Truly there was never a time when I was not,
Nor thou, nor these lords of men;
And neither will there be a time when we shall cease to be;
All of us exist from this time onward.
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Know that that by which all this universe
Is pervaded is indeed indestructable;
No one is able to accomplish
The destruction of this imperishable.
These bodies inhabited by the eternal,
The indestructible, the immeasurable embodied one,
These bodies alone are said to come to an end.
Therefore fight, Arjuna!
He who imagines this one the slayer
And he who imagines this one the slain,
Neither of them understands;
This one does not slay, nor is it slain.
Neither is this one, the embodied one, born nor does it die at any time,
Nor, having been, will it again come not to be.
Birthless, eternal, perpetual, primaeval,
It is not slain when the body is slain.
He who knows this--the indestructable, the eternal,
The birthless, the imperishable--
Whom does he cause to slay, Arjuna?
Whom does he slay?
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For the born, death is certain;
For the dead there is certainly birth.
Therefore, inevitable in consequence,
Thou should not mourn over this.
Beings are such that their beginnings are unmanifest,
Their midpoints are manifest,
And their ends are unmanifest again.
What complaint can there be over this?
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The embodied one is eternally inviolable
In the body of all, Arjuna,
Therefore thou should not mourn
For any being.
And perceiving thine own implicit duty
Thou should not tremble.
Indeed, for the implicit warrior,
anything superior to appropriate battle does not exist.
And so, if thou will not undertake
This proper engagement,
having avoided thine own implicit duty,
Thou will promote and encourage evil.
Krshna to Arjuna, from the Bhagavad Gita
(for the benefit of those to whom these words not familiar) |
