Kinship With All Things

Bhakti practice, as modeled by Mirabai, progressively dissolves the boundary between self and other, human and non-human. The divine beloved is not only in the temple but in all creatures. This expansion of kinship radically shifts how we hold anticipatory grief about civilization. Instead of grieving civilization as though it were separate from nature, we feel ourselves as nature grieving itself through human consciousness. The extinctions, the climate shifts, the transformation of landscapes are not external losses but losses within our own extended body. This kinship does not lead to paralysis but to a more mature accountability: we recognize that our civilization is not standing apart from the web of life judging it, but implicated within it, capable of both harm and healing. Mirabai's devotional practice teaches us to love the whole interconnected cosmos, which requires holding the grief of all beings, not just our species' losses.