The Field and the Knower

To lift Arjuna from his despair, Krishna did not begin with strategy or with exhortation, but with the deepest metaphysics, with the truth about the soul; for Arjuna's grief rested on a false belief, that in killing the body one destroys the person, and the whole despair could be dissolved only by uprooting that false belief at its source.

The wise, Krishna told him, grieve neither for the living nor for the dead:

अशोच्यानन्वशोचस्त्वं प्रज्ञावादांश्च भाषसे।

गतासूनगतासूंश्च नानुशोचन्ति पण्डिताः॥

ashochyān anvashochas tvaṁ prajñāvādāṁsh cha bhāṣase

gatāsūn agatāsūṁsh cha nānushochanti paṇḍitāḥ

You grieve, Krishna said, for that which is not worthy of grief, while speaking words of wisdom; but the wise do not mourn for the living or the dead. For there was never a time when I was not, nor you, nor any of these kings, nor shall we ever cease to be. The soul does not die when the body dies. And he gave the great image, which the whole book has been circling since Yayāti's day:

वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि।

तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णान्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही॥

vāsāṁsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya navāni gṛhṇāti naro 'parāṇi

tathā sharīrāṇi vihāya jīrṇāny anyāni saṁyāti navāni dehī

As a person casts off worn-out garments and puts on new ones, so the soul casts off worn-out bodies and enters new ones. The soul is not born and does not die; it is unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient; it is not slain when the body is slain:

न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः।

अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे॥

na jāyate mriyate vā kadāchin nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ

ajo nityaḥ shāshvato 'yaṁ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne sharīre

The soul, Krishna taught, cannot be cut by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor wetted by water, nor dried by wind; it is unbreakable, unburnable, eternal, present everywhere, unchanging, immovable, everlasting. And knowing this, Arjuna, you should not grieve; for the body is perishable and was always going to perish, but the dweller in the body is beyond all harm.

This is the foundation of the whole teaching, and it is worth resting on before we go further, for it changes everything. Arjuna grieved because he believed that in this battle he would destroy the very being of his kinsmen; and Krishna's first answer is that no one can destroy the being of anyone, that the soul is untouchable, that what falls in battle is only the outer garment while the wearer passes on.

This is not offered as a cold comfort or an excuse for slaughter; it is offered as the deep truth about what we are, that we are not these perishable bodies but the eternal souls that wear them, infinitesimal fragments of the Supreme, indestructible and everlasting. And from this truth flows a great freedom: the freedom from the terror of death, both our own and others', the understanding that the deepest self is beyond all that can be done to the body, and that our grief, real as it is, mourns the garment and not the soul.

All the rest of the Gītā's teaching rests on this ground: that the self is eternal, and that to know this is to be freed from the fear that paralyzes us.