Śōka (Sanskrit, grief, sorrow, lamentation) appears across multiple theological and devotional contexts in Śrī Vaishnava literature. Its most celebrated occurrence is in the Bhagavad Gītā's opening: Arjuna, overcome by grief (viṣāda) at the sight of his beloved kinsmen ready to be killed in battle, collapses in his chariot (BG 1.28–2.8). This śōka is the direct occasion for Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa's teaching — the Gītā is born from Arjuna's grief. In this sense, the Gītā itself can be understood as Bhagavān's compassionate response to a suffering devotee.
The ācārya tradition reads Arjuna's śōka on two levels: (1) On the mundane level, it reflects the confusion of a soul that identifies with the body and its attachments (deha-ātma-bhrama). Kṛṣṇa addresses this by teaching the eternal nature of the ātmā in Chapter 2. (2) On a deeper level, some commentators read Arjuna's collapse as an involuntary act of prapatti — his surrender arising from utter helplessness (ākiñcanyam), making him a fit vessel for Bhagavān's grace.
In the devotional literature of the Āzhvārs, śōka appears in its most exalted form as viraha-śōka — the grief of the soul separated from Bhagavān. The paradigm for this is Nammāzhvār's Tiruvāymozhi: across multiple decades (especially the 'antādi' sections), the Āzhvār voices the anguish of the ātmā that has tasted Bhagavān's beauty and cannot bear separation. This grief is not pathological but sacred — it is the inverse of joy in Bhagavān's presence, and its intensity measures the depth of the devotee's love (prema).
Śrī Rāmānuja, in his Śaraṇāgati Gadyam, also voices a form of śōka — the sorrow of a baddha-jīva who has wasted countless births in saṃsāra and now stands confessed before Bhagavān. This penitential śōka, combined with trust in Bhagavān's mercy, is one of the emotional pre-conditions of prapatti.