POETRY IS LIKE TAKING A DEEP BREATH

Sunday 12 December 2010

GRIEF IS VAIN

Arjuna-Krishna-Bhagavad-Gita


Thou hast grieved over them for whom grief is unmeet,
though thou speakest words of understanding. The learned
grieve not for them whose lives are fled nor for them
whose lives are not fled.
Never have I not been, never hast thou and never have
these princes of men not been; and never shall time yet
come when we shall not all be.
As the body's tenant goes through childhood and manhood
and old age in this body, so does it pass to other bodies;
the wise man is not confounded therein.
It is the touchings of the senses' instruments, O Kunti's
son, that beget cold and heat, pleasure and pain; it is
they that come and go, that abide not; bear with them, O
thou of Bharata's race.
Verily the man whom these disturb not, indifferent alike to
pain and to pleasure, and wise, is meet for immortality, O
chief of wise men.
Of what is not there cannot be being; of what is there
cannot be aught but being. The bounds of these twain have
been beheld by them that behold the Verity.
But know that That which pervades this universe is
imperishable; there is none can make to perish that
changeless being.


Bhagavadgita
Lesson The Second, verses 11-17
translated from the Sanskrit by F Max Muller