It seems to me the qualities of group and individual practice are quite different, and as I've recently been, every month or so, going back and forth between daily practices that are conducted by myself and daily practices with another person, these different qualities have become more apparent, and they seem to complement each other. Group practice emphasizes a certain formality and its merits are a diligence and explicitness regarding the ritual performance, but it necessarily needs the merits of a solitary practice, absorption and concentration, to work as well. Likewise, a solitary practice that is too loose or foggy only benefits from time spent doing practice with others.
It makes me think of something I heard a while back, that some monks would take retreat the second half of the lunar month, when the moon is waning, and engage in the teachings and monastic rituals in the first half while the moon is waxing. To let the Dharma into one's life after all is an unpredictable (and perhaps inconstant?) affair and sometimes, despite everything we do, it isn't there at all. Like a tide receding, or pushing forward, the Dharma seems to come and go in cycles, filling us up with wisdom, insight and morality, and then emptying us later, and leaving us with a practice and shell that seem curious vestiges of some forgotten but quaint meaning.
Likewise, a practice and life develop by alternating time spent with others and time spent alone, going over the basic points of our practice again and again, until we cannot mistake the life-embodied Dharma's absolute certainty.
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