The Garden of Sorrows

Mirabai's devotion was embodied and sensual—she danced, she used flowers and fragrance as offerings. The garden metaphor offers a practical framework for anticipatory grief: rather than holding abstract despair about 'civilization,' we tend to specific griefs in specific gardens—the wetland being drained, the language disappearing, the neighborhood transformed, the coral reef bleaching. This practice roots grief in the particular and observable, which both honors loss and enables response. A garden requires attention, work, small acts of restoration. Some plants die; we compost them. Others we protect. The Garden of Sorrows is not a metaphor for passivity but for committed, daily, embodied care. Mirabai's love was specific: for Krishna, for music, for the night sky. Ours can be too.