Catholic, Shia and Shakta Salvation Through Mystical Sorrow: Holy Mothers and Sacred Families

Abstract

Suffering is a problem addressed by many world religions. This paper examines the understanding of suffering in three religions: Catholic Christianity, Shia Islam, and Shakta Hinduism. In each of these cases, ordinary suffering is transformed into mystical sorrow, becoming a path to closeness and divine union. This transformation makes use of religious symbolism of the family, emphasizing the role of the mother. Worldly suffering is no longer meaningless; instead, it becomes a spiritual path through which the individual person, and even the world at large, may be redeemed.

1. Introduction

The Western study of religious emotion has grown and expanded over the last fifty years. From its early origins in the memoirs of St. Augustine, through the writings of William James on religious experience, it has branched out in two major directions. Both respond to the problem of exploring subjective experience, analyzing those aspects of religious life traditionally viewed as ineffable and irreducible.

One approach understands religious emotion to be a subcategory of emotion generally, which is best understood through neurobiology and cognitive science. Emotion is shown through the body, and it is best understood as an aspect of biology, especially brain chemistry and genetics. Emotions are physically embodied, and this biological basis for emotions is consistent through different religions and cultures. This is sometimes seen as a universalist perspective, as all humans have bodies through which to analyze these experiences, and the bodies can determine religious faith. As an example of this approach, Robert Fuller’s book The Body of Faith: A Biological History of Religion in America suggests that a person can be genetically inclined towards demonstrative or subdued religions, and that genes and biochemistry can affect a person’s membership in various religious denominations (Fuller 2013).

One currently popular aspect of this approach is the affect theory, in which religious emotion is evoked through physically embodied practices, and theorists study the ways that bodily postures and physical movements can affect religious feelings. Such emotions are preverbal, not determined by thought, based on the body1. As Abby Kluchin notes, “The category of affect allows religion scholars simultaneously to theorize the effects of affective visceral response at the level of the individual body and at the level of an entire community” (Kluchin 2017). This is important, as research on religious groups has become a major area of study in the field of religious emotion.

Another approach views religious emotion as shaped and structured by culture. Emotion is a performance, acted out differently in different cultures (see Lutz on Micronesian culture, and Rosaldo on Ilongot traditions)2. Religious emotion, like other emotions, is shaped and guided by religious norms. It may spread through religious contagion, or appeal to individual ideals, but the ideals of the religion should be present in the culture for the person to understand and be attracted to them. This includes the sociological approach to religious ideas.3

Both of these approaches were discussed at the conference “How do we Study Religion and Emotion?” at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina back in 2015. Neither side came to dominate the discussion. However, there was general agreement that the field needed more study from a variety of methods and disciplines, and that more comparative work was needed.

In a sense, this article is a response to that concern. The current popular models discussed used Western styles of analysis and categories of understanding. Here, I am interested in what our subjects understand themselves to be feeling, especially in the area of mystical religious emotion. Therefore, my approach is neither sociological nor biochemical. Instead, I shall examine the self-understanding which is expressed through the mystical theology of each religion, and the ways that it understands the self to be constructed, through the approach of ethnopsychology.

Ethnopsychology is a relatively new field that examines how cultural beliefs and values influence the thought and behavior of particular groups. It also seeks to explore the ways in which different cultures interact with and shape each other. This includes examining the ways in which different cultures perceive and interpret the same psychological phenomena, the ways in which they influence each other’s beliefs and behavior, and the ways in which they interact with the environment. It is also known as cross-cultural psychology, as defined by the APA Dictionary of Psychology: “A branch of psychology that studies similarities and variances in human behavior across different cultures and identifies the different psychological constructs and explanatory models used by these cultures. It has been influenced by anthropology and emphasizes social psychological analyses of international differences”.4

In the groups that we shall study here, the focus is on their different psychological constructs and explanatory models. However, the constructs examined here are from the schools of mystical theology of these groups, studying understandings of the mind and person rather than focusing on behavior patterns. Their ethnopsychological models of the person include aspects which are not generally covered in Western schools of psychology.

This approach thus moves against the traditional models of analysis, which emphasize the physiological and social aspects of experience. In his book Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy, Joel Marks describes this split in theoretical approaches, noting the role of gender: “If cognitivism is the New View of Emotion, then the last decade has seen an even Newer View rise to prominence. Its contemporary roots lie in feminism and social theory, and the basic idea is that emotions are not just things in the head but essentially involve culture. This kind of critique has been applied to the (philosophy of) mind in general, but the feminist gloss is especially pertinent to emotion…” The upshot for emotion (at least in ‘Western’ societies) perceived as feminine, has been a general denigration, in deference to the superior ‘male trait’ of rationality’.5 This has been a particular problem for the study of Asian religions, which have often historically been dismissed as irrational and inferior when compared to Western religions. Here, we shall treat them all as legitimate approaches to the understanding of the person.

In three of the great religious traditions of the world, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, religious emotion is an important aspect of life; it is the pathway to the human experience of the divine. All three have writings on many forms of religious emotion and theorize about it according to their own categories. One of the most powerful and important types of such emotion is suffering, especially grief over human loss, which is expressed through the metaphor of family, especially in the relationship between mother and child.

In Roman Catholic Christianity, the Mater Dolorosa is one of the most important figures of love and suffering, shown most famously with her dead son in Michelangelo’s statue of the Pieta. Participation through faith and ritual in the drama of Christ’s death and resurrection brings entrance into the alternative family of the church, and entrance into the Mystical Body of Christ, a mystical union of all Christians into a spiritual body with Jesus Christ as their head. He is the head of the new humanity in whom all live a life of glory, and the worshiper is adopted as a child of God. Mary’s suffering is a doorway through which the person may come to this mystical union, following the Biblical emphases on suffering as Christ did. The self is triune, following the Pauline model; it is composed of body, soul, and spirit.

In Shia Islam, mourning the death of Husayn with his mother Fatima brings entry into the family of Mohammad. This shared suffering allows the worshiper to enter Paradise with the ahl al-beyt, and he becomes a member of the extended family and beloved by God. The family has its own area of paradise, where the faithful Muslim may enter. Shared suffering allows the person to become a part of the divine family, with access to their sacred territory. In the Shia Muslim system, the nafs is the lower soul, and it is through the qalb or heart that the person can attain realization of the ruh, the spirit, or divine nature.

In Hindu Shaktism, the suffering worshiper shares his emotions of sorrow and doubt with the divine Mother Kali. Through this deep sharing and eventual mutual recognition, he comes to accept his fate, as she comes to accept his soul into her paradise. It is a nuclear family in which the relationship with the god Shiva, husband of Kali, is secondary to the bond of relationship between Mother and child. The self is composed of the jiva, the aspect of the soul that holds individual identity and karma, and the atman, the infinite aspect of the self. Together, they are called the jivatman. As the person comes to love the Mother, the atman or deeper nature comes into an eternal relationship with her, either staying together with the Mother in a relationship of love in her heaven, or merging into her essence as infinite consciousness.

We may note that all of these religions have been subject to prejudice (Papists! Terrorists! Black tantrikas!). In this article, we seek to find some commonalities. It has been the modern direction in Religious Studies to emphasize differences rather than similarities, and to use Western analytic models that examine religions according to our own terms, not theirs. This paper prefers a sympathetic approach, through the common theme of sorrow. It intends to move against the current social, political, and academic tendency to polarization, which the current styles of study of religion have done little to mitigate.

2. Sorrow and the Catholic Tradition

In Roman Catholicism, the drama of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is traditionally the most important set of events in the religion. The holiday of Easter is preceded by Good Friday (when Jesus Christ was crucified) and Holy Saturday (associated with his descent into Hell), and on Sunday worshippers remember and celebrate Jesus’ return.

Jesus was a figure who was understood, through the doctrine of atonement (also called the doctrine of Satisfaction or Vicarious Atonement), to have suffered to take on the sins of humanity. By this act, God and humanity were reconciled, thus reversing the Fall and the condemnation of mankind. In the Nicene Creed, it was a divine decision, by God “who for us men and for our salvation, came down, took flesh, was made man; and suffered…” A description of this role is found in Isaiah 41, a description of the Suffering Servant, which the Catholic church understands to be a prediction of Christ’s experiences of suffering and sorrow:

• He was despised and rejected by men;
• a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
• and as one from whom men hide their faces
• he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
• Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
• yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
• But he was wounded for our transgressions,
• he was bruised for our iniquities;
• upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
• and with his stripes we are healed.6

There are many forms of suffering which re-enact those of Jesus Christ in the Catholic tradition. For centuries, pilgrims have journeyed to Jerusalem to follow Jesus on the road to his death at Calvary. Marian tradition holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was the first to make visits to the sites of her son’s suffering and death. These visits later became known as the “way of the cross” or “via crucis” and they have traditionally included fourteen stations, taken both from scripture and tradition.7 Through these stations, Christians have been able to spiritually journey to the via dolorosa (Latin for “way of sorrows” or “way of suffering”) in Jerusalem without physically going there. Beginning with Christ’s condemnation all the way to his body being laid in the tomb, each “station” or “stop” allows modern-day pilgrims to meditate on and sometimes vicariously re-experience these events. Over the years, pilgrim processions ending at the church of the Holy Sepulcher were accepted as the way Jesus went to his death. Today, the “via Dolorosa” winds through the crowded areas of Jerusalem’s Old City, and pilgrims still travel it, mourning for Jesus’ sorrows and torture, sometimes crawling along it on their hands and knees. There have also been many ascetic figures in Christian history who have chosen to physically suffer as Jesus did, whether by fasting, vigils, flagellation, or even being physically nailed to crosses.

The figure most associated with individual mourning over Christ’s death is the Virgin Mary, his mother. She is variously called Our Lady of Sorrows, the Sorrowful Mother or Mother of Sorrows (Latin: Mater Dolorosa), and Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows (or Dolours). These are names by which Mary, mother of Jesus, is referred to in relation to sorrows in life, and the contemplation of The Seven Sorrows of Mary is a popular Roman Catholic devotion. In its imagery, the Virgin Mary is portrayed as sorrowful and in tears, with one or seven long knives or daggers piercing her body. The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows is celebrated every September, while a feast, the Friday of Sorrows, is observed in some Catholic countries. A prayer to her shows this imagery:

• Holy Mary, pierce me through
• In my heart each wound renew
• Of my savior crucified.
(Warner 1976, p. 206)

Mary was understood to be martyred in spirit, as Jesus was martyred in body. Monastic groups like the Cistercians and Franciscans had special prayers for Mary, identifying with the suffering she shared with her son. Mary is the Lady of Paradise who cries out in pain when told her son had been stripped, flogged, and nailed to a cross. (Warner 1976) Her obedience to God, her purity, and her pain gave her a special role in Paradise, where she is understood to be humanity’s Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix, who was taken bodily into heaven, and who can influence who goes there. As Elie Dib states,

In our suffering, we can also turn to the Blessed Mother Mary. At the foot of the Cross, Mary stood as a source of consolation and strength for Jesus. She cradled Him in her arms when His lifeless body was taken down from the cross… This moment encapsulates the profound union of Mary’s extreme sorrow and Jesus’ salvific wounds. In our own suffering, we too are linked to Mary, as we are joined with Christ, wounded and breathless, in the comforting embrace of His mother.

(Dib 2023)

Over the centuries several devotions and monastic orders arose around meditation on Mary’s sorrows. The Seven Sorrows of Mary is a rosary devotion that was said to be revealed in the fourteenth century by the Virgin Mary to Saint Bridget of Sweden. In these prayers, the Virgin Mary is understood to be the Queen of the Martyrs:

Beloved Mother, Queen of the Martyrs, give us the courage you had in all your sufferings so that we may unite our sufferings with yours and give glory to God. Help us follow all His commandments and those of the Church so that Our Lord’s sacrifice will not be in vain, and all sinners in the world will be saved.

Queen of Martyrs, your heart suffered so much. I beg you, by the merits of the tears you shed in these terrible and sorrowful times, to obtain for me and all the sinners of the world the grace of complete sincerity and repentance

(Marie 2022).

There has been much debate over the theological role of the Virgin Mary in the process of redemption. Some theologians minimized her role, as an exemplary disciple who is a member of the church like all of the faithful, resisting her status as universal spiritual Mother and Mediatrix of grace. At Vatican II, there was agreement that “just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifest cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source. …. For as St. Irenaeus says, she “being obedient, became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race” (Fastiggi and Miravalle 2022). The Council’s confirmation of St. Irenaeus’ teaching of Mary as the “cause of salvation” (causa salutis) for all humanity, “even if secondary, instrumental, and incarnational, remains a clear Patristic and magisterial testimony to the unique Marian cooperation in Redemption” (Fastiggi and Miravalle 2022).

When Pope Pius XI made the first public papal reference to Mary as “Co-redemptrix” in 1933, his explanation of the Co-redemptrix title focused on two essential elements: (1) giving birth to the Redeemer; and (2) Mary’s suffering with Jesus in the sorrow and sacrifice which led to the Redemption of humanity (Pope Pius XI 1933). Pope Francis has also affirmed the unique role of the Virgin Mary in the work of redemption. In his 1 January 2020 homily for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, he states that “there is no salvation without the woman”:

The first day of the year, we celebrate this nuptial union between God and mankind, inaugurated in the womb of a woman. In God, there will forever be our humanity and Mary will forever be the Mother of God. She is both woman and mother: this is what is essential. From her, a woman, salvation came forth and thus there is no salvation without the woman. In her, God was united to us, and if we want to unite ourselves to him, we must take the same path: through Mary, woman and mother. … She is not only the bridge joining us to God; she is more. She is the road that God travelled in order to reach us, and the road that we must travel in order to reach him. Through Mary, we encounter God the way he wants us to: in tender love, in intimacy, in the flesh

(Pope Francis 2020).

There are some people who are understood to be called to a special status of suffering as a part of the Catholic faith and these are called Victim Souls. This is first seen in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24). A Victim Soul is understood to be a person especially called by God to sacrifice and suffer in union with Him for the conversion of souls, and in reparation for the sins of mankind. There is understood to be a special union between Jesus and the soul victim. Jesus is not only with them, but also in them, and they are thus united to God in a special way. Thus, united, they can be considered to be co-redeemers with Christ. This idea is linked with St Paul, who says: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). As Gerald Korson notes in his article, “What is a Victim Soul?”:

His suffering is his witness. It has a purpose. It is telling us something… St. Thérèse of Lisieux believed her suffering could help others. She would take her moments of pain or annoyance or sadness and offer them to God, believing that they became united with God’s love, united that is with something infinitely powerful which works always for the betterment of man. She would ask God to take her suffering and use it to help the missionaries of the world. She knew … there’s a kind of web around the world, an electric web in which we’re all united in suffering and in love. When you give to it what you have, you add to the communion of love all around the world.8

Although the notion of a scapegoat has been present within Judeo–Christian teachings for a long time, the concept of a Victim Soul is distinct and different, as in this case the Victim Soul willingly offers the suffering to God, unlike the scapegoat who is targeted involuntarily. In this type of soul, redemptive suffering takes on an intense, personal form, a gift of grace that is often accompanied by mystical phenomena. Some writers note three levels of the Victim Soul. We have those who suffer in an ordinary way and accept it as helping others, and there are the consecrated souls, those who have taken religious vows, “who set out on a more arduous path, desiring to attain greater identification with the Divine Master. These are the priests and those consecrated to God who resolves to carry not only a portion of the Cross, but to carry it entirely”. The third and highest degree of being a victim is called the expiatory victim, which often involves mystical experiences and visions (De Sousa 2023).

The Victim Soul participates in the suffering of Christ in a special way, “taking on punishment to protect others”. It is often found in women who have visions of the Virgin Mary. Sandra Zimdars-Swartz describes the Victim Soul as the personalization of the “orthodox Anselmian atonement theory of the vicarious suffering of Christ” and notes that it is widespread in Marian apparitions. It is primarily seen in people who share the sorrows of Mary, but also more broadly as those who suffer bearing the Virgin Mary’s messages (Zimdars-Swartz 1991).

Christ’s life is considered to be a model for Christians. In the New Testament, Jesus said, “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:38 also 16:24; 20:22). Jesus went through great pain in order to bring peace, and he experienced suffering to obtain glory. Therefore, his followers will have to walk in the same path (1 Thessalonians 3:3), and Paul rejoices in his suffering. “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:5). People can survive the sufferings given to them, as Paul notes, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9). This sharing of suffering brings fellowship and koinonia, which brings unity through participation. Paul’s desire for redemptive suffering was strong, for he said, “My sorrow is so great, my mental anguish so endless, I would willingly be condemned and be cut off from Christ if it could help my brothers, my own flesh and blood” (Rom. 9:2–4).

As Paul states, human beings have been given the privilege of suffering for and with Christ (Philippians 1:29). Suffering is considered to be a means of learning, for Jesus tells people to wear his yoke and let him teach them (Matthew 11:29–30). Suffering is also a test of faith, to make sure that faith is strong and pure (1 Peter 1:6–7). Faith is like gold, which is refined by fire. Christians should become partners with Christ in his suffering (I Peter 4: 12–13), and they should rejoice, so that they may be joyous when divine glory is revealed. According to Paul, “Since we are his children, we will share his treasures- for all God gives to his Son Jesus is now ours too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering” (Romans 8:17). St. Paul told the Corinthians that, “When we are made to suffer, it is for our consolation and salvation” (2 Cor. 1:5, 6). “It makes me happy”, Paul told the Colossians, “to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church” (Col. 1:24).

According to Christian theology, through his crucifixion, Jesus took the sins of the world upon himself for the redemption of all human beings, and it was through his suffering that he achieved victory over sin and death. While Christian followers cannot replicate Jesus’s sacrifice, they are called to bear their own crosses in life. In Christian spirituality, suffering is ‘walking with Christ’ and, therefore, both redemptive and transformative. Christians should serve “the poor and the suffering, in whom the Church recognizes the image or her poor and suffering founder” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2000). This has been echoed in various ritualized forms of suffering, especially on Good Friday, when many Catholics perform penitential and even ascetic practices. These allow them to share the suffering of Jesus in a ritual fashion.

While much of the writing on suffering and redemption came from the early church, it has continued to be an important theme in the modern day. As Pope John Paul II phrased it in his 1984 letter Salvifici Doloris,

Suffering is, in itself, an experience of evil. But Christ has made suffering the firmest basis of the definitive good, namely the good of eternal salvation. By his suffering on the Cross, Christ reached the very roots of evil, of sin and death. He conquered the author of evil, Satan, and his permanent rebellion against the Creator. To the suffering brother or sister Christ discloses and gradually reveals the horizons of the Kingdom of God: the horizons of a world converted to the Creator, of a world free from sin, a world being built on the saving power of love. And slowly but effectively, Christ leads into this world, into this Kingdom of the Father, suffering man, in a certain sense through the very heart of his suffering.” …

(John Paul II 1984)

The church becomes the family, as Matthew 12:46—40 notes, Jesus calls his disciples his true family. Jesus phrases it even more strongly in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple”. This emphasis is also found in Matthew 10:37, “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”.

From this perspective, it is the church that is his true family, an alternative family linked not by blood but by grace. The person who is part of this family is grafted into the Mystical Body of Christ, a process which is compared by Paul to grafting a branch onto an olive tree (Romans 11:17). Its ritual entrance is the sacrament of Baptism, which brings the person into the church, and that status in maintained by participation in the Eucharistic ritual.

The doctrine of the Mystical Body includes several aspects. The members of the Church are bound together in a supernatural life, communicated to them and strengthened by the presence of Christ in the sacraments (the basic rituals of the Catholic Church, which are considered to be ‘outward signs of inward grace’). Christ is understood to be the center and source of life, who gives each person gifts suitable for his or her position in the body. These gifts or graces form it into an organized whole, whose parts are knit together. Individual members are formed into the image of God, and the Mystical Body forms one whole with Christ. This union between head and members is conserved and nourished by the sacrament of the Eucharist or the Mass. Through this ritual of bread and wine, the incorporation of the individual into the Body of Christ is both outwardly symbolized and inwardly actualized; “We being many are one bread, one body; for we all partake of the one bread” (I Cor., 10, 17). It is within this Mystical Body that both suffering and grace are shared (Joyce 1911).

The Mystical Body is an alternative notion of family, in which all members are united through faith rather than blood. By identifying his own suffering with that of Christ, the Catholic finds in his or her suffering interior peace and even spiritual joy. In this doctrine, Christ’s sacrifice affects all Christians so profoundly that it transforms them from natural creatures of God into divine, supernatural sons and daughters. They become like cells of Jesus’ Mystical Body, making them a part of the drama of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and giving them a future of eternal glory. Participation in the sorrows of the lives of Jesus and Mary brings a special union, a new family of the universal church, and a new future life in the fullness of time. Prayer to the Virgin Mary brings a sharing of sorrows with his natal family, while entrance into the alternative family of the church is entrance into the Mystical Body of Christ giving eternal life. There are two understandings of family here.

A relevant question follows: how does this emotional process work within the self as it is constructed in the system of Catholic ethnopsychology? The Pauline trinity of body, soul, and spirit is generally considered to be the basis of the Christian model of the self, but it is often unclear how these sections of the person work with each other. The definition of body and soul is clear, but in theological writing, the spirit is variously described as an aspect of the person, a gateway for the soul to perceive God, and the presence of the Holy Spirit within the soul. Indeed, if we look at the entry for ‘spirit’ in the Glossary section of the Catholic Catechism, it says “see Holy Spirit” (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 2000), while it defines the soul as “the spiritual principle of human beings”. As Andrew Tallon notes, this debate goes back to a tension between Plato’s triadic concept of the soul and the dyadic soul of Aristotle and Aquinas: “For Aristotle, continued in Aquinas, the soul was two-part, comprising only the spiritual faculties of intellect and will (in Aquinas’ terms), while for Plato the soul was tripartite… What Aristotle and Aquinas did was to relegate the emotions to the “lower”, sensible animal soul, having to do with the body, while reserving to the “higher” soul the “spiritual faculties of reason and will” (Tallon 2008). Because of this debate, it can be challenging to describe how religious emotion works in a person.

More generally, the soul is placed within the person where divine grace can enter, with grace as a supernatural gift of God to intellectual creatures (which includes men and angels). The Holy Spirit brings supernatural light to the soul, allowing it to learn eternal truths. There are various types of grace, of which the most relevant here is sanctifying grace. This is understood in Catholic theology to cleanse original sin, and to give eventual access to heavenly bliss. It is philosophically termed a “permanent, supernatural quality of the soul”, or, as the Catechism has it “divina qualitas in anima inhaerens”. As this grace is supernatural, it can only be received by infusion from above; therefore, it may be called “a supernatural infused habit” (habitus infusus). Sanctifying grace brings the person into the divine family, for by it man is entitled to a share in the ‘paternal inheritance’, which is the beatific vision. This process of adoption is usually phrased as “sonship”,9 and it is described as adoptive, as expressed in the New Testament (for example, see Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:5). The crowning point of justification is found in the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which gives certain side effects, variously described as “the replenishing of the soul with balsamic odours”, “a glow permeating the soul“, and “a gilding and refining of the soul“.

While these details are rarely explored in modern Catholic theology, they were quite important a few centuries ago. If we look at treatises of mystical theology, such as Poulain’s The Graces of Interior Prayer, we can see how the presence of the Holy Spirit is understood to bring about the development of the spiritual senses through divine love. These senses include spiritual sight (with which the Blessed and the angels see each other), spiritual hearing (as God speaks to prophets and saintly souls), and other supernatural senses which result from interior touch (Poulain 1910). These are mystical states, associated with the ”anguish of love” and mystical suffering from the “wound of love”, which brings both pleasure and pain at the same time.

Thus, it is ironic that suffering brings ultimate joy, and that adoption into the family of God brings access to the beatific vision, the realization of heaven which is the goal of human life. It is a style of religious emotion in which sorrow, shared pain and hope come to evoke a love of God through faith. These are also important factors in the religion of Shia Islam.

3. Sorrow and Shia Islam

The heart is important in Islamic tradition, and it may be influenced in many ways. As the Muslim theologian and mystic Shaikh Shahabu-d-Din Suhrawardi phrases it in his thirteenth-century A Dervish Textbook (‘Awarifu-l-Ma’arif), ecstasy or wajd is an event that comes from God, and turns the heart to “great grief, or to great joy” (Shaikh Shahabu-d-Din 1980). Shia tradition has emphasized grief, from the time of Mohammad on.

In the Shia religion of Iran, emotion can be understood through the metaphor of substance. It is the bond that unites families and tribes, an identifier which stretches over time and space, linking together the past and present. It organizes kinship, a major factor in how the person lives in the world, and it influences clan ties and family obligations. Sorrow is a more powerful bond and unifier than joy. The concept of the Shahid or martyr includes such religious emotions as loyalty, dedication, and passion for the good, and is associated with nobility and kingship

Shia Ashura observances are commemorations of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the son of Ali and grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. He was killed by the Caliph Yazid in the desert of Karbala in 680 CE, and his family and followers were also tortured and killed. During rituals held at the time of Ashura, the tenth of the month of Muharram (the first month of the Muslim calendar), Shia participants may reenact the narrative of the events at Karbala in ta‘ziyah plays, passion dramas of mourning, which include the bloody massacre of Husayn’s forces by the Umayyad army. Other observances during the period of Ashura include public displays of mass mourning, which represent humanity’s struggle against injustice. Shia followers seek to heighten their spiritual awareness to reach the purity and generosity of Husayn, who fought evil in a righteous struggle during his life. He was killed in the desert while he was on a pilgrimage to Mecca, by the troops of the caliph Yazid. This is considered to be the worst possible time to attack a person, while in prayer on a religious pilgrimage. Karbala became such a sacred site that even today, clay and soil from the ground are compressed into pieces and exported around the world for Shia followers to use in ritual, and they press their foreheads against it while bowing in prayer (Al-Jibouri n.d.).

Religious love, in Shia doctrine, includes three categories: love for God, love for the Prophet and his household, and love for the faithful. In a famous hadith or tradition, Mohammad is reported as questioning his followers concerning the “firmest handhold of faith” (awthaq ’urwat al-iman). When they cannot reply, he declares: “The firmest handhold of faith is to love for the sake of God and to hate for the sake of God, to befriend God’s friends and to renounce His enemies” (Al-Kulayni (n.d.). Cited in (Hijaz n.d.)). Love and hatred are thus related to each other, and both are considered to be basic to faith.

In Shia tradition, there is a great focus on the Mohammad’s family, especially on his grandson Husayn. They are sometimes called the household of Prophethood: Fatima, her father, her husband, and her two sons (Mohammad’s wives are not included, nor are the wives of his grandsons). Mourning with the family of Mohammad makes one a part of the family- a form of salvation by association. Those who grieve together show the strongest form of family affiliation.

Commentaries on the Qur’an and on Mohammad’s words and actions are known as hadiths or traditions. The Hadith al-Kisa’, the Tradition of the Cloak, is a very important hadith in Shia belief and is understood to be narrated by Fatima, Mohammad’s daughter. It quotes Mohammad, who has spread his Yemeni cloak or mantle over his family:

• “O Allah, these are the people of my Household (Ahlul-Bayt).
• They are my confidants and my supporters.
• Their flesh is my flesh and their blood is my blood.
• Whoever hurts them, hurts me too.
• Whoever displeases them, displeased me too.
• I am at war with those at war with them.
• I am at peace with those at peace with them.
• I am the enemies of their enemies and
• I am the friend of their friends.
• They are from me and I am from them.”

O Allah! Bestow Your Blessings, Benevolence, Forgiveness and Your pleasure upon me and upon them. And remove impurity from them and keep them thoroughly pure.

Then, the Lord, Almighty Allah said, “O My angels! O Residents of My Heavens, verily, I have not created the erected Sky, the stretched earth, the illuminated moon, the bright sun, the rotating planets, the flowing seas and the sailing ships, but for the love of these Five lying underneath the cloak” (Hadith Kisa 2024).

This hadith is particularly important because it is associated with special blessings to all Muslims by Mohammad.10

The worshiper has been instructed to love Mohammad’s family, because they are the highest exemplars of obedience to the commands of God, they have exalted stations in the eyes of God, and they are pure, without any traces of polytheism, sin, or anything that deprives Muslims of divine mercy. The Shia follower loves Mohammad’s family, but is distressed at their plight in Karbala, and feels hatred towards the false caliph who has betrayed the ideals of Islam. He or she becomes close to the family by sharing their emotions. As the ‘Excellences of the Ahl al Bayt’ states, “The mantle is a symbol of divine mercy and blessing covering the Prophet and his holy family. It is, moreover, a source or haven of consolation and serenity in the face of the great sufferings and martyrdom which the Prophet’s family had to endure after him. In this infinite source of divine mercy, the pious also share in times of sufferings and afflictions” (Ayoub 1978).

In Shia Islam, which emphasizes the importance of Ali and the followers of Ali and his household (commonly known as al-shi’a), the most intense ecstatic state is not joy, but rather grief. It occurs at the yearly commemoration of the torture and death of Husayn, the grandson of Mohammad. This event, which happened on Ashura day during the month of Muharram, was of cosmic significance. The death of the rightful heir to the caliphate represented the death of innocence, and the life in the House of Sorrows whose intensity will call forth the coming savior, or Mahdi.

This event is understood both historically and theologically. Historically, there was much infighting over leadership in early Islam in the days after Muhammad’s death, and most of Muhammad’s early descendants, the imams who claimed the right of leadership, were killed. In the year 680, Muhammad’s grandson Husayn, the son of his daughter Fatima and his cousin Ali, was killed in the desert of Karbala by the troops of the Umayyad ruler Yazid. This came to aggravate Shia hatred of the Umayyads, and it caused a long chain of wars and bloodshed.

Theologically, Husayn was understood to be the innocent sacrifice who would save the world, and whose death transformed the universe. There are many parallels between the death of Husayn for the Shia, and the death of Christ for the early Christians. As Mahmoud Ayoub states:

The martyrdom of Imam Husayn has been regarded by the Shi’i community as a cosmic event around which the entire history of the world, prior as well as subsequent to it, revolves… Husayn’s death may be regarded as a redemptive act… through the participation of the faithful in the sorrows of the Imam and his beloved family. It will be seen, moreover, that not only mankind, but all creation as well, is called upon to participate in this tragic event.

(Ayoub 1978)

By his death, which was understood to be voluntary, Husayn transformed suffering itself from a negative and evil power to a road to salvation. This was due to human faith and divine mercy (Ayoub 1978).

Muhammad’s family, the ahl al-bayt, underwent poverty, sorrow, and murder, but in death, they went to paradise, and now they can save those who suffered on earth. As Ja’far al-Sadiq stated, “Truly affliction is nearer to the pious man of faith than is the fallen rain to earth” (Ayoub 1978).

Through sorrow, the soul is in contact with God, and during Husayn’s death, which was the peak of human suffering, all persons and creatures of the past, present, and future suffer together with the martyrs of Karbala. Human history revolves around Husayn, whose martyrdom was predestined, and who gained control over all human destiny by this event (he was then associated with the tablet, the record of human destiny, and the pen, which writes out the divine decrees of fate). Those who have been saved by mourning for the blood of Husayn will be raised on the Day of Judgment with the prophets, and then taken with them and the angels to sing praises before Allah’s throne. They will be counted among those who were martyred with Husayn at Karbala, and as members of the family of Mohammad (Ayoub 1978).

The Ashura rituals which commemorate the death of Husayn emphasize ecstatic sorrow. This is grief which ceases to be individual, and it is understood to be a cosmic emotion. The entire universe mourns for Husayn, humans and animals, and nature itself. The prophets knew that Husayn must die. Adam, Noah, Ibrahim, and the other prophets mourned long before Husayn was born. Mourning is a part of the Muslim prophetic tradition. It is said that Adam and Hawa (Eve) mourned their son Habeel (Abel) for so long that their tears formed a stream (Azadari 2024). Mourning was described in the lives of other prophets, including Noah and Abraham, and it shows God’s grace in their lives. As it is said from the Shia perspective, “Crying is the Sunnah of the prophets” (Azadari 2024). Shia poetry describes how the sky shed tears of blood for Husayn for forty days, and even wild beasts roamed in anxiety in the jungles and forests. Lions and other beasts paced around the body of Husayn to protect it, and the supernatural Jinns recited elegies. The sun darkened at noon, and stars collided with each other. Blood gushed from the ground, for sky and earth shared the Muslim faith.

Nature mourned Husayn in the past, and it continues to mourn him. As Syed Ameed said in his book, The Importance of Weeping and Wailing:

Man expresses his grief by shedding tears, while other creatures express their grief in their own different ways. A river or a sea expresses its grief by a stormy rush of water or violent surging of waves. A fish expresses its grief by coming to the surface of [the] water and running in agitation to and fro. The air expresses its grief by flowing in the form of a stormy yellow or red or black wind. The earth expresses her grief by violent pouring of water or dust. The sun expresses its grief by turning pale…

(Ameed 1974)

All of the visible and invisible creatures of Allah mourned for Husayn, the jinn, and men and angels. Seventy thousand angels will continue to weep for him until the Day of Judgment. The lower angels had to cool the burning fire of their sorrow with their wings, to prevent the heat from creating floods. As the sixth imam stated,

The heavens wept for forty days with blood. The earth wept for forty days as it was covered in black [literally, in mourning]; the sun similarly wept for forty days with eclipses and redness. The mountains were torn asunder and scattered, and the seas burst.

(Ayoub 1978)

Such events are still going on for those who mourn. As the sixteenth-century treatise The Garden of Martyrs states in a Muharram lamentation poem:

• Earth and heaven weep at the death of Husain,
• from the Throne on high to the dirt far below, all beings weep.
• Fish in the ocean depths, birds in the sky’s upper heights:
• all weep in mourning for the King of Karbala.
(Pinault 2001)

Such mourning brings unity with mankind, nature on earth, and salvation in the afterlife. It is shared emotion which determines one’s locale in paradise. As Imam Raza said to Bin Shabeeb: “If you wish to be with us in the most distinguished ward of Paradise, then feel our grief as your own grief and our joy as your own joy” (Ameed 1974). Such emotion is always possible because, as Imam Riza phrases it, heaven is eternally Ashura day, when Imam Husayn was killed (Ameed 1974). Ali and Fatima are eternally clad in black robes, sorrowing and weeping in paradise, until the end times.

Ecstatic sorrow is total immersion in cosmic grief, and the person joins ‘the universal chorus of mourners’. Eternal tragedy is happening now, and every Muharram becomes the month of death, and every Ashura is the day of Husayn’s martyrdom (Ayoub 1978). Those who participate in this mourning are marked by Husayn’s blood, and they are considered to be a part of his family. At the final resurrection, they will go to the area of paradise meant for the ahl al-bayt, and they will be considered members of Muhammad’s family.

For those who mourn on earth, the Day of Judgment will be joyous. Tears evaporate sins, and they create a barrier between heaven and hell, so that the soul will not be tempted towards hell. The mourner will witness the presence of his fathers at death, and this mourning is considered to be tasbeeh (glorification of Allah) and jihad in the path of Allah (Azadari 2024). According to the Shia hadith Bihar al Anwaar, Mohammad says to Fatima, “Whosoever weeps and cries for Husayn, we shall take them by their hand and lead them into the Garden of Paradise” (Azadari 2024).

This entry into heaven brings a final purification from sin and temptation and an eternal focus on both mourning and love which erases sin. Events on earth give insight into events in heaven, and emotion shared between the worlds connects the Shia worshiper with Mohammad, and with God.

One figure most associated with mourning is Fatima, the daughter of Mohammad and his first wife Khadijah. As wife of Ali, who was the cousin and son-in-law of Mohammad, and mother of Husayn and Hassan, she endured attacks on her family, and her sons and her husband were killed. She is understood to be in heaven wearing a black robe, eternally mourning them. Most Shias believe that she was injured when defending Ali against an attack by the first Sunni caliph, Abu Bakr (an illegitimate claimant to the role in Shia opinion), and his aide Umar, and that this incident led to her early death.

Fatima, regarded as “the Mother of the Imams and All Believers”, plays a special role in the Shia religion. She has a unique status as Mohammad’s only surviving child, the wife of Ali, their first Imam, and the mother of Hassan and Husayn. She led a moral life, being generous to others and praying for their benefit. Lengthy prayers, night vigils, supplicating God for others like her neighbors, fasting, and visiting the graves of the martyrs were some of the special characteristics of Fatima that were reported by some of Mohammad’s companions. In poetry, she is called immaculate, sinless, and an ideal for Muslim women.

According to Mahmoud Ayoub, the two main images of Fatima within the Shia tradition are the “Eternal Weeper” and “the Judge in the Hereafter”. In Shia tradition, the suffering and death of Fatima was a great tragedy of Islam. She spent her last days mourning the death of her father, and she eternally wept at the death of her two sons. Shias shared in Fatima’s suffering by weeping for her sorrows. The tears of the faithful are also believed to console Fatima. During the days that preceded the anniversary of Fatima’s martyrdom, which are known as the Fatimiyya days, the Shia hold mourning ceremonies.

Fatima will play a redemptive role as the mistress of the Day of Judgment in the hereafter as a reward for her mourning and suffering in this world. In Shia tradition, Mohammad said that Fatima would be the first person to enter Paradise and she will intercede for those who honor her and her descendants.

Fatima is also associated with angels. After the death of Mohammad, an angel was said to visit her and talk to her (thus giving her the title ‘Muhaddatha’, one to whom angels will speak). The sayings of this angel were said to be recorded by Ali in a book called the Mushaf of Fatima. It contains predictions of the future, and it describes Mohammad’s time in Paradise. It is believed to be in the possession of the last Imam, the Imam al-Mahdi, who will come at the end of time, to purify the world and rid it of evil and injustice. He will then establish the kingdom of Allah on earth.

The earth is a place of mourning because heaven itself is a place of mourning, and the earth reflects heaven. Sorrow is the basis of life and death, and recognition of that universal sorrow unites human and divine worlds. The grief of Mohammad’s family continues in heaven, where even those blessed by God wear black robes and mourn. Sharing this mourning makes one part of Mohammad’s family, and able to enter his special area in heaven. Sorrow gives insight into the universal, allowing the person to transcend individual concerns. Sharing the mourning for Husayn shares the grief of the world, and the heavens.

Shia writers have noted that life begins in sorrow- the newborn baby’s response to the world is crying and wailing. This echoes the weeping of Adam, the first prophet, when he was sent from heaven to earth (Azadari 2024). Lamentation is also a major act of believers, showing their humility before God. Mohammad deeply mourned his uncle Hamza, and his support for mourning is stated in many Shia hadiths. According to one hadith, Mohammad said, “whoever on the Day of Ashura weeps for Husayn, Allah will place that person in paradise alongside the Ul’il Uzm Prophets” (Azadari 2024).

This shows the importance of the annual passion plays which involve ta’ziyeh, re-enactments of the martyrdom of Husayn and his family at Karbela. They are known to evoke visions, as in one from the imam and martyr Abbas: “In his vision he sees Fatemah on the Day of Judgment rising from her grave, holding in one hand the bloodied shirt, and in the other the broken teeth of her father, the Prophet. On her head she wears the empty turban of Hussein, complaining bitterly about his killers”.11

We also see sorrow in Shia Sufi’s thought, which has emphasized poverty, self-mortification, and sorrow over the threat of divine retribution for sinful acts. Mourning becomes an ecstatic technique for the ascent of the soul. Some Sufi practitioners are known as ‘the weepers’ (bakkaun) with the gift of tears that lead to Allah’s grace. They follow the sadness of Adam being expelled from heaven, as well as the sorrow of Mohammad, Fatima, Ali, Yaqub, and Joseph. Henri Corbin links such sorrow to fana or self-annihilation as a stage of spiritual growth, as the practitioner plunges into the black light or luminous darkness, which can easily lead towards both sorrow and madness (Corbin 1998). The Sufi has killed the lower self (nafs) and mourns its demise, in some groups by wearing a black ‘thousand-needle’ robe, which symbolizes the thousand blows of spiritual combat and the needles of despair. Tazkiyat al nafs or destroying the carnal self to become the mirror of God, is a painful process. The person must be able to overcome the chaos that is associated with self-annihilation, in order to be reborn in a divine state.

There are several Shia Sufi groups, of whom the Bektashi are the most well known. In these groups, the imams who are the descendants of Ali are not just saints, but divinely appointed leaders, and the intense love of imams brings irfan (gnosis). Chanting sessions (dhikr) with poetry and lamentations, as well as rituals to honor martyrs and ascetic practices, bring grace and visions of Paradise. For even Allah participates in sorrow, as Henri Corbin states, “But consider the idea of a God who is essentially sadness and longing, yearning to reveal himself…” (Corbin 1998). Sufi scholar Annemarie Schimmel notes an important hadith qudsi for Persian Sufis: “I am with those whose hearts are broken for My sake”.12

As Rumi has stated, the lower self or nafs, body, and heart must be broken so that God can build a new mansion for Himself in it. In Shia ethnopsychology, the nafs is the lowest principle of man, the qalb is the heart, and the ruh is the spirit. The lower self obscures the spirit, and its darkness must be overcome by spiritual practice. The heart is the meeting point for the higher and lower aspects of the self, and it must be expanded by love or broken by sorrow for the spirit to be revealed.

Thus, we see that the state of sorrow can be linked with the purification of the self, to make it ready for a life in Paradise. The style of religious emotion that we see in the Ashura rituals emphasizes feelings of dedication, loyalty, and shared anger at injustice. It is the entrance into the family of Mohammad that brings the person into the highest state of Paradise, and the mourning Fatima who guides the soul on its way.

4. Sorrow and Shakta Hinduism

Shaktism is the worship of the goddess, who is most often seen in the Indian state of West Bengal in the form of Kali. While in other areas of India Kali is understood to be a dreadful death goddess, in Bengal she is a goddess of life, death, and rebirth. She escorts the soul into the body at birth, and she guides it to its future life at death, whether as rebirth in a human body or entrance into her paradise. Though she is frightening on the outside, in her heart, she is beautiful and loving.

There is no single, authoritative sacred text for Shaktism as we see in Christianity or Islam. Instead, people sing the poetry of Shakta poets known for their love of the goddess. In the songs to Kali, called Shyama sangit and Kali kirtan, we see many emotions expressed. These range from devotional love to anger at her poor treatment of her human children. These songs are sung throughout the year, but they are most widespread at her annual holiday of Kali Puja when there are Kali statues in temples, houses, and on street corners throughout the state.

In Hinduism, religious emotion is most well known from the Vaishnava tradition, which worships Vishnu or Krishna. It has a broad literature in which religious states are analyzed. In Bengali or Gaudiya Vaishnavism, the worshiper may love the god Krishna through five basic religious roles or bhavas, perceiving him in the mood of a lover, a friend, an infant, a master, and a deeper aspect of self.

In the poetry to Kali, we see a variety of religious emotions emphasized: there is wonder at her compassion, terror at her power, sorrow at the state of the worshiper’s life, and anger and complaint at human suffering, as well as a love of her beauty. A goddess who is universal can express and appreciate all of these emotions. The primary role of the worshiper is that of the child, who can identify as being both admirer and victim. Kali may also be both a friend and a personification of the deeper state of universal awareness.

In Bengali Hinduism, religious emotion is not a physiological event, it is rather a substance out of which souls are developed and shaped. Emotion is like a liquid, which can be boiled, condensed, and sculpted. It flows in through the ear, when the person hears religious music and poetry, and goes down into the heart, where it can be used for strength and creativity, and to create inner spiritual bodies. The bhava or state of religious emotion can be affected by the rasa or emotional essence that the person encounters, and the religious tradition which gives detailed meditations to control such transformations of religious emotion is called devotional Hinduism or bhakti.13 In Vaishnava bhakti, death is overcome by building immortal bodies. In Shakti bhakti, it is the goddess who guides the soul, and death can be welcomed rather than feared (McDaniel 2008).

Bengali poetry values emotional essences or rasas which give beauty and flavor to the works. Rasa is an essence which can be found in the arts, often compared to the sap of trees or the perfume of flowers. It gives poetry its power. In the languages of Sanskrit and Bengali, rasa literally means “juice, essence or taste”. It is a concept in Indian arts that denotes the esthetic flavor of any visual, literary, or musical work that evokes an emotion or feeling in the reader or audience. It is appreciated by a ’sensitive spectator’ or sahṛidaya, literally one who “has heart”, and can perceive the subtleties of the work. It is an abstract, emotional essence, which is supernatural (alaukika), yet capable of being evoked by the natural world. While its ancient use was to understand mantras and hymns, its later focus came to be works of art. Dictionary definitions of the term rasa include sap, juice, water, liquor, milk, nectar, poison, mercury, taste, savor, essence, flavor, relish, love, desire, and beauty (Biswas 1983). Early meanings refer to the soma used in the Vedic soma sacrifice, and the Vedanta understanding of brahman.

One of the most famous classical writers on the topic of rasa was Bharata, whose book on performing arts, the Natyashastra, is variously dated from the fifth century BCE to the fifth century CE. Bharata described eight basic emotional essences (later writers have added on a ninth rasa, the peaceful or santa rasa). The rasas have corresponding bhavas, moods which they evoke in people. The eight rasas are the loving or erotic, the comic, the tragic or pathetic, the furious, the heroic, the terrible, the disgusting, and the marvelous. They evoke moods of love, humor, sorrow or compassion, anger, courage, terror, loathing, and amazement (Patnaik 1997). All of these can act as religious emotions and bring the person closer to the god or goddess.

Of these, we see five major rasas or emotions in Shakta’s poetry. Rati or shringara rasa is the essence of love, the erotic and sensual essence, which is later found in the bhakti devotional tradition and is transformed into love of the gods. In Shakta bhakti, it is often transformed into the love between a mother and child (a form of vatsalya bhava). Karuna rasa is the tragic essence, which evokes pity, sorrow, and compassion, and develops altruism in the audience. This is found as a response to narratives of pain and sorrow by Shakta poets. The adbhuta rasa brings forth wonder, amazement, and surprise at divine action. We see this in the literature which expresses intensity and enthusiasm, especially seen in visions of the goddess. Raudra rasa expresses the anger over human misery that is part of life, and it calls the goddess to task over her neglect of her children. The terrible or bhayanika rasa shows the frightening aspect of the goddess in her association with death, and it makes the worshiper into the vira or hero to confront her and to bear her power. All of these rasas represent ways that the goddess interacts with her devotees.

In the poetry of two major Bengali Shakta poets, Ramprasad Sen, and Kazi Nazrul Islam, we can see the rasa of sorrow. For these poets, one classically Hindu and one often understood as Muslim, the goddess is immanent in the physical world of sorrow and suffering. Poetic beauty recognizes her presence in the lowest as well as the highest, in terror and pain as well as happiness.

The eighteenth-century Bengali poet Ramprasad Sen is well known for his songs to the goddess Kali. He has been called the founder of the Shakta bhakti movement, the first Shakta poet to sing of the goddess Kali in her roles as a loving mother or as a little girl. His poetry is still popular in West Bengal today, as a major part of the tradition of Shakta padabali, or poetry dedicated to the goddess. He is often called the most beloved of Bengali poets, and its greatest religious practitioner or sadhaka. He is said to have died of love at the annual festival of Kali (called Kali Puja) as the Kali statue was being immersed in the Ganges River, with the vision of the goddess before his eyes. His songs are sung each year on the two great goddess holidays of West Bengal, Durga puja and Kali Puja.

Ramprasad’s poetry and songs (called syama sangit or songs to the dark goddess) focus on a single great goddess, who is most frequently called Kali, though sometimes she is also called Durga, Bhairavi, Sita, Uma, and Kalika. The poems of Ramprasad are often called “Ramprasadi”, a genre named after him. Ramprasad was sometimes called “love-mad” (insane due to his love of the goddess) by his friends and family, but for Ramprasad their opinions were not important. Here, he describes his ecstatic experience of wonder, as bhava, an abbreviation for mahabhava or highest state, and the difficulties he had with family and society:

• O Ma Kali, wearing a garland of skulls
• What an experience (bhava) you have shown me!
• You taught me how to call you
• And at the moment I chanted “Ma”
• You drove me to ecstasy! …
• When worldly people look at me
• They call me mad from love
• The members of my family
• Hurl curses and insults at me.
• But whatever people say, dark mother
• My faith will not waver.
• Let people say what they want
• I will chant the name of Kali forever.
• If you get rid of this illusory world
• Insults and pride are unimportant.
• I have made your red feet my goal.
• I am no longer concerned with worldly opinions.
(Sen n.d. from the Bengali)

The combination of worldly suffering and rejection by others, and the vision of the goddess which generates passion and faith, brings him to renounce the world, seeking only the paradise of the goddess. We see the rasa of the wondrous and marvelous in his hopes of her vision, which is beyond earthly sorrow:

• Mother, I long to see the day
• When my eyes will be full of tears,
• Crying at the thought of you!
• The clouds that fill my soul will break
• And my eyes will see your light
• I shall enter a new world
• Where I shall sing praises
• And my soul will soar to heights
• Where sorrow cannot reach!
(Chaudhuri 1976)

For Ramprasad, Kali is a compassionate mother, and devotion to her gives visions of her paradise while still alive. When the worshiper, who is the child of the goddess, cries, she takes him into her arms and gives him special care:

• You who are born of the Divine Mother
• Need not fear death.
• She will be at your side, and she will keep you safe.
• Fear death no more, for
• The Lord of Death worships her…
• She is your loving mother, who softens
• When she hears you sob with misery.
• She will take you up in her arms
• If you cry.
(Chaudhuri 1976, rephrased)

Sometimes, Ramprasad shows anger towards the goddess, according to the bhava or mood of blame, as in this poem:

• I’m not calling you Mother anymore.
• You’ve given me such agony,
• and you keep giving me more.
• I used to be a happy householder.
• You’ve made me into a crazy ascetic.
• What else can you do to me, Wild-Haired One?
• I’d rather go from house to house and beg my food,
• rather than call you Mother, or come to your arms,
• or sit in your lap again.
• I kept calling “Mother, Mother”,
• but Mother, your eyes didn’t see
• and your ears didn’t hear.
• How can any other misfortune compare
• when a son suffers like an orphan
• while his mother is still there?
(Mukhopadhyay 1996, from the Bengali)

Suffering and despair are part of the ‘game of existence’, and the devotee must learn to accept them. One way to do that is through renunciation of human goals and acceptance of divine ones. We can see this in the mood or bhava of sorrow and despair, as in this poem, where incarnation on earth is no longer appealing:

• Human rebirth offers high hopes,
• but my coming into the world
• was just coming, and it came to nothing in the end.
• A bee imagines a painting to be the real lotus
• and stubbornly hovers near.
• Mother, you tricked me with words
• and fed me bitter neem leaves
• saying they were sugar.
• My mouth watered for sweetness
• but tasted only bitterness.
• You have cheated me my whole life long.
• You put me on earth saying
• “It’s time for us to play”,
• but the game you played
• only disappointed me.
• Ramprasad says this outcome
• of the game of existence
• was always meant to be.
• Now night falls, Mother, come and take
• your tired child home.
(Dasgupta 1993, from the Bengali)

Kali is a goddess of compassion towards her worshippers, but she is described also by the terrible or frightening rasa. We see imagery of death in many poems, and it is welcomed by the devotee. A partial version of this next poem was popularized in a recent film about the Thuggee sect, “The Deceivers”:

• Because you love the burning ground
• I have made a burning ground of my heart
• So that you, dark goddess, can dance there forever.
• I have no other desire left, O Mother
• A funeral pyre is blazing in my heart.
• Ashes from corpses are all around me, my Mother
• In case you decide to come.
• Prasad prays, “O Mother, at the hour of death
• Keep your devotee at your feet.
• Please come dancing with rhythmic steps
• Let me see you when my eyes are closed”.
(Sen n.d., from the Bengali)

In the iconography of the goddess Kali, she is often shown dancing at the burning grounds where corpses are burned (in India, most bodies are cremated rather than buried). For the heart to become a burning ground means that divine love burns so intensely that all earthly attachments are destroyed, and the person is ready to renounce them and enter the paradise of the goddess.

The most popular songs by Ramprasad show a goddess who is beyond human concerns and desires. The devotee must accept the experiences that the goddess gives him- only then can he perceive her true nature. In sorrow and terror, his limited human nature is revealed, his sins and bad karma are purged, and he is able to see beyond the finite world. She is the Mother, he is the child, and this nuclear family is the deepest relationship of soul and deity. The worshiper is adopted as the child of the goddess, and he is loved in life and after death. The Mother brings sorrow, but she also takes it away, bringing the soul to her eternal paradise. In that world, the devotee will live forever with the Mother, in her arms, or in her lap, in a state of divine happiness. His poems follow the idea of a jiva or soul which becomes purified by the emotion of sorrow, which allows the love of the goddess to flow in like an ocean.

The twentieth-century writer Kazi Nazrul Islam wrote both Muslim poems and Shakta poems to the goddess. Here, he writes of sorrow and separation from the deity in his poem “The More You Escape Me”. His writing shows divine love in separation, the mood of vipralambha, which is a traditional part of the Hindu rasa of sorrow and sadness:

• Why did you offer so much love
• If I receive only tears?
• When will your game of hide and seek end…?
• These endless comings and goings make me suffer, my God
• Life after life, I follow this path.
• I have wept so much that my tears are gone.
(Huda 2000)

He is able to see her as beautiful. However, one of his most powerful moods is that of the tragic and the sorrowful, the mood which evokes compassion- the karuna rasa. A poem which expresses the karuna rasa well is “The Pain of the Poor”. It directly condemns the wealthy, but also questions the divine Mother who allows her children to suffer, which is a tradition in Shakta poetry. After all, mankind is her family and her creation:

• These children are suffering, they lack a Mother’s care.
• They are ragged and covered with dirt
• Their faces are hollow from starvation
• With skin rashes and fevers.
• They work all day, but they can barely eat.
• O wealthy people, how can you ignore them
• And feast on rich desserts?
• When they see you eat,
• They beg silently with sad eyes
• Shame on you! How can you gorge yourselves
• When just a small portion of the rice you have stored
• Could feed them all!
• You have all sorts of clothing
• These children barely have a rag
• With which you would polish your shoes…
• When they have fevers, none offer them water
• Reduced to skeletons
• They die in their Mother’s arms.
(Huda 2000, rephrased)

This shows the condemnation both of human cruelty and of the Mother’s carelessness, which is also seen in many of Ramprasad’s poems. It is once again the mood of blame, with the question of why the Mother allows injustice. The goddess is beyond the opposites of good and evil, and as we see with the Biblical Job, human despair cannot fathom the ways of the deity.

When he writes on “The Nobility of Sorrow” in his Jiban Vigyan, Nazrul shows the ways that universal sorrow can help mankind, and make people more sensitive and aware:

To feel the pain of others is to realize the nobility of sorrow. It has no selfish motivation. Such pain is felt through the memory of one’s own pain. The soul is amazing in its ability to share the feelings of others. Such sharing can give a deep sense of joy… Words cannot express it. It is this realization which elevates human beings towards divinity.

(Kamal 1999)

Here, he discusses the role of universal sorrow and the situation of mankind. Human suffering is the birth pain of a new creation, a new form of humanity, and it is the Mother who gives birth to this new humanity. Sorrow brings about a shared awareness of the human family, which brings them closer to the divine state.

The focus on these emotions shows a recognition of the complexity of the goddess, who has power over all experience and shows herself through all rasas. The goddess is present on earth as well as in heaven, in pain as well as in joy. The heroic devotee is one who can perceive her through the maya of human experience. Anybody can love a god of blessing and happiness. However, as in the case of the Biblical Job, it is harder to love a God that brings suffering. In Shaktism, one is devoted in the face of challenges. The vira or hero, who in the tantric tradition is unmoved in the midst of forbidden rituals of sexuality and death, becomes in Shakta bhakti the devotee who can look beyond pain. Nevertheless, in this case, such far vision does not bring brahman, the goddess’ formless aspect. Instead, it brings a devotional love which includes the goddess and the world. This approach presupposes multiple lives, with many forms of experience. As day and night alternate, the emotions fluctuate in response to the variations throughout our lives. Also, sorrow can bring a form of nobility to the soul, which will share the suffering of the world in the search for divine love. From the perspective of Shakta ethnopsychology, it is suffering and divine love that separates the jiva from the atman.

We should note that in this tradition, Kali is a type of Great Goddess, a goddess that holds all opposites within herself: joy and sorrow, light and dark, pleasure and pain, creation and destruction. Knowing her dark side brings knowledge of her totality. While most Shakta devotees do not seek pain, and they endure it as a part of the goddess’ play (lila), some follow the older ideals in texts like the Upanishads (1000 BCE on). These texts include ascetic practices as a way to go beyond ordinary perception, and to realize the ultimate nature of the universe. Pain becomes a pathway to deeper knowledge, and ultimately union with the goddess.

5. Discussion

Suffering is a universal emotion, the first of the Buddha’s noble truths. Suffering alone is a special kind of pain, with no redeeming value or deeper meaning. However, placed in a religious context, it can become part of a greater narrative, the suffering of mankind that is part of the arc of salvation. Suffering is more painful when it is meaningless when pain and sorrow have no end and no goal. It has been one of the major tasks of religion to explain the reason for such difficult states and to turn suffering into mystical sorrow.

In this paper, we have examined three religions. How does suffering work in these religions? How does the literature on sorrow and pain contribute to spiritual growth?

Entrance into a divine family is a metaphor for all three traditions. In Roman Catholicism, the person enters the alternative family of the church through adoption. This process occurs through baptism, a sacrament which cleanses the person of original sin and allows him or her to join the Mystical Body of Christ. This allows full participation in the drama of the sorrowful death and joyous resurrection of the savior. In Shia Islam, the worshiper shares sorrow by mourning for the family of Muhammad, especially sharing Fatima’s suffering over the unjust death of her son Husayn, and in this way he or she becomes a part of the extended divine family. Lamentation, the ritual weeping associated with the loss of a family member, demonstrates one’s family status, and it is a shared religious emotion that is the basis for the clans and tribes which will continue into the heavens. In Hindu Shaktism, the devotee becomes a part of the nuclear family of the goddess, with a distant father but a close and loving mother. The worshiper feels misery during his or her life, but this personal suffering becomes reconciled with the divine love of the Mother. She adopts him or her as her child, with an eternal future in her love.

The mother figures in these traditions give a special kind of access to the divine presence. The Virgin Mary is the Queen of Heaven and the Angels, the Mother of Sorrows, and the Queen of the Martyrs. She acts as Advocate, Mediatrix, and Intercessor, to bring people close to God and the heavens. She is both Mother of the Church and the Refuge of Sinners, considered to be pure and sinless, an ideal woman. Fatima is the Mother of Imams and of All Believers, the Lady in Black and the Eternal Weeper. She is both a Judge in the Hereafter and an Intercessor for sinful humans. Her virtues are her dedication to God and her mercy towards mankind. She too is pure and sinless, and an ideal woman. However, Kali is the Goddess herself, and she would not need to intercede with any other deity. She is the Divine Mother, the Dark One, the Goddess of Burning Ground, the Primordial Energy (Adi Shakti), and the goddess who gives Liberation (Mokshadayini). She is not an ideal figure, but rather real, holding the creativity and destruction that is seen in nature. Pure good and pure evil are artificial constructs, not seen in the worlds of incarnation. She is beautiful, but she tears away attachments, so that concern with the earth will be transformed into concern with the infinite. She is neither light nor dark, she is the mystery from which the world was born, and the Truth revealed through the world of illusion.

We see salvation in these three religions through different forms of redemptive suffering; they are modalities of religious sorrow. In Roman Catholicism, we see vicarious suffering and contemplation of Jesus’ sorrows as a way to open the heart to universal love. In Shia Islam, it occurs through shared mourning for the death of Husayn, giving insight into the universal grief uniting heaven and earth, and preparing the soul for the Day of Judgment. In Shakta Hinduism, we see human misery that leads to world renunciation, giving up everything in devotion to the goddess, even the opposites of pleasure and pain. Sorrow purifies the soul, and it opens the door to Paradise. Those who are rich and powerful have their reward in this world, while those who grieve will have their reward in the next.

In terms of the ethnopsychology of religious emotion, each tradition has a structure of the person that allows such emotions to be transformative. The Catholic opposition of body and soul (and spirit) is transformed by a religious sorrow that atones for sin and purifies the soul, and this evokes the faith that allows entrance into the body of the saved. The Muslim breaking heart allows the higher spirit or ruh to be revealed amid the fog and darkness of the lower self or nafs. It is the qalb or heart that opens the pathway to the divine. In Shakta Hinduism, the lower self or jiva can become transformed into the higher self or atman with the realization of the goddess as beyond good and evil, brought initially by sorrow but transformed into a renunciate form of love, a love of the Infinite in whatever form it may take.

When suffering becomes a pathway to God, it makes the pain in life meaningful. In religious experience in these three traditions, ordinary suffering is transformed into mystical sorrow, giving life a purpose and direction. While their outer doctrines and rituals are different, these religions which have often viewed each other as enemies have inward aspects that can act as a basis for dialog.