The unborn · The body and its dweller · Elias Thorn
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The unborn · The body and its dweller

Bhagavad Gita 2:19–25

2:19 The one who considers him a slayer and the one who thinks him slain: neither knows. He neither kills nor is killed.

2:20 He is never born and never dies; having existed, he does not cease to exist. Unborn, eternal, enduring, ancient, he is not killed when the body is killed.

2:21 One who knows him as indestructible, eternal, unborn and undiminishing: how can such a person, O Partha, cause anyone to be killed or kill anyone himself?

2:22 As a person casts off worn-out clothes and takes others that are new, so the dweller in the body casts off worn-out bodies and enters others that are new.

2:23 Weapons do not cut him; fire does not burn him; waters do not wet him; wind does not dry him.

2:24 He cannot be cut, burned, wetted or dried. He is eternal, all-pervading, stable, unmoving, primordial.

2:25 He is called unmanifest, unthinkable and unchanging. Therefore, knowing him to be so, you should not grieve.

Reading notes

The comparison of bodies with clothes explains the claim that what dwells in the body does not perish with it. The selected verses concern the indestructibility of the self and the limits of bodily change.

Kṛṣṇa speaks these words to Arjuna before battle. The passage offers a metaphysical argument; by itself it does not settle the permissibility of every act of violence. Judging conduct also requires the circumstances of the conversation and the Gītā’s further argument.

English rendering of the Russian working translation, with the same passage boundaries and uncertainties. Seven consecutive verses from chapter 2, without internal omissions. The Russian working text follows the Sanskrit in GRETIL. “He” refers to Atman; dehī in 2:22 literally means one who possesses a body. Partha addresses Arjuna. Repetition and the distinction between killing and causing someone to be killed are preserved. This passage belongs to a conversation before battle; it does not exhaust that conversation or the Gita’s ethical teaching.

Open source ↗ (https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/2_epic/mbh/ext/bhg4c02u.htm)

Sanskrit · chapter 2, GRETIL (https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/2_epic/mbh/ext/bhg4c02u.htm)