the sense that we sometimes see a "re-traditionalization" of previously modernist currents. The fact that Western adherents of Buddhism can become more traditional and live in their own enclaves is in itself a product of modern globalization and "postmodern" culture. But I´m getting ahead of the story...
The themes woven together to create Buddhist modernism are varied and complex, McMahan doing a valiant attempt to disentangle them. One important theme is the "Protestant" character of modern Buddhism. Instead of monkish tradition, the scriptures of the Pali canon are central. Empty ritualism (once again monopolized by monks) is replaced by individual connection to the Divine through meditation. Laymen and their associations become progressively more important than monks and "priests". Other elements are: intense self-scrutiny, Victorian moral codes, an emphasis on social and political action. It´s not difficult to see the similarities with the Reformation´s insistence on "sola Scriptura", or with Pietism and the Social Gospel. Modernist Buddhist in Ceylon even carried out "counter-mission" against actual (British) Protestants, in effect mimicking the organizational methods of their adversaries!
Two other sources for modernist Buddhism are really contradictory: scientism or Enlightenment rationalism on the other hand, and Romanticism on the other. Yet, this in itself shows the modern character of neo-Buddhist discourse, since the opposition between scientism and Romanticism is typical of Western modernity (or its more intellectual denizens). Connected to Romanticism are perennialism, Jungian psychoanalysis, Neo-Vedanta, Theosophy and the latter´s grand-children in the New Age. I was frankly surprised that many ideas about religion and spirituality that we take for granted are really reworked versions of the opinions of the German Romantics. (Hmmm...) Sometimes, the criss-crossing influences are almost ridiculous. Thus, Ralph Waldo Emerson and other American Transcendentalists believed themselves to be influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism (rather than simply repeating Romantic talking points). Later, modernist Buddhists would repeat *Emerson´s* views as an example of "Buddhism"!
Strictly speaking, there isn´t one monolithic Buddhist modernism, there are many. And while the initial impulse for reform in the Buddhist nations of Asia came from the West, it was quickly taken up by some Asians themselves. McMahan calls this phenomenon "strategic occidentalism" (a kind of strange mirror image of "orientalism"), with Sinhalese nationalist Anagarika Dharmapala in Ceylon as a prominent example. Dharmapala portrayed Buddhism as compatible with Darwinism, science and non-belief in a theistic god, while attacking *Christianity* as superstitious and backward. He even contrasted "Aryan" Buddhism with "Semitic" Christianity, apperently knowing exactly what strings to play when communicating with certain Westerners. Dharmapala was a modernist, but his modernism was nevertheless a different project from Western modernity - an important insight, since today we can clearly see that there are indeed many modernisms, not just one (the Western liberal one).
In contrast to the scientist-nationalist reinterpretation of Dharmapala stands the "occult science" interpretation of Buddhism advocated by Colonel Olcott of the Theosophical Society (whose "Buddhist Catechism" is still used in Sri Lanka - note the Protestant title!) or the perennialist-Romantic view of Zen brought to the United States by D T Suzuki from Japan. (It´s interesting to note that both Dharmapala and Suzuki were at one point members of the Theosophical Society.) What seems to have happened in many cases is that a modernist Buddhism emerging in Asia under Western influence (and Western pressure) was exported to the West by Asians, where Westerners became avid followers, perhaps without understanding that they were simply responding to *Western* modes of thought all along. As already noted, however, the Asians weren´t just passive envoys for this curious process. They wanted to counter Western colonialism and imperialism by selectively chosing modernizing themes to strengthen their own nations. Even the perennial Romantic Suzuki was really a kind of Japanese modernizer, supporting Japan in World War II. Asians still participate in various versions of modernist Buddhism, the current Dalai Lama being a good example.
While the author tries to be as charitable as possible towards the neo-Buddhistas, I must say that their doctrinal innovations are sometimes rather glaring. The most extreme is the Jung-inspired notion that the frequently bizarre deities of Tibetan Buddhism are really just psychological archetypes. The author points out that Tibetan Buddhism (which must look very superstitious to a believer in modern science and very "Catholic" to a modern Protestant) simply couldn´t make it in modern Western circles without this extremely radical (in my view, almost conceited) reinterpretation of "The Tibetan Book of the Dead". (At the same time, the Tibetan case is complicated by the fact that many Westerners *also* want Tibet to be a Romantic pre-modern haven, which ironically could be used by Tibetan Buddhists as an argument for *not* modernizing lest they lose the interest of affluent Westerners looking for noble savages.)
Other innovations include the notion that karma simply means "cause and effect" in the modern scientific sense (hint: it does not), or that dependent co-origination proves the deep ecological worldview. While the latter might actually be "true" in a sense, most forms of Buddhism consider the intricate web of the universe to be a samsaric yoke to be liberated from, not something to celebrate. (The author has managed to find one ancient Chinese form of Buddhism, Huayan, that´s actually "pro-nature", probably due to pre-Buddhist Chinese cultural influence.) As for Zen, it seems that essentially nothing you ever learned about this Sino-Japanese form of Buddhism from a modern Western book is true. Real Zen practice has nothing to do with "spontaneity", becoming enlightened while changing dipers or the art of motorcycle maintenance. (Isn´t Alan Watts the man, then?) Apparently, my favorite novel "Siddharta" by Herman Hesse has very little to do with Buddhism either, due to its perspective of individual seekership without any guru. The fact that most Buddhists in the United States tend to be politically liberal is surely another obvious difference with traditional Buddhism.
What way Buddhist modernism? The book was written 13 years ago. One trend that certainly is still going strong is mindfulness meditation. About five years ago, I ended up at a class for unemployed people in Sweden which featured...guess what...mindfulness. (We only did the most basic drills, as in "lay down on the floor and do nothing", so I didn´t even feel the right modernist-liberal vibes. What a pity.) There is also the persistent rumor that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election due to too much mindless mindfulness meditation. Perhaps the author is right when he, somewhat tongue in cheek, talks about the emergence of a "global folk Buddhism", comprising Buddhist or "Buddhist" techniques completely disconnected from the actual Buddhist religion. One also wonders how SJW struggle sessions and cancel culture will affect liberal modern Buddhism in the US, given the compassionate niceness of the latter, perhaps making them easy victims of the SJW juggernaut? The interface between climate protests and Buddhism might also be interesting to look into. The Dalai Lama recently had a video conference with Greta Thunberg. More ominously, a kind of Buddhist fundamentalism is still strong in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and perhaps other places...
It seems everything is in constant flux in samsara, even the dharma.
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