Question: “how should one deal with loneliness from a buddhist perspective?”
Well, I always tell myself to just suck it up and deal with it, that usually helps a bit :p
There’s really no such thing as loneliness if we can really sit down and think about it. In Buddhism, we learn that everything is interconnected, everything is dependent on something else. For an apple to grow it needs soil, water, sun, air, and the tree to grow big and nurtured enough to grow the apple. For us to have the apple, we need everything that makes up the apple, then we need people to grow the apple, pick the apple, transport it to the store, and then all the means and abilities in between for us to get to the store and purchase that apple.
Everything around us works in the same way; computers, books, pens, walls, chairs, everything – it all needs a helping hand and sometimes human help. So we’re surrounded by things and people all the time. We are always in a crowd!
Sometimes we think we need to be surrounded by people, friends and family to be happy, to not be lonely. Sometimes all that makes us even more lonely. Loneliness, like jealousy or anger, is a mental formation; it is something that we create.
Loneliness can seem unpleasant or a feeling that something is wrong with us or others, but we can always practice meditation to help assuage those concerns. When we meditate on ourselves, most of the time we can determine or pin-point certain feelings or perceptions we have and either eliminate them or change them. It also helps discover ourselves, to look deeply within us, and we can end up finding out something about ourselves that we never knew!
Smile and be well!