Sankhya Yoga
Chapter 2, Verse 11
śrī bhagavān uvāca
aśocyān anvaśocas tvaṁ
prajñāvādāṁśca bhāṣase
gatāsūn agatāsūṁśca
nānuśocanti paṇḍitāḥ
The Lord says: You grieve for those who should not be grieved for, yet you speak words of wisdom. The enlightened man does not mourn for either the living or for the dead.
Now is the beginning of the Gita. The real Gita starts now with the smile of the Lord. All that came before was just a preparation for this.
The Lord says, “You grieve for those who should not be grieved for, yet you speak words of wisdom.” You see, Bhagavan Krishna has been watching and observing Arjuna all the time. The Great Observer always observes life and sees life. He observes how life is going on. Your true Self, the Atma, is always observing life from within you. Krishna says, “You grieve, ‘yet you speak words of wisdom’. You know about life, you have the right feeling inside but when you speak, you say something stupid.” You have the deep feeling inside that you should not do something! But you do it anyway! And then afterwards you say, “Oops, terrible! I did it again!” Learn this great wisdom. You have the wisdom, you have the knowledge, you have the feeling inside you.
“The enlightened man does not mourn for either the living or for the dead.” Krishna says, “There is no beginning and there is no end. There is no birth, there is no death.” Krishna is going slowly with Arjuna, saying, “Let Me give him the knowledge step by step.” He is gradually taking Arjuna from the state he is in before. The utmost thought in Arjuna’s mind, at that time, has been about the destruction of the family, the destruction of the race and the inevitable consequences of the war. In Chapter 1, he says that the war will bring confusion; it will cause the downfall of the castes; and the ancestors will go to hell. Krishna has said, “You are wise. Mourn not.” That is what Christ says in the Bible. When the disciple came to Him and says, “First let me go and bury my father, then I will come,” Christ says, “Let the dead bury themselves.”
If you want true wisdom, know that there is no birth and no death. You are the Atma, you are eternal. For the Atma, there is no beginning, there is no end. So why do you mourn? You have come here to attain a higher reality; you have come here to do a higher work than what you realise. Krishna tells Arjuna that the wise never grieve in this way. The one who has the knowledge of the Self, the realised one, the Jivan Mukta knows that the Atma is eternal and that there is no point in mourning or grieving. The wise person, the paṇḍitāḥ, knows that God is the embodiment of true knowledge, Satchitananda. The wise person knows that it is only Him who is abiding in everything. He is the Self of all. He is the indestructible Absolute. Whatever is created – the body or whatever you see in the outer world – is not permanent. He says, “Do ‘not mourn for either the living or for the dead.’ Whatever is created, will be destroyed.” Everything in this world keeps changing. The only one who is not changing is God. The body is temporary, it goes through changes and dies. It doesn’t stay.
The association, the link between the body and the soul, is like a dream. Sometimes you dream of something and in that dream, everything appears so real: you are running, you are very active and very busy in that dream; you feel it! But when the dream ends, you wake up, and realise, “Oh, it was a dream.” When you are in that dream, you don’t see reality. But when you are out of that dream, you are back in reality. Krishna is talking about birth and death, about living and not living. This is similar to dreaming. When you are in a dream, everything is imaginary; but when you come back to reality, you realise that it was just a dream. So awake! An awakened man, enlightened man knows that a dream is only a dream and he stays out of that dream.
Krishna says, “So Arjuna, why are you in these circumstances in grief? You are wise, you should not be in grief. In your words when you speak, you are grieving. But there is much Truth inside you; there is much wisdom inside you. You are not just stupidly saying all these words. You have great compassion for others; you care deeply for others. But do you really want to help others? First help yourself! If you help yourself and become strong, then it will be much easier to help other people.”
Bhagavad Gita
