Param-Pad: The Transcendent Ground of Grief

Param-pad, the "supreme abode" or ultimate ground of being, appears frequently in Mirabai's songs. It represents the eternal, unchanging reality beneath all transience. Grief anniversaries reveal the paradox of human life: everything we love is temporary, yet love itself seems eternal. Param-pad invites us to hold both. On a triggering date, we feel the acute reality of impermanence—the person is gone, time has moved on, things have changed irrevocably. Yet we also touch something that doesn't change: the love itself, the bond itself, the spiritual substance of what was real between us. The examined heart, standing on param-pad, grieves fully without being destroyed by grief. We acknowledge death while touching the deathless. This is not bypassing sorrow but transcending despair—recognizing that loss is real and that love, too, is ultimately real, perhaps more real than the changing forms it inhabited.