Saturday 1 November 2014

37. Listen to Heart – Laminate Lamentation….

Hari Bol....

37. Listen to Heart – Laminate Lamentation….


Lamentation is the passionate expression of grief or sorrow. Lamentation leads to weeping. It is expression during sadness. It leads to cry of sorrow and grief. When one regrets for something deeply it is lamentation. It is a typical and specific behavior. This is a very typical behavior during mourning. It is an often vocal expression of grief or mourning. Lamentation usually occurs when someone dies or a tragedy occurs. At the funeral, you could hardly hear the speaker above the wails of lamentation. Lamentation is when grief pours out. If you lose a nice pencil that's no cause for lamentation, but if you lose all your money in a stock market crash that might be. If someone tells you you'll be late to your own funeral, you can always say: “At least I'll get to be part of the lamentation!” It is from the Latin word ‘Lamenta’, meaning “weeping” or “wailing,” lamentation means more than just shedding a few tears. It is recorded since 1375, from Latin lamentatio (“wailing, moaning, weeping”), from the deponent verb lāmentor, from lāmentum (“wail; wailing”), itself from a Proto-Indo-European *la- (“to shout, cry”), presumed ultimately imitative. It replaced old English ‘cwiþan’. Lament is a 16th-century back-formation.

Above Picture: Beweinung Christi (Lamentation of Christ, 1509) by German painter Bernhard Strigel. The lamentation of Christ is a common subject in Christian art, and shows Jesus being mourned by his family and friends after his crucifixion and descent from the Cross.

I was going through an article about Book of Lamentation which I going through. Most modern day biblical scholars assert that the Book of Lamentations was written by one or more authors in Judah, shortly after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC; and was penned as a response to Babylonian Exile, the intense suffering of the people of Judah, and the complete and utter destruction of Jerusalem. Werner E. Lemke and Kathleen O’Connor point out “Lamentations is probably the work of a survivor (or survivors) of the nation’s destruction who poured out sorrow, anger and dismay after the city’s traumatic defeat and occupation by the Babylonians." The theological views that led to its author(s) writing the Book of Lamentations emanated from the cultural and religious attitudes of the people of Judah in the 6th and 7th centuries BC and was probably also influenced by non-biblical sources which originated from the cultural and religious attitudes of Judah's neighbors of differing religions.

The book consists of five separate poems. In chapter 1 the prophet dwells on the manifold miseries oppressed by which the city sits as a solitary widow weeping sorely. In chapter 2 these miseries are described in connection with national sins and acts of God. Chapter 3 speaks of hope for the people of God. The chastisement would only be for their good; a better day would dawn for them. Chapter 4 laments the ruin and desolation that had come upon the city and temple, but traces it only to the people's sins. Chapter 5 is a prayer that Zion's reproach may be taken away in the repentance and recovery of the people.

The Book of Lamentations reflects the theological and biblical view that what happened to Jerusalem was a deserved punishment; and its destruction was instigated by their God for the communal sins of the people. This theological viewpoint was also widespread among Judah’s neighbors of differing religions who believed the destruction of a particular city could be attributed to the city’s deity who was punishing the city for some communal sin or wrongdoing. The destruction of cities by foreign invaders, and its resulting catastrophic suffering, unfortunately, was very common in the ancient Near East and, therefore, we can observe examples of the lament form/genre concerning destroyed cities and temples from extra-biblical sources, particularly from early Sumerian Literature dating to the late third and early second millennia BC. For example, from Sumerian Literature we can see the same Genre that we see in the Book of Lamentations of the Funeral Dirge and Lament reflected in the Sumerian Lament: Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur which depicts the destruction of the cities of Sumer and Ur. Yet, as Lemke and O’Connor point out, The Book of Lamentations, while adapting several traditional literary, historical, and cultural Near Eastern elements, is a unique literary composition, scripted to a specific historical situation, in response to a historical catastrophe, addressing the survivors of this catastrophe in a distinctive religious context.

Above Picture: Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem" by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.

Readings, chanting, and choral settings, of the book of Lamentations, are used in the Christian religious service known as the Tenebrae (Latin for darkness). In the Church of England, readings from Lamentations are used at Morning and Evening Prayer on the Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week, and at Evening Prayer on Good Friday. The Book of Lamentations is recited annually on the Tisha b'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of both of the Jewish Temples as well as numerous other unfavorable days in Jewish history. At the "Wailing Wall" in the Old City of Jerusalem, "the Jews assemble every Friday afternoon to bewail the downfall of the holy city, kissing the stone wall and watering it with their tears. They repeat from their well-worn Hebrew Bibles and prayer-books the Lamentations of Jeremiah and suitable Psalms." In the Coptic Orthodox Church chapter three is chanted on the twelfth hour of the Good Friday service that commemorates the burial of Jesus.

The Lord Krishna who is the Supreme Personality of Godhead said, “While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead.”

As Arjuna did not happen to be a very learned man, he was consequently lamenting for something which was unworthy of lamentation. A person who knows this is actually learned, and for him there is no cause for lamentation, regardless of the condition of the material body. The body is born and is destined to be vanquished today or tomorrow; therefore the body is not as important as the soul. One who knows this is actually learned, and for him there is no cause for lamentation, regardless of the condition of the material body.
Krishna says in Gita that give up lamentation. The nature of the world is such that events will sooner or later impel us to lament, but the Gita’s message takes our vision beyond this world of materialistic world to the Supreme, whose enduring love gives us the confidence to tolerate and transcend the unenduring storms of the world.

All Glories to Lord Krishna & All His Loving Devotees….. Hari Bol……
Courtesy: Bhagavad-Gita As It Is (by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada ) , Srimad Bhagavad-Gita ( by A. Parthasarathy  & www.gitadaily.com ) Chapter 2 : Text 11 , www.google.com, Wikipedia. www.krishna.com, www.krishna.org, www.thefreedictionary.com, www.yourdictonary.com, en.wikipedia.org, www.answers.com, The Book of Lamentations

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