Sanskrit
न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः । अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे ॥
na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin nāyaṃ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ ajo nityaḥ śāśvato'yaṃ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre
Translation
He is not born, nor doth he die; nor having been, ceaseth he any more to be; unborn, perpetual, eternal and ancient, he is not slain when the body is slaughtered.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The core metaphysical claim of the whole Gita: the self (atman) that animates the body is not the kind of thing that is born or dies. Bodies begin and end; the self that inhabits them does not. Krishna isn’t offering this as comfort so much as correcting a category error — Arjuna is grieving over what he takes to be the destruction of persons, when what actually happens on a battlefield is the destruction of bodies. This verse is the hinge the whole chapter’s argument for fighting turns on: if the self cannot be killed, killing is not what the killer imagines it to be.
Concepts