Conference on World Religions 1994 07 NY Queens

Author(s): Council for The Conference on World Religions
Publisher: USA Parliament of the Worlds Religions

Page 61

All Yearning is Yearning for God by Bill Davis, Vedanta Society of New York Based on a talk to be delivered at the Bengali Studies Conference, May 28, 1994
A child can feel incredible yearning for a thing, feeling that it will give him unimaginable bliss. I remember the magic of the bicycle parade. Everyone decorated their bikes with crepe paper and rode in formation. In the eyes of a first and second grader it was pure unadulterated magic and joy. You had to be at least in third grade to participate. Well there we were. I was finally in third grade and we were assembled to receive instructions about the parade. I was beside myself with excitement and joyful anticipation. I was finally going to take part in this magic. The teacher asked us to be quiet. Then she threatened that whoever didn't stop talking could not be in the parade. Somehow it didn't occur to me that her words could apply to me. I and I alone was sent from that assembly banished from the parade. This was the most keenly felt disappointment in my life. To be robbed of that bliss was to me a tragedy of the first magnitude. My mother begged the teacher to relent, but an example had to be set. I participated in fourth grade but by then the magic had drained away.
I remember also the breathless anticipation I felt at 6 at the prospect of opening my Christmas presents. You see I'm Jewish and had spent the first five years of my life in a Jewish section of Brooklyn. We had just moved to a Christian community in St. Louis and here my parents decided to celebrate Christmas. I was so excited I could not sleep. But no real presents could live up to the outlandish hopes I had for them. They were nice but not in the joyous league I had imagined. As we get older we gradually learn, as a hedge against disappointment, to be realistic and tone down our hopes to a level that is pallid in comparison to that of a child. Even our nighttime dreams become more prosaic. However, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna, two great Bengalis and great world citizens, have proclaimed that no hope is too outlandish when it comes to God. We need outlandish hopes. But as adults we've virtually lost the capacity to have them since we've been disappointed by every single thing that we've ever attained. I used to think that there was something wrong with me that I was always being disappointed by things reputed to be great. For instance, winning. I remember how badly I wanted to win the race when I ran track as a youth. What bitter disappointment I felt when I lost. However, when I did win there was a momentary elation but that was all. In a little while I felt disappointment that winning did so little for me. It didn't solve anything -- the elation hardly lasted at all.
The fact that we start life with unrealistically high hopes is a kind of proof for the existence of God -- for the existence of a god whose nature is bliss who we intuitively understand can be attained. We dismiss the hopes of childhood as childish but from where does this idea of incredible joy come? We experience thirst and to satisfy it there is water. We experience hunger and there is food to satisfy it. We experience lust and there is sexual gratification. Is the hunger for limitless joy alone without its suitable object?
The central idea of Vedanta is that there is only one existence and that is Brahman. That Brahman -- no one knows how or why -- has become all this, has become the world and each one of us. Since we are literally divine, since our inner nature is literally bliss -- although this is a fact that is hidden from our ordinary perception -- it would seem logical that we would feel a discontent in being estranged from the bliss that we must intuitively understand is our essential nature. Thus we crave that bliss and seek it in every way possible. Every yearning we feel for this or for that is actually that very yearning for divine bliss. Since our senses have been turned
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