I went to Panditarama in Yangon during the winter of the Millennium. There I saw a statue of the Buddha in a mudra, a posture, I had not seen before. His right hand was pointing to his heart. I asked what the meaning was and I was told it symbolised the sadness the Buddha felt at the loss of his two chief disciples, Sariputta and Mogallana. How could the Buddha feel sad? After all shouldn't the virtue of total acceptance of the way things are, prevent such a ‘reaction'.
I know of an elderly lady who could not stop grieving the loss of her son who had died five years before. It was suggested she might be confusing grief with sorrow. By sorrow is meant the sadness one feels at another's misfortune and grief refers to the loss of someone we are attached to. It can be complicated with anger, guilt and remorse, all dependent on the particulars of the situation.
When someone we love dearly leaves us or dies, it leaves an open wound in the heart. Someone whom we depended on to bring us comfort in sadness and joy in success was gone. And so the happiness we felt when we did the same for them. But this comfort and joy and happiness, though quite natural can become dependencies. And that's what we mean by attachment. Now they have gone we lose on two counts and that loss we experience as grief.
If then the amount of grief is believed to be the measure of our love, every time the lady’s grief lessened, she would mistakenly feel her love for her son was also lessening. Guilt would arise and so grief would have to be pumped back up. Because of this misunderstanding her grief would never end. She was asked if her son would be happy to know of her suffering. Would he not want her to accept the situation and to wish him well. She believed in an afterlife, so it was suggested she perform a ritual such as writing him a letter expressing her sorrow at his passing, but that she was ready to accept the situation and wish him well on his onward journey. And then perhaps to read it out at his grave. And then to dispose of the letter in a way that brought closure. Even within a week her grief had gone and she was happy when she remembered the relationship she had with her son.
The Buddha expressed his sorrow at the loss of Sariputta and Maha Moggallana, ‘This assembly, O bhikkhus, appears indeed empty to me, now that Sariputta and Maha Moggallana have passed away.’ But he did not grieve for them. He was expressing his sadness for the Sangha that the two most important teachers had died and for himself at the loss of two close members. (It is reported that Mogallana was murdered by another group of mendicants since he was converting some of their members.)
There is also the occasion when at the end of his days he gave his ‘elephant look’ i.e turning his full body to look at Vesali and remarked to Ananda that this would be the last time he would see Vesali. There is a suggestion of sadness.
What then might sorrow be? When we bring to mind the enormous and growing suffering in the world caused by ideological wars, the climate crisis bearing down upon us, the destruction of nature and disappearance of species, there may arise all sorts of mental states from despair, and in spite of despair a daring to hope, anger and the will to action only to find the crushing acceptance of impotence over the bottomless greed and lust for power of overwhelming vested interests. Yet there may come a time, exhausted, we rest in the solitude of sorrow. For there within that profound sadness there comes the salve of total acceptance. This is the way it is! This is what it is! After all this is the world of Samsara, a swirl of consciousnesses driven by greed, hatred and fake identities. If we stay there in silence long enough within this inner composure, we will find an unexpected solace and a subtle joy arising and a desire to re-engage. For true sorrow does not drown in pitying sadness, but is a catalyst for compassion and cannot remain passive. It demands we move back into the suffering world. And when we do, we find ourselves on firmer ground, no longer wearied by despair, wishful hoping, anger, grief and powerlessness.
Knowing this distinction, makes grief a little easier to distinguish from sorrow. For the grief we feel will equal the measure of attachment. In our vipassana practice, we allow that grief to manifest, but we do not allow the mind to fantasise. We simply sit within the feeling allowing it to discharge and we may find ourselves crying. Grief is a very complex state and may include times of anger, fear and depression. We have to embrace all these mental states with a sense of care and patiently bear them till they exhaust themselves... and they will.
Francis Wells: The Wild Edge of Sorrow – investigates the ‘Five Gates of Grief' and the role of ritual.
Symphony of Sorrow by Henryk Górecki (Polish composer) I find this difficult to listen to. The sorrow is intense.
Górecki's most popular piece is his
Third Symphony, also known as the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"
(Symfonia pieśni żałosnych). The work is slow and contemplative, and each of its three movements is for orchestra and solo soprano. The
libretto for the first movement is taken from a 15th-century lament, while the second movement uses the words of a teenage girl,
Helena Błażusiakówna (Helena Błażusiak), which she wrote on the wall of a
Gestapo prison cell in
Zakopane to invoke the protection of the
Virgin Mary.
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The third uses the text of a
Silesian folk song which describes the pain of a mother searching for a son killed in the
Silesian Uprisings. The symphony's dominant themes are motherhood and separation through war. While the first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, the second is from that of a child separated from a parent.
Wikipedia
