You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair. – Chinese proverb

No one told me that grief felt so much like fear. – C.S Lewis

Tears are silent language for grief. – Voltaire

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. – Aeschylus

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. – Khalil Gibran

Grief is always difficult to forget and will go away. Wise persons describe grief as the memory of joy and the tears for one’s delight. If we read what the Gita says we can understand the implications of death. Our soul is indestructible; it can’t be destroyed by the elements of earth or weapons or by water, fire and air. Therefore, it is absolute ignorance to lament for it.

The first chapter of the Bhagwad Gita is about Vishada Yoga, the yoga of grief. It is a beautiful concept. ‘If you are able to grieve and are able to provide a direction for yourself, that becomes yoga.’

If you fail to provide yourself with direction and further go into grief then it becomes imbalance. It is like achieving balance in stress. One has to learn the management of grief. Everyone has to experience grief and this leads to process of purification as it happened to the Buddha.

There are eleven Rudras, who are expressions of Shiva. Rudra means one who cries. How can such a person, who cries all the time be a manifestation of Shiva. Shiva is consciousness and there are various layers and stages of progression in that consciousness defining different levels of existence and experiences. The eleven Rudras represent the different stages of consciousness.

Grief can be expressed in different ways. One can be witness, a drashta and one learns this in Yoga. One can use a meditative process called Inner Silence to discover the real cause of grief.

Swami Niranjananda Saraswati.

Aim Hrim Klim

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