longing

🌓 Sri Ramakrishna (to the devotees): “God’s will is both in worldliness and freedom. It is He, who has kept you unconscious in worldly life. And again, at His will, when He calls you, you will be liberated.

The child has gone out to play – its mother will call at meal-time.

He will give you the company of sadhus, when he wants to grant you Liberation. And He will also give you the yearning to attain Him”.

A neighbour: “Sir, what kind of yearning?”

Sri Ramakrishna: “The yearning that you feel, when you lose a job – the way you go from office to office every day to enquire: “Sir, is there a vacancy?”

Yearning brings restlessness: how can I attain God?

When a dandy twirls his mustache up on the sides, sits cross-legged, and chews betel-leaf nonchalantly, he can’t attain God”.

Neighbour: “Can you develop such longing by keeping the company of holy people?”

Sri Ramakrishna: “Yes, you can. But a hypocrite can’t attain such yearning. A kamandalu (a sannyasin’s water pot made of bitter gourd) is with the sadhu all the time that he is visiting the four centres of pilgrimage, but it remains as bitter as it was before”.

Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna

("Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita" word to word translation by Sri Dharm Pal Gupta, V5, Section VI, Ch. I, “Sri Ramakrishna at Balaram’s and Adhar’s houses in Calcutta”, 2 June, 1883)