Bereavement and Grief in Buddhist Literature: The Story of Kisa Gothami

Four Tasks of Grief by William Worden is a profound theoretical framework on Bereavement and grief. Recently I referred to it as I was supposed to do an assignment on a similar topic. After the assignment submission, I suddenly remembered a famous story in Buddhist literature. It was about a woman called Kisa Gothami (aka Gothami) whose life became a tragedy after the death of her son. Her story is a great example to demonstrate some aspects of Worden's perspective on bereavement and grief.

Gothami in the Buddhist literature

Gothami was known for her inborn fortune, leading her to marry a Baron in ancient India. She was privileged with aristocratic status and blessed with a comfortable motherhood. But, fate was too soon to grab her child son away from her. To the general theory of motherhood, she wasn't ready to accept her son as a corpse. She thought her child was sleeping, so she clasped his body, tried to feed him, and insanely wandered from place to place. No one could help her with her situation and regain consciousness. However, she was directed to the Gauthama Buddha, the greatest empathetic human with incomparable intelligence, who was the teacher of Buddhist philosophy.

Gauthama Buddha, approached Gothamai convincing her that the only option to revive the child was "Mustard Seeds". Also, he imposed a condition to collect those from a house where no one had died before. Gothami, who was in extreme denial about her child's death wandered here and there looking for Mustard seeds from a home unaffected by death. Soon she realized that as Mustard seeds are frequent bereavements also frequent, none of us can resist. This simple strategy helped her regain her consciousness and achieve a supreme state of 'Arahath', a supermundane status described in Buddhism.

Psychological Perspective

Grief is the emotional content of bereavement which is a completely natural and inevitable phenomenon that every human has to experience during their lifespan. According to William Worden, there are various types of grief that humans experience. Gothami's bereavement was unexpected, losing a child is a complicated grief in nature. Even though this is a natural incident, prolonged and unmanaged grief leads to detrimental consequences. According to Buddhist literature, unless Gothami was directed to Buddha she would have ended with such pathetic sequels. Worden emphasized to get over the grievance, we have to actively work on a "4-task" completion.

Task I: Accept the Reality

Either expected or unexpected bereavement has been attached to us since our birth. The matter is how long we take to accept it. This is one of the core teachings of Buddhism. Gothami was also unable to accept her child was dead. Instead, she kept his body thinking he would stand again which Worden described as "mummification" citing Geoffrey Gorer. Another strategy that Worden highlighted that supports denial is spirituality. In Gothami's case, she believed Buddha may help her with Mustard to resuscitate her son. Those who are deeply trapped in a state of denial may follow any kind of activity in the name of spirituality. It is common nowadays too. Until we accept that the deceased person no longer exists, we wander in this maze, exactly as Gothami did.

Task II: Work Through the Pain of Grief

According to Worden, the inability to complete the 2nd task makes the people carry their grievance throughout life which may even require therapy later on. The integral point in his explanation is, that intimate parties should encourage bereaving people to express their grief through safe and appropriate reactions rather than compel them to suppress or bottle up their emotions. According to Worden, people use 'bypass' suppressive strategies such as "Geographical cure", in which people travel from place to place finding relief rather than truly experiencing the grief. These strategies are not healthy as they distract people from achieving Task II. Unintentionally Gothami was also wandering. Buddha neither blocked her emotional expressions nor gave platitudes. Rather assigned her a task to commit to altering the adverse behavior into an insightful one. There, eventually, she realized that bereavement is common for all only the intensity varies.

Task III: Adjust to the Environment Where the Deceased is Missing

Worden elucidated 3 aspects of adjustment,

1. External
2. Internal
3. Spiritual

Depending on the relationship with the deceased adapting to the world where that role no longer exists is denoted by 'external adjustment'. The demise of her son shifted Gothami's status as a mother to an ordinary woman.

Balancing the impacted internal sense of 'self' due to bereavement is denoted as 'internal adjustment'. Losing a child cannot be seen merely as a natural bereavement in some cultures. The collectivistic influence tends to assign the child's overall responsibility to the mother which has the potential to lower the mother's self-esteem, confidence, and efficacy with the self-built stigma as a 'bad mother'.

Bereavement can alter one's sense of the world, beliefs, and values which is defined as 'spiritual adjustment'. Worden extracted, mothers whose children died at very young ages often struggle with God about why such things were allowed to take place. According to Buddhist literature, the demise directed Gothami from her mundane life to the supermundane/ transcendent realm.

Task IV: Emotionally Relocate the Deceased and Move with Life

Worden posited, that withdrawing emotions from the deceased and reinvesting them in another relationship is the core of Task IV. In my view, this is somewhat dependable for the reason of people's insights, trajectories, and re-born personalities after bereavement. For instance, dependant personality traits such as urgently seeking another relationship as a source of care. Thus not all who do this can be considered who overcame the grief process. Also, those who practice Buddhism, understand the outcome of attachment as suffering despite its momentary pleasure. Hence, they practice avoiding attachments gradually with a positive insight. So as Gothami did. According to the literature she was blessed with the supreme relief of the supermundane realm after realizing the naturality of bereavement and the way it sprouted from human attachments. The Buddhist perspective focuses on relieving living beings from their suffering by recognizing pain, identifying the source of pain, ending pain, and the path to get over it. That philosophy reveals the importance of accepting reality and employing effort to let go of the attachments that are the seeds of suffering.

Worden's four tasks are not necessarily to be achieved sequentially, depending on the individual's strength and the external support received, the order and the time duration can be varied. The integral idea that Worden's framework posits is that, to heal first one needs to feel the pain, realize that one is suffering, and actively work on it.

Reference

• Worden,?J.?W. (2008).?Grief counseling and grief therapy?(3rd?ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
• Buddhist literature