Vismarana as Strategic Forgetting

Vismarana—forgetting, relinquishment—appears in bhakti as a practice of surrendering ego-driven concerns and past grievances to focus on devotion. Mirabai's radical abandonment of court life, caste status, and widow conventions involved strategic forgetting of what no longer served her true love. In anticipatory civilizational grief, vismarana becomes essential for psychological sustainability. We face the reality of what has already been lost—species extinct, cultures erased, ecosystems collapsed—which we cannot undo. To remain effective, we must practice vismarana of these unchangeable losses, not through denial but through honest acknowledgment followed by conscious release. This creates mental and emotional bandwidth for focused attention on what remains salvageable: relationships, local ecosystems, knowledge systems, skills, cultures, and possibilities still within our reach. Vismarana is not dissociation but disciplined grief followed by redirection. It honors the dead and disappeared by channeling our devotion toward the living and the possible, much as Mirabai honored earthly bonds by transcending them toward higher love.