Love in Separation
The eleventh form is the intense love that lives in the very pain of separation from the beloved, keeping the heart aflame.
Parama-viraha-asakti is the love expressed through the anguish of separation (viraha) — the burning longing of the devotee parted from the beloved, which the tradition counts as one of love's highest forms. The gopis' grief when Krishna left Vrindavan, and the yearning poured out in the poetry of the saints, show that separation, far from diminishing love, intensifies it to its purest pitch. In this mood the very pain becomes sweet, for it is wholly occupied with the beloved and proves the depth of the heart's attachment. The longing itself becomes a form of union, since the beloved fills the mind completely. The separated devotee loves through tears that are themselves a kind of worship. This sacred ache keeps the flame of love from ever growing cold.
And the highest love is that which burns even in the pain of separation.
The exaltation of longing-in-separation parallels the Sufi concept of firaq, the lover's anguished distance from the Beloved, which Rumi's Masnavi opens by likening to the reed torn from the reed-bed, crying for its home.
Narada Bhakti Sutras
Written about in
- What the Narada Bhakti Sutras say about loneliness
The tradition counts viraha, love in separation, among the eleven forms love takes — not as a failure of the other ten. The claim is specific: longing fills the mind with the beloved completely, so the ache itself functions as a kind of contact.