2.27

Sanskrit

जातस्य हि ध्रुवो मृत्युर्ध्रुवं जन्म मृतस्य च । तस्मादपरिहार्येऽर्थे न त्वं शोचितुमर्हसि ॥

jātasya hi dhruvo mṛtyur dhruvaṃ janma mṛtasya ca tasmād aparihārye'rthe na tvaṃ śocitum arhasi

Translation

For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.

Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain

Explanation

The fallback argument from verse 26 gets its logical backbone here: birth guarantees death, and — within the same cyclical view — death guarantees rebirth. Grieving over something certain and unavoidable achieves nothing; Krishna’s point isn’t that death doesn’t matter, it’s that grief is not a rational response to what was never going to be otherwise.