What Manikkavachakar's Tiruvachakam Tells You When You Weep and Cannot Name the Grief

The cry that has no object

You know this feeling. Not grief over something. Not sadness with a cause you can point to. Just tears that arrive in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, while you are washing rice, or standing on a railway platform, or hearing a particular note in a song you have heard a hundred times before. You look for the reason. There isn't one. Or rather, the reason is so deep it has no surface address.Most traditions tell you this feeling is a problem to be solved. Manikkavachakar, the 9th-century Tamil Shaiva saint, is one of the few who tells you it is a form of knowledge.