Joy and Sorrow, these two are the basic things that forms the life. Right from childhood till the old days, these are the two things that continues parallel in your life, as if the two sides of a ladder. But have you thought, what are the core reasons of this sorrow or joy?

What Bhagavad Gita says

Chapter 2 of Bhagavad Gita states about attachments and its fruits. According to the scripts, it is earthly attachment that brings sorrow and joy – when you find in life the thing that you are attached with, you feel joyous and on the contrary, when you won’t get it, you feel sorrow. Consider some examples to understand the thing and also realize how things take up some ugly shapes, without our mindful consciousness.

Case study 1: Birth of a baby

Consider birth of a child as the first example. Parents longed for a son, while the wife was pregnant. Now, at the time of birth, they discovered that it is a baby daughter and they feel the agony of pain or sorrow, within their heart. What happens now in either case. Get through it now. As the child born is a baby boy, parents start rejoicing on their kid and this rejoice continues to flow for years. They care the baby and at times that care turns so much intense that, it turns out to as pampering the baby. Gradually the baby starts feeling shy to the world and plunges into the darkness of sorrow… which again gives sorrow to the parents .

On the other hand, the baby if it is a daughter, she bears the sorrow of her parents, which eventually carries negligence, at least a bit. this again creates pain in the daughter, and she bears the pain as she turns out to be a lady, and at last that turns out to as her own sorrow.

Case Study 2: Passing out an exam

In your life, if you are reading this article, you must have gone to school, at least once and there you must have faced exams. Here is a story of three friends, who was preparing for their exams .
One of the friends, after coming out of the exam hall, stated that he had given an excellent exam and would secure 90 percent marks.
The second friend stated that he also have given outstanding exam and will surely get 80% marks.
The last of the three friends stated that he is satisfied with the exam he have given, now what marks, he would get depends on the teacher, so he is not going to think about that.

Results came out within a week and the first friend found that he secured 65% marks, instead of 90%. The second friend found that he got 82% marks, instead of 80% and the third friend got 79% marks.
Now, the first friend, finding that his expectations are not met, felt sorrow; the second friend finding that he received best quality marks and that is beyond his expectation, faced high class ego and stopped mixing with his old friends. But the last friend felt nothing but the joy of passing the exam. Thus, …

Attachment develops expectations; when expectations are met, it give rise to false-ego and while not met it develops sorrow. If attachment is thrown out, it develops joy, pure joy.

How a devotee explains sorrow?

All that has been stated above are worldly and psychological concepts, but the aspect of a devotee has not been considered till now. The matter is that, a devotee is simple and the simplest minded. He/she looks at the world with eyes that are even more simpler than that of a baby. Thus the intelligent will always consider rethinking on what a devotee thinks on an aspect. A devotee really looks at the thing with utter simplicity and redefines the reason of sorrow by only two things –

1)The person who won’t think about lord experiences sorrow unless and until, he /she starts Bhakti lord.
2) A devotee who thinks about lord, while attaches with someone or something else, experiences sorrow.

You might feel that this is just a word of an ignorant, but forget who says this and try to throw some light at it. What you have learnt from the discussion says clearly that it is attachment, which is the source of sorrow and to a devotee, sorrow is what he/she experience from the detachment from lord. A devotee knows well that, the world is just an illusion of Lord and Lord is the destiny of all. Keeping that in mind, devotee firmly believes that a person who doesn’t do bhakti of Lord, experiences sorrow, which is sourced by Lord himself/herself (Lord has no gender actually). On the other hand, for a devotee, if he/she feels a minute attachment to someone else, forgetting lord, he/she is assassinated with sorrow.

As a devotee feels, it is the Lord, who dreams the universe and hence, it is him/her alone who is the actual doer of everything. Hence, he/she is the source of sorrow and even of rejoice. Hence, out of bhakti, a devotee assigns the granter of sorrow to Lord himself/herself and defines the reason of sorrow as stated above. So, never think that a devotee is childish and his/her words are baseless. The base, their word has, is derived from the purest form of love – Bhakti and hence that contains truth to the extreme level.

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