India was beautiful—intense, bustling, diverse, imbued with a different human touch. Yet, in the humid heat, I found myself thinking more and more often of blessed spring days back home. Of the coolness of early spring with willow trees beginning to bud. Of mid-spring, when fruit trees open their blossoms, and there’s a gentle breeze. Oh, that silence... Those flavors... Those familiar faces... Hey, those landscapes of home!
The fire was blazing in the stove. What a freezing spring! How nice was it in Auroville when you could take a stroll in the evening, not even thinking of a sweater, let alone a coat! Oh, those cardamom groves… The yellow fireflies in the crowns of palm trees… The Indian ease with people… Hey, those colorful birds, those fruits, scents, flower gardens!
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always longed for some hard to define state or place. Maybe not as a small infant—back then, as far as I can recall, I was completely immersed in the surrounding sensory wonder. But even as a child, I’d constantly imagine other places, situations, times around me. I longed for something that, at times, took the form of a specific object, situation, or feeling, yet it was more. A powerful longing for something in a misty inexplicableness, a craving from deep within.
What’s interesting is that once I obtained that specific thing that seemed to be the object of my desire, even though joy temporarily overshadowed it, the longing soon resurfaced in some form.
Many years ago I wrote a few lines that don’t make much literal sense, yet they capture this feeling in some way. At least for me. I don’t know if they mean anything to anyone else.
Horizon
Your name’s being called one more time
by pictures from dizzying far,
seeing that in infinite seas
you’ll have to go search after all.
They’re swimming there, ay, so remote
perhaps achievable to reach.
Perhaps they will find their way
into your hands on the beach.
Perhaps those people we don’t particularly like—because they rev up their brushcutters at six o’clock on Sunday morning or are fond of bombing refugee camps—are driven by similar feelings. It’s possible that they get too stuck in a specific hunger while not being overly sensitive to start with. But fundamentally, they, too, are driven by a desire for some faraway state.
We don’t often think about the founding myth of modern civilization — the loss of paradise. We ate from the tree of knowledge, relinquished bliss, removed ourselves from the natural order of things, and began constructing—well, not exactly shopping malls at first, but that became a direct consequence. The story says that we were ‘expelled’ from paradise. Were we really driven out, or was it us who decided to leave the Garden of Eden? It doesn’t appear a necessity; we had lived well in the community of beings for millions of years. Even today, there are a few tribes deep in the Amazon, or on the Sentinel Islands, who haven’t benefited from the blessings of civilization; there’s no doubt in my mind that they are healthier, more vibrant, and happier than we are.
Could it be that they also long to be somewhere else?
“Beyond the beyond.” Graffiti in rural Hungary.
Perhaps it’s paradise we long to return to. Perhaps it’s the drop longing to return to the ocean. Perhaps the two are the same. In any case, I believe that the wanderings of us, vagabonds don’t stem merely out of curiosity or a thirst for adventure. What might lie beyond the next hill? And beyond the one after that? We’re searching for something—some state of being, some kind of unity—that our cells seem to remember. Something that once existed. Or did we just wish it had? The midlife crisis is just that—losing something you never had.
This last point touches on the bitter side of longing, but let’s include it here, because it might help us understand the picture. Would it be desirable to reach the realm of the devas? To live for a very, very long time in wondrous beauty and happiness? Would you try it? I would. And I suspect that possibly, after a while, I’d start longing for something else.
Does this mystery only apply to human existence? We don’t know where we came from, what all this radiance around us is, or where we’re going. I’d be curious to know how chickadees or walnut trees experience this question. Even though they don’t think, they’re still very much aware—of that I have no doubt.
The lost paradise… Will we ever find it? In my language tomatoes were originally called paradise apples, later shortened to paradises. Thus ‘paradise’ and ‘tomato’ are the same word: paradicsom. No kidding. Today I’m going go to my godfather to pick up some paradicsom plants.