The Gita in daily life
When someone has died
Someone I love has died. What does the Gita have to say to me?
Someone I love has died. What does the Gita have to say to me?
Someone has died, and the Gita does not begin by comforting you. Krishna’s argument is that the one who dwells in the body is not born and does not die (2.20), that it puts aside a worn body as a man puts aside worn clothes (2.22), and that whatever is born will certainly die (2.27). Those are claims about what has happened to the person who died. They are not claims about what you are feeling. On that the text says one thing: bear it (2.14). It does not say the loss is not a loss.
Hansi Gita Bhawan Trust · from the Bhagavad Gita
The Gita does not open gently. Krishna’s first response to Arjuna’s collapse is that it does not befit him and wins him nothing (2.2). When the teaching proper begins at 2.11, the line is harder still: you grieve for those who need no grief, and the words you use sound like wisdom. It is worth being exact about what that sentence is. It is the opening move of an argument between two men on a battlefield, addressed to a soldier who is refusing a war. It is not a rule handed to a mourner at a cremation ground.
Look at what the argument actually claims. The dweller in the body passes through childhood, youth and age and then into another body (2.13). It is not killed when the body is killed (2.20). It changes bodies as a man changes clothes (2.22). Birth and death follow one another and cannot be avoided (2.27). Every one of these is a claim about the one who died. None of them is a claim about the one left behind. The Gita nowhere says that the particular person you knew — the voice, the habits, the face — comes back to you, or that you will meet again.
To the mourner the text says less, and it says it once. Contact with things brings cold and heat, pleasure and pain; they come and they go; they do not last; bear them (2.14). Bear is the verb. Not deny, not rise above, not be grateful. And the argument does not settle Arjuna either. He has already told Krishna that nothing he can imagine would dry up this grief (2.8), and the conversation runs on for sixteen more chapters before he says his confusion has gone (18.73). Whatever this teaching is, it is not quick.
In the Gita’s own words
Where this comes from.
Bhagavad Gita 2.11Shri Bhagavan
अशोच्यानन्वशोचस्त्वं प्रज्ञावादांश्च भाषसे ।
गतासूनगतासूंश्च नानुशोचन्ति पण्डिताः ॥You grieve for those who need no grief, and you speak words that sound wise. The learned do not mourn — not for the living, and not for the dead.
The first line of the teaching, and it is a rebuke: the learned do not mourn, for the living or the dead. Read it as the opening of an argument with a soldier, which is what it is.
Bhagavad Gita 2.13Shri Bhagavan
देहिनोऽस्मिन्यथा देहे कौमारं यौवनं जरा ।
तथा देहान्तरप्राप्तिर्धीरस्तत्र न मुह्यति ॥As the one who dwells in this body passes through childhood, youth and age, so he passes into another body. The steady are not confused by it.
The dweller in the body moves through childhood, youth and age, and then into another body. The change at death is put in the same class as the changes a person has already survived.
Bhagavad Gita 2.14Shri Bhagavan
मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदुःखदाः ।
आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत ॥Kaunteya, contact with things brings cold and heat, pleasure and pain. They come and they go. They do not last. Bear them, Bharata.
The one verse in the passage addressed to what the mourner is feeling. Heat and cold, pleasure and pain come and go and do not last. The instruction is to bear them.
Bhagavad Gita 2.20Shri Bhagavan
न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्
नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः ।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो
न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे ॥It is not born, and it never dies. Having been, it does not cease to be. Unborn, everlasting, enduring, ancient — it is not killed when the body is killed.
The flattest statement of the claim: unborn, everlasting, not killed when the body is killed. Whether one accepts it or not, it is unambiguous, and it is about the dead and not the bereaved.
Bhagavad Gita 2.22Shri Bhagavan
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय
नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि ।
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा
न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही ॥As a man puts aside worn-out clothes and takes up new ones, so the one who dwells in the body puts aside worn-out bodies and enters others that are new.
The worn clothes. The most quoted verse in the Gita after a death, and the image is exact: what is discarded is the body, not the one who wore it.
Bhagavad Gita 2.27Shri Bhagavan
जातस्य हि ध्रुवो मृत्युर्ध्रुवं जन्म मृतस्य च ।
तस्मादपरिहार्येऽर्थे न त्वं शोचितुमर्हसि ॥For whatever is born will certainly die, and whatever dies will certainly be born. You should not grieve over what cannot be avoided.
What is born will die and what dies will be born; you should not grieve over what cannot be avoided. The reasoning is from inevitability, which is a colder ground than it is usually made to sound.
What to actually do
Small, and today.
- Do the rites your family does, in order and without hurrying them. The Gita has nothing to say about funeral observances, but it has a great deal to say about doing the work that is in front of you, and in the first weeks that is what the work is.
- Read the passage whole rather than in fragments. Verses 2.11 to 2.30 are one continuous argument. Single lines from it arrive on phones and land badly. Reading the twenty together at least shows you what is being claimed, by whom, and to whom.
- Keep one small duty that does not stop — a child’s school bag, the shop shutter at its usual hour, a parent’s medicines. 2.14 asks a person to bear what comes and go on. An ordinary task done at an ordinary time is where that begins.
- Say out loud, to one person, what you have lost. Arjuna says it at length before any teaching reaches him, and the text keeps every word of it rather than tidying it away.
What the Gita does not say
That the Gita tells you not to feel it. 2.11 is a move in an argument with a man who is refusing to fight, not an instruction to a mourner to suppress what he feels. The rebuke does not even work: Krishna says the same thing at 2.2–2.3, and Arjuna answers that his mind is still confused about what is right and asks to be taught (2.7). Krishna does not withdraw the line, and he does not stop talking either. Nothing in the text asks you to perform a steadiness you do not have.
The words behind this
Common questions
About this.
Does the Gita say I should not cry?
No. It says the learned do not mourn (2.11), inside an argument with a man refusing to fight. It gives no instruction about tears and praises nobody for hiding what he feels. Arjuna weeps in front of two armies (2.1), says plainly that he cannot see what is right (2.7), and is taught anyway.
Which verses are read after a death?
Most families turn to the passage from 2.11 to 2.30, and to 2.20, 2.22 and 2.27 in particular. The Trust publishes all of them with the Sanskrit, the transliteration and a plain translation. The Gita itself prescribes no verse for a funeral; the custom is a custom, not an instruction in the text.
Will I see the person again?
The Gita does not say so. It says the dweller in the body is not destroyed and passes into another body (2.13, 2.22). It says nothing about recognition between lives, nothing about reunion, and nothing about where a particular person now is. Anyone who tells you otherwise is adding to the text, usually kindly.
Is it wrong to grieve for a long time?
The text sets no length and gives no schedule. It asks a person to bear what comes and to keep doing what is his to do (2.14). Arjuna himself is still arguing sixteen chapters after the teaching begins, and the Gita treats that as ordinary rather than as failure.