“As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My being thirsts for God, the living God. When can I go and see the face of God?” (Ps. 42:2-3, NAB)
Through this Psalm, and others like it, we see an articulation of the longing we experience in our own hearts for God. This is a longing that we know nothing in this world can satisfy. Yet, this longing is not only known by those who believe in God. It is also expressed by non-believers, even if they do not recognize that it is a call to Him. It is as if all experience the question of longing, but propose different answers to this question.
The Grasping Mind
I was intrigued to find this unquenchable thirst articulated outside of the Christian community when taking a class about Zen Buddhism. In this class, I read about how human beings have a “craving” that nothing in the world can satisfy. This craving is recognized as the source of suffering, because as we crave we “grasp” onto things of this world that do not satisfy. We deceive ourselves into believing that we may satisfy this craving and instead cause ourselves to persist in suffering. In the class, we read a chapter from Zen Questions: Zazen, Dogen, and the Spirit of Creative Living, in which Taigen Dan Leighton describes this craving as the feeling that “something is missing.” He writes:
“This something missing is exactly our life problem, our sadness and frustration. In Zen practice we sit facing this reality that something is missing, as Dharma fills our mind. The problem with consumerism is that it attempts to fill this ‘something is missing’ with new toys, to distract us from our own fears, sadness, and frustrations, and thus to take us away from our life.”
He goes on to explain that Buddhism does not seek to stop being aware of this “something is missing,” but rather to see it and let it go, finding contentment in the simple things of life: “In consumerism we fill our life up with things that actually do not touch the reality of our lives. In Buddhism we do not need to possess everything. We can recall Ryokan’s happiness and enjoy the moon. We need not conquer the moon.”
As Leighton suggests, this idea of overcoming a deluded sense of desire is not confined to Zen Buddhism, but extends to Buddhism in general. This is evidenced by the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism which express that suffering exists, suffering is due to attachment, suffering can be overcome, and that the way to overcome suffering is through the practice of Buddhism and the achievement of Nirvana. The Dalai Lama, in an address entitled Four Noble Truths, as translated into English by Alexander Berzin, explains the reasoning behind these truths by analyzing the “mind that grasps” and how it should be handled:
“[W]hen you investigate to see whether the mind that grasps at things as inherently findable is correct or not, you find that it is not correct, that it is distorted—you cannot actually find the objects at which it grasps. Since this mind is deceived by its object it has to be eliminated.”
In other words, the answer proposed for the question of desire is that we are deceived and must overcome our self-deception. The answer to desire then is “nothing,” in a very complete and purposeful sense.
Rebellious Despair
I was further intrigued to find this experience of longing answered in another way. An atheist acquaintance recommended that I read some of the Absurdist, Albert Camus’ work. In his essay, “An Absurd Reasoning,” Camus explains that each man feels a “longing for happiness and for reason.” He further explains, just as the Buddhists did, that this longing cannot be satisfied by the world. However, while the Four Noble Truths of Buddhist teaching hold that this desire is due to our grasping attachment and that it must be overcome, namely that we are deceiving ourselves but that we may be liberated, Camus concludes that it is not our thinking, but the world that is at fault. He explains Absurdism: “The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
Camus further proposes, like Leighton, that humans should not try to distract themselves from this reality of “something is missing.” But his proposal is darker than Leighton’s:
“The absurd man thus catches sight of a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given, and beyond which all is collapse and nothingness. He can then decide to accept such a universe and draw from it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation.”
Where Buddhism proposes peace in achieving nothingness and contentment with reality, Absurdism proposes stubborn despair and happiness in rebellious persistence. These answers are different, but have something in common: both hold that this deep longing that all human beings have is senseless.
Culture of Death
These philosophies are reflected in a culture devoid of hope. While many in the West may not specifically subscribe to Buddhism or Absurdism, many subscribe to what Blessed John Paul II calls a Culture of Death. This culture, while smothered by consumerism and hedonism, holds at its core the common thread between Buddhism and Absurdism: that our deep longing is senseless because it has no object.
The dismissal of the object of our desire, that is the fulfillment that can only be found in God, has the effect of keeping us from being fulfilled and, instead, embracing either a lukewarm nothingness or a burning despair. It further results in the devaluing of human life. It is in this environment that we are met with rising “life” issues in the political arena. We are left questioning not only how to live valuable lives, but whether lives have value.
New Evangelization
In the face of this growing trend and addressing both the question of longing and the question of the value of human life, Blessed John Paul II offered an entreaty in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. He made this entreaty in 1995, but it is still very much relevant today, nearly two decades later:
“The present Encyclical, the fruit of the cooperation of the Episcopate of every country of the world, is therefore meant to be a precise and vigorous reaffirmation of the value of human life and its inviolability, and at the same time a pressing appeal addressed to each and every person, in the name of God: respect, protect, love and serve life, every human life! Only in this direction will you find justice, development, true freedom, peace and happiness!”
This new evangelization is an answer to the call of every human heart, especially to the broken hearts in our own time and culture. It is an answer to those who have either forgotten or overlooked the key message of Blessed John Paul II’s entreaty. It is the same key presented by C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Lewis’ proposal holds the unstated understanding that human life is valuable, while proposing that our desires make sense.
Lewis’ explanation follows a common understanding that if people are thirsty, there is something that they can drink to satisfy the thirst; if people are hungry, there is something they can eat to satisfy the hunger. This does not mean that there will always be water or food available to people, but it does mean that it is reasonable to suppose such sustenance exists. This is why people are reasonable to seek out food and drink to satisfy these natural desires. Why should it be any less reasonable that our greatest longing, which cannot be satisfied in this world, can be satisfied by God? Why would there be a locked door without a key or a key without a lock?
My experience seeing this common longing expressed by non-believers and answered in unsatisfying ways has made me more aware of the need for the evangelization presented by both Blessed John Paul II and C. S. Lewis. For Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, presented a similar plea in response to this need:
“I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence . . . the secret that we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.”
Everyone knows this question of desire. It is the universal longing of human hearts to be filled by God. Yet, in a culture darkening with despair that such a desire cannot be satisfied, it is up to the members of Christ’s Body to spread the Good News that life does have value and that our desire does make sense! It is up to Christians to accept God’s love into our hearts and allow it to be poured out to a world that desperately needs to know that love is real.