Chapter 2

Sanjaya continued: To Arjuna—overwhelmed with compassion and grief, his eyes brimming with tears, sunk in despondency—Krishna, the slayer of Madhu, his charioteer, spoke these firm words:

Krishna: How has this weakness come over you? Where does this disgraceful faintness come from, shameful to a brave man, blocking the path of virtue? No, Arjuna, don’t give in to such feebleness. It tarnishes your warrior’s name. Throw off this cowardly fit. Wake up. Be yourself. Rise, you scourge of your enemies.

Arjuna: How can I, in battle, fire arrows at Bhishma or Drona, O chief? Both are worthy of worship, both honorable men. It would be better to live as a beggar than to feast on rich meals tasting of their blood and survive in guilt. And who can say which is worse—to win here or to lose—when those who face us in anger are the very ones whose deaths would leave life empty? Lost in pity, tossed by doubt, my thoughts turn distractedly to you, the guide I most revere, that I may learn what to do. I cannot see what would heal the grief burned into my soul and senses, even if I became the unchallenged ruler of the earth, or a god, with all these dead and gone.

Sanjaya: So Arjuna spoke to Krishna, the Lord of Hearts, and with a sigh said, “I will not fight,” and fell silent. To him, O Bharata, with a tender smile, while the prince wept in despair between the two armies, Krishna replied in divine words:

Krishna: You grieve where no grief belongs, and your words lack wisdom. The wise in heart mourn neither for the living nor for the dead. There was never a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these princes; nor will any of us ever cease to be. Everything that lives, lives always. Just as the body passes through infancy, youth, and age, so the soul takes up and lays down one dwelling after another. The wise know this and are not afraid. What troubles you—your sense-life, with its responses to the elements, bringing heat and cold, sorrow and joy—is brief and changeable. Endure it, prince, as the wise endure. The soul that is unmoved, that meets sorrow and joy with the same steady calm, lives in undying life. That which truly is can never cease to be; that which is not will never come to exist. To see this truth belongs to those who can tell essence from accident, substance from shadow. Learn this: the Life is indestructible, spreading itself through everything. It cannot in any way be diminished, stopped, or changed. But these passing frames it inhabits with deathless, endless, infinite spirit—these do perish. Let them perish, prince, and fight! Whoever says, “Look, I have killed a man!” and whoever thinks, “Look, I am killed!”—neither understands. Life cannot kill. Life is not killed.

The spirit was never born; the spirit shall never cease to be. There was never a time when it was not. Beginning and end are dreams. Birthless, deathless, changeless, the spirit remains forever. Death does not touch it at all, though its dwelling appears to die.

Whoever knows the spirit as inexhaustible, self-sustained, immortal, indestructible—how can such a person say, “I have killed a man, or caused a man to be killed”?

Just as someone lays aside worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, saying, “I’ll wear these today,” so the spirit easily sets aside its garment of flesh and moves on to take up a new dwelling.

I tell you, weapons cannot reach the Life; flame cannot burn it, waters cannot drown it, dry winds cannot wither it. It is impenetrable, unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched, immortal, all-pervading, stable, certain, invisible, ineffable, beyond word and thought, eternally itself. This is the Soul as declared. Knowing this, then, how can you grieve when there is no cause for grief? If you understand that the newly dead, like the newly born, is still a living man—one same existing Spirit—why weep? Birth ends in death, and death ends in birth: this is the order of things. Why mourn, mighty-armed warrior, for what could not happen otherwise? The birth of living things is unseen; their death is unseen; only the time between is observed. What is there to be sad about in this, dear prince?

It is wonderful and wistful to contemplate, difficult and uncertain to put into words, strange and great for the tongue to relate, mysterious for any ear to hear. And even when one has seen, spoken, and heard of it, one still doesn’t grasp how marvelous it is.

This Life within all living things, my prince, lies beyond harm. Refuse to suffer for what cannot suffer. Do your part! Remember your name, and don’t tremble. Nothing better can come to a warrior’s soul than a righteous war. Happy is the warrior to whom comes the joy of battle, as it has come to you now—glorious, fair, unsought—opening for him a gateway to heaven. But if you refuse this honorable field—you, a Kshatriya—if, knowing your duty, you let duty go, that will be your sin. Future generations will speak ill of you from age to age, and for men of noble blood, disgrace is harder to bear than death. The chiefs in their chariots will conclude that fear drove you from the fight. Those who held you great-souled will scorn you, and your enemies will mock you with bitter words, ridiculing the courage you once had. What fate could be worse? Either, killed, you win the security of heaven, or, alive and victorious, you reign as an earthly king. So rise, son of Kunti! Brace your arm for combat. Steel your heart to take pleasure and pain, profit and ruin, victory and defeat as the same thing. With that mindset, gird yourself for battle, and you will commit no sin.

So far I’ve spoken to you from the standpoint of Sankhya, the unspiritual approach. Now hear the deeper teaching of Yoga, by which, once you grasp it, you will break the bonds of karma, the chains of your actions. Here no effort is wasted, no hope spoiled, no loss to be feared: even a little faith will save you from your dread. Here, glory of the Kurus, one rule shines steady, while wavering souls have many hard laws. Treat as plausible but false the talk of those poorly taught teachers who praise the letter of the Vedas, saying, “This is all we have or need.” Weak-hearted with their wants, seekers of heaven, they say it comes as “fruit of good deeds done,” promising men advantages in later births for works of faith, with various rituals heaped up; large merit, they say, accumulates toward wealth and power. But those who most crave wealth and power have the least steadiness of soul and the least grasp of heavenly meditation. The Vedas teach much about the “three qualities”; but you, be free of the three qualities, free of the pairs of opposites, free of that anxious righteousness that keeps an account. Be self-governed, Arjuna—simple, satisfied. Just as a tank pours out water for every need, these Brahmans draw a text for every want from the reservoir of Scripture. But you—want nothing, ask nothing. Find your full reward for doing right in the right itself. Let right deeds be your motive, not the fruit they bring. Live in action. Work. Make your acts your devotion, setting self aside, indifferent to gain and merit, even-minded in good or evil. This evenness of mind is Yoga, this is piety.

And yet the right act is far less than the right-thinking mind. Take refuge in your soul; find your heaven there. Scorn those who pursue virtue for its rewards. The mind of pure devotion, even in this life, sets aside both good deeds and bad, rising above them. Devote yourself to pure devotion. With perfect meditation comes perfect action, and the right-hearted rise—more surely because they seek no gain—out of the body’s bonds, step by step, to the highest seats of bliss. When your firm soul has shaken off those tangled oracles that guide ignorantly, then it will soar to a high indifference to what is permitted or forbidden, this way or that, in doctrinal writings. No longer troubled by priestly learning, your soul will live safe and sure, steadily intent on meditation. This is Yoga—and peace.

Arjuna: What is the mark of one with such a steady heart, settled in holy meditation? How do we recognize his speech, Kesava? Does he sit and move like other men?

Krishna: When a person, son of Pritha, abandoning the desires that disturb the mind, finds in his soul full comfort for his soul, he has attained Yoga. Such is the man. Not cast down in sorrow, not carried away in joy; living outside the pressure of passion, fear, and anger; settled in the calms of lofty contemplation—such a one is a muni, a sage, a true recluse. He who is bound nowhere and to no one by ties of flesh, who takes things bad and good without despair or exultation—he bears the plainest mark of wisdom. He who, like the wise tortoise drawing its four feet safely under its shell, withdraws his five fragile senses behind the soul’s shield from the world that would otherwise assail them—he, my prince, has the mark of wisdom. Objects of sense leave the self-governed alone; even the appetites of one who lives beyond them fade away, no longer roused. Yet it may happen, son of Kunti, that even a controlled mind will feel the storm of the senses sweep through and tear out self-control by the roots. Let him win back his kingdom—let him conquer this, and sit fixed on Me. That man alone is wise who keeps mastery of himself.

If one dwells on objects of sense, attraction springs up; from attraction grows desire; desire flames into fierce passion; passion breeds recklessness; then memory, betrayed, lets noble purpose slip and saps the mind, until purpose, mind, and man are all undone. But if one deals with objects of sense without loving or hating them, making them serve a free soul that rests serenely as lord, then such a person comes to tranquility; and from that tranquility rises the end and healing of his earthly pains, since the governed will sets the soul at peace. The ungoverned man does not possess his soul, nor does he know himself; and lacking that, how can serenity grow? And without serenity, where can he look for happiness?

The mind that gives itself to following the shows of sense sees its rudder of wisdom torn away and, like a ship in stormy seas, drives toward wreck and death. Only in him, great prince, whose senses are not swayed by sense-objects—only in the one who keeps his mastery—does wisdom appear in full. What is midnight darkness to unenlightened souls shines as wakeful day to his clear sight; what seems wakeful day to them he knows for night, the thick night of ignorance. Such is the saint.

And as the ocean, day after day, receives the floodwaters of every land yet never overflows its shoreline, never leaping out, never retreating, fed by the rivers but never swollen by them—

so is the perfect one. Into the ocean of his soul the world of sense pours its enchanting streams; they leave him as they found him, undisturbed, paying their tribute while he remains the sea.

Yes, whoever shakes off the yoke of the flesh and lives as master, not servant, of his desires, freed from pride, from passion, from the sin of “Self,” touches tranquility. O son of Pritha, that is the state of Brahma. No dread remains once that last step is taken. Live where he will, die when he may, such a one passes beyond all lamentation to blessed Nirvana, attaining union with the gods.

Here ends Chapter II of the Bhagavad-Gita, entitled “Sankhya-Yoga,” or “The Book of Doctrines.”