When I was young I was longing for the life experiences I thought were awaiting me in the future. Now, being over fifty, I know that experiences awaited me - but not the ones I expected. Some of them are better, some are worse than I expected. So, I cannot say that life fulfilled my longing, but it relieved me of a great burden. My burden was a feeling that I was cheated and treated unjustly by life.

Best years of our life

Until ten years ago I was somehow feeling that I was preparing myself for the great days in life to come, for the bright future that was still to come. Then one day, all of a sudden, I felt that the best days of my life were not in front of me, awaiting me in the future, but behind, already in the past. I read about the same experience, described by the French writer Marcel Proust, who died in 1922. Somehow, we both have shared this feeling of being cheated by life -it has put something before us as a bait, and then, before we could reach the bait, it disappeared. I felt that this was not fair - as if life "promised" me something, but did not keep the promise.

Winner or loser?

I seem to have passed the prime of life empty-handed, with a feeling of a loser. I was feeling that life has treated me unjustly -that I did my best, but was not rewarded for the effort.
Then, I remembered a quotation from K'uran , the holy Muslim book, which says:
I swear by time
And by the unreliable destiny
That man is always at loss
And so it is until the end of time. (sura 103)
After several years I considered another way of reasoning. Maybe life is not to blame. I thought that life promised me something in exchange for my promise to work hard, and be "a good boy." Perhaps my longing projected some hopes for the future that could not be fulfilled. When time forced me to see that these shall not be fulfilled, I felt cheated, and I had to give up my hopes. Now, my hopes were not any more part of future expectation, but part of a remembered past, my hopes became my memories.
Later, I changed the perspective, following my own advice, that I gave to a young man, several years ago. This is what he said: "I always thought that my life would have meaning if I could go toward a single goal, like an arrow shot toward its target. But somehow I cannot see what should be that target, and when I catch a glimpse of a possible goal, myriad of difficulties arise in front. Therefore, I fell confused and without direction."
I gave him an answer by example. Being an archer, one shiny day I took him to a beautiful field where I never practiced archery. I brought the target and said: "See, no matter how good an archer, he can shoot more or less close to the center. In many cases he will miss it. Now, consider a different practice -and I took an arrow, pulled the bow and shot the arrow aimlessly up in the air. After a big free flight it fell down and struck between the grass blades. I said: ''See, if you shoot like this - just for the love of flying -you always hit the center, because the center is on the spot where the arrow falls. So, maybe you should consider giving your life a more free course, instead of compulsively searching for the target, sticking to one option, and a straight trajectory."
I am not sure was this, in his case, a good advice, because I know that some people need an opposite advice -they lead a completely aimless life, and would really benefit from searching and finding the target that would give them direction, and stediness. Anyway, this proved to be a good advice for me. I do not feel any more cheated by life, nor do I feel that life did me wrong. For someone maybe this is ''nothing special", but I feel much better than I felt before.

Burden and ease

During life-time our longing takes different courses and turns.
When we are young, we long to separate, to get away from the supervision of parents, and start a life of our own. However, in many cases this may be contrary to our parents' wish, who long to keep us more close to them. Sometimes these contrary longings clash, sometimes they find a happy compromise. But in many cases there is much suffering involved on both sides. Later, when you have your own children, you change sides - now you wish to keep them more close to your supervision, but they oppose, and develope lives contrary to your expectations and wishes. Also, you can, sometimes, be caught in-between your parents, and your children, especially when -both sides at the same time - are expecting support from you. That is why many people go through life (as if) carrying a burden, or a "cross".
In Christianity there is a famous dictum of Jesus Christ: "And whoever does not accept his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me" (Bible, Matthew, 10: 38).
In Ch'an Buddhism there is a story related with Pu-tai (whose biography appears in Ch'uan-teng Lu, fasc. 27), and who lived during the T'ang Dynasty (died in 916). He is popularly known now as Laughing Buddha, or Happy Chinaman. It is said that he always went around carrying a huge bag -a bottomless source of benevolence, full of gifts for children.
Once a Ch'an master stopped him and asked him :
- What is the meaning (the essence) of Ch'an?
Pu-tai immediately stoped and plopped his sack down on the ground. Master understood this as his answer ("The essence of Ch'an is to give you relief ffrom your burden"), and asked further:
- What is the actualization (the function) of Ch'an.
At once Pu-tai swung the sack over his shoulder and continued on his way.
Ha! - thought the master - this means that once you have the essence you return to daily life again and take over the ussual burden, but with new mind!
Anyway, no matter do we consider our burden - (a) as a cross that we have to carry because of our past sins, and as a ticket for our future salvation, or (b) as a heavy sack of benevolence towards others - it seems to be related with being human. Every person shares a certain lot (burden).
Trying to get rid of all burden, and to turn everyone and everything into a support for oneself, turns a man into a monster. However, such monsters are not rare in human kind, although they have various success and careers -some manage to manipulate nations, or corporations, while some have power only over several persons.
For virtuous people relationship with such men is a particular problem, and the subject is dealt with beautifully in Chuang Tzu, ch. IV (''In the World of Men"): "You may go and play in his bird cage... If he listens, then sing; if not, keep still."

Longing for relationship and intimacy

In young age, persons also feel a general longing (without a definite goal, or object), longing for experiences, and relationships. Perhaps this longing comes from the same source as the longing of the chick to get out of the egg, or of the butterfly to free itself of the cocoon.
This longing is found in a poem recorded by Meng Ch'i, in his Pen-shih shih /Original Incidents of the Poems/, written during the T'ang dynasty. The lonely Palace maiden was longing for a close relationship. So, she inscribed a poem on a tree leaf, letting it down a flowing stream, to drift outside the palace walls. The poem was as follows:
Once I entered the palace depths.
The spring of life was closed for me forever.
Now, I entrust my poem to a strip of leaf,
Hoping it will reach a man of feeling.
However, a person may long for a relationship even if not closed inside a palace. Sometimes persons have a feeling that life itself is like a palace with high walls, and they feel that they are closed in life -closed within existing relationships, that are without warmth and tenderness, empty and cold.
The French painter Van Gogh /19th cent./, wrote to his brother: "Some people have a big fire-place in their souls, but no one ever approaches it to warm up; passers-by just notice some smoke above the chimney and go their way without stopping." He was fighting bravely against loneliness and feeling of abandonment. At the end, he was overwhelmed by loneliness, and committed suicide, unable to keep his sanity.
It does not matter does one feel like a maiden closed in a palace, like a butterfly in a silk cocoon, or like a isolated fire-place. Basically, it is the same longing -to reach out for a fruitfull relationship.
The initial longing is a valuable energy in human beings and whole life. By itself, it is only a general potential -thirst for life, wish to experience and go through life. It can be invested in evil -those who destroy and kill give us examples for that. It can be invested in virtue, and inspire humans to find out things, to undertake arduous enterprises and hardships in order to reach lofty goals.
It can remain in its crude form -as will for power, property, or fame -or it can be sublimed for higher aspirations. It can take various courses even in the same person, in which case the person is contradictory - with opposite traits.
However, most people manage to compromise, developing a dominant guiding line in their life. In modern times, it usually centers round their profession. For most people profession is a strong identification center, and when they have to give it up and retire, this seems hard, or impossible.

Mask and face

In various traditions there is a story of a man who wanted to hide his identity behind a mask. He wore a mask for many years, Finally, one day he decided to get rid of it and to appear again with his original face, but it was impossible -the mask has become his face.
Most often, we identify with a certain profession. After many years, when we should retire, we are not willing to do that, because we feel we do not have any other identity. Our personality has been spent up in our profession. However, for most people, usually in late age, but sometimes before /if they change the profession/, it is necessary to find a new center of identity.
"From Three Dynasties on down, everyone in the world has altered his inborn nature because of some thing. The petty man? -he will risk death for the sake of profit. The knight? -he will risk it for the sake of fame. The high official? -he will risk it for family; the sage' -he will risk it for the world. All these various men go about the business in a different way, and are tagged differently when it comes to fame and reputation; but in blighting their inborn nature, and risking their lives for something, they are the same" /Chuang Tzu, ch. 8/

Longing for reunion

We can see that longing undergoes some change during life. When one is young, his longing is directed towards the future, towards the expected experiences and things of life: love, offspring, material, or spiritual attainments. In old age one may have /or may not have/ a feeling that he has attained or realized the goals of his youthful longing. In most cases his longing makes a turn in the deep seat of consciousness. It no longer faces the future, but mostly the past -he remembers his past experiences and attainments, with a longing for the "good old times'!
The most rare kind are those who always seem "to be young at heart" (a refrain in a tune, sung long time ago by Frank Sinatra). They -even in old age -seem to have a childlike enthusiasm, readiness to forget the old pain, and injustice, to start anew every day without resentment, as if nothing bad ever happened. They always seem to consider the world afresh, as a vast screen for new expectations, a great store of opportunities.
One type of longing is most common -to fulfill some particular desire related with a definite object, or situation. This longing has two principal forms. It can be a longing for a particular relationship, that is either expected to happen, or to continue. Or it can be a longing for something lost, actually, a wish for reunion. When we search through poetry, it seem that we find more examples for the second type of longing - wish for reunion.
The Chinese poet Li Shang-yin /812 -858/, from T'ang dynasty, left in his poems fine examples of longing:
Coming was an empty promise, you have gone and left no footprint.
The moonlight slants above the roof, already the fifth watch sounds.
Dreams of remote partings, cries which cannot summon.
Hurrying to finish the letter, ink which will not thicken.
The light of the candle half encloses kingfishers threaded in gold,
The smell of musk comes faintly through embroidered water lilies.
Young Liu complained that Fairy Hill is far.
Past Fairy Hill, range above range, ten thousand mountains rise.
/"Seven love poems", poem 5/

With Li Po /or Li Bai, 691 -762/, from T'ang dynasty. we find examples of longing for reunion, in his poem "To someone far away".
When she was here
pretty darling
flowers filled the hall.
Now she's gone
pretty darling
left her bed behind.
On her bed
the embroidered coverlet
rolled up
never slept in again.
Three years to the day
still keeps
the scent of her.

Fragrance never lost
pretty darling
never came back.

Longing and patience

In ancient Greece the poetess Sappho wrote: "I know that in this world man cannot have the best, yet to pray for a part of what was once shared, is better than to forget it."
In myth related with Orpheus we find a beautiful story how longing -being always more or less impatient -can wreck an opportunity for reunion.
-Orpheus was in love with Eurydice, but one day she died of a snake bite. With his lamenting songs Orpheus touched Pluto, the terrible Lord of the Underworld. He permitted him to lead Eurydice back to the world of living, but under one condition. It was stipulated that Orpheus must not look back to see whether Eurydice really follows him (on the upward journey), until he is completely beyond the confines of the Underworld. But the impatience and longing were too strong for Orpheus. He looked back too soon, only to see Eurydice, with a desperate glance, being drawn back again - and thus he lost her forever.
After that he was longing for Eurydice, but this was longing for something with no hope of retrieving.
Longing for something that will never be again, that is definitely out of reach, is a particular subject of poetry; it causes hopelessness, which is hard to bear.
In an old Chinese tune from Sung dynasty it is said:
When will the last flower fall, the last moon fade?
So many sorrows lie behind.
Again last night the east wind filled my room.
O gaze not on the lost kingdom under this bright moon.

Still in her light, my palace gleams as jade
Only from bright cheeks beauty dies.
To-know the sum of human suffering
Look at this river rolling eastward in the spring.
/''The Beautiful Lady Yu"/

In many cases longing for the irretrievable is related with the death of the beloved. We find this in a tune by Su Shih /1037 -1101/, from Sung dynasty:
For ten years the living and the dead have been severed;
Though not thinking of you,
Naturally I cannot forget.
Your lonely grave is a thousand miles away,
Nowhere to tell my grief.
Even if we could meet, you would not recognize me;
My face is all covered with dust,
The hair at my temples shows frosty.
/"The Charms of Nien-nu"/

Longing for youth

But longing for something (usually) irretrievable is not the last mode of longing. Among irretrievable objects, most irretrievable is one's youth.
In certain periods of life longing seems to tire of itself, and one is not capable to feel with previous freshness and intensity. There is lack of enthusiasm, versatility, readiness to feel and run after experience. Sometimes this is related with aging, but not necessarily.
When that happens one may feel a longing for previous freshness and intensity; usually this is "longing for youth" The Serbian writer Bora Stankovic /1876-1928/ was fascinated by this sentiment. In his play Koshtana, the main character, an aged man laments:
"Nothing is wrong with me, I am healthy, but I suffer. I suffer of myself, because I am alive. /.../ Why has my heart withered, my strength dispersed, and I am aged... Do you know what is the black-sorrow-of-the-hearth (Turkish: kara-sevdah)? That is my sickness. Being of old age, but still feeling the lust for life... still craving for beauty and tenderness..."
This is a particular twist of longing -a person feels weary, but part of the impulse is still present, and there is a longing for former days and ways, when craving seemed related with something possible.

Being tired of life

When the French writer Jean-Paul Sartre /1905-1980/ wrote his novel Nausea he was thirty, but it was the voice of a tired man.
Bloomings, blossomings everywhere, my ears were buzzing with existence...'But why' I thought, 'why so many existences, since they all resemble one another?' /.../ They did not want to exist, only they could not help it; that was the point. /.../ Tired and old, they went on existing... simply because they were too weak to die... Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. /.../ But no necessary being can explain existence: contingency is not an illusion... it is absolute, and consequently perfect gratuitousness /Nausea, ch. "Six o'clock. in the evening"/.
"Man is a useless passion" - concludes Sartre at the end of ch. 4 in Being and Nothingness.
This tiredness sometimes arises even in hearts of young men and women. It may be a pre-sentiment of weariness, and despondency that people feel with more justification when they are hit by some personal or collective catastrophy, or when they are tired of life in old age. We can also find this mood in Indian Buddhism:
There is no fire like passion, no capturer like hartred,
There is no net like delusion, no torrent like craving.
/Dhammapada, 2:3/

The value of the useless

Is it the same thought, as in Sartre -is it useless to flourish? Are our passion and our longing useless, and absurd? Have we been cheated by life and becoming? Is our longing just a cunning invention of nature to make us take over and carry our crosses, and sacks for decades, before we tire up, or realize the uselessness? And the Gods join to persuade us that it is our holy duty to do so?
Taoism and Buddhism go beyond the point where Sartre stops. Lao Tzu said:
See, all things howsoever they flourish
Return from the root from which they grew.
But he adds: This return to the root is called Quietness;
Quietness is called submission to Fate;
What has submitted to Fate has become part of the always-so
To know the always-so is to be Illumined;
Not to know it, means to go blindly to disaster /Ch. 16/.
At the very end of ch. 4 in Chuang Tzu we find a famous remark: "All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless." Perhaps old Rome -beside silk and china-ware -imported from old China some wisdom as well, and Publius Ovidius Naso /43 B.C.-18 A.D./, says in his Ex Ponto /II,7.47/: "Nothing is so usefull as arts that are of no use" /Magis utile nil est artibus bisque nil utilitatis habent/.
So far, three answers seem possible, and I think that all are legitimate; neither can be prescribed as exclusive and valid for everyone. It is possible to affirm the will to flourish, again and again, as Nietzsche would say: "Let it be -once again" Or to say with Sartre: "No more -I find it useless and absurd" Or to agree with Buddhism and look for release from the wheel of becoming and longing.

Longing for release

With the third, longing seems to come to its final goal and form -longing for release /from longing/. Is it possible for longing to go beyond itself, and reach that peace of mind that liberates from longing? This is -at the same time -most simple, and most complex.
In Hsin-hsin Ming, a Ch'an text from the eight century, we find the following lines with a possible answer.
The best way is not difficult
It only excludes picking and choosing
Once you stop loving and hating
It will enlighten itself.

To set longing against loathing
Makes the mind sick.
Not knowing the deep meaning /of the Way/
It is useless to quiet thoughts.

If the mind does not discriminate
All things are of one suchness.
In the deep essence of one suchness
Resolutely neglect conditions.

When all things are held as even
You return again to spontaneity.
Put an end to the cause
And nothing can be compared.

One is all
All is one -
Merely with such ability
Worry not for finality.
/Stanzas 1,3,24,25,35/
What is the real difficulty? If you want to go beyond longing - and not only give it up in despair and/or unsatisfied thirst, which will lead you to a new birth, repeating the story all over - release should not be an object of your longing.

Bibliography

- Anthology of Chinese literature /1965/, ed.by C. Birch, Penguin
- Auden, W.H. /1976/: The Portable Greek Reader, New York, Viking
- The Complete Yorks of Chuang Tzu, /1968/, trans. by B. Watson, New York.
Columbia Un. Press
- Evans, B. /1972/: Dictionary of Mythology, New York, Laurel
- Levy, H.S. /1968/: "The Original Incidents of the Poems", Sinologica,
Vol. X, No 1, Basel, Switzerland,/pp 1-51/
- Pajin, D. /1985/: "On Faith in Mind -Translation and Analysis of the Hsin-hsin Ming", Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. XXVI, No.2, Univer. of Hong Kong /pp.-776-288/
- Sartre, J-P. /1965/: Nausea, Penguin
- Sartre, J-P. /1969/: Being and Nothingness, London, Methuen
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Allen & Unwin.