On Grief and Dharma: Encountering a ‘hard bhava’ in the Mahabhrrata and Tagore

An illustrated talk by Professor Purushottama Bilimoria, senior research fellow with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, senior lecturer at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He is a Chancellor's Scholar and Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley; an honorary professor at the Deakin University and senior fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia

Chair: Prof. Rahul Govind

 

The presentation explores recent thinking on the 'hard emotions', in particular, grief, sorrow and mourning, and links the challenging inner and social condition to the calling of Dharma (righteous law, normatively worthy action).  Drawing from some comparative work (academic and personal) in the study of grief, mourning and empathy, the talk will discuss the treatment of this tragic pathos in classical Indic literature and modern-day psychotherapy.  Drawing on the moving series of paintings (especially of women in various shadows of grief by Rabindranath Tagore),  the talk will demonstrate that even though secularised, these emotions continue to serve as the sites of imagination at much deeper personal and inter-personal levels. As such these bhava-s (that don't always play out in corresponding rasas-s) are not antithetical to a dharmic quest despite their haunting presence even when 'the four walls collapse around one in the intensity of dukha'