The Doctrine of Reincarnation in the Bhagavad-Gita

Although the original language of the poem is Sanskrit, it has been translated into the other languages of India since the sung narrative was written down, sometime around A.D 400. Knowing the meaning of the Sanskrit title gives some sense of the poem's significance: "maha" means great and "Bharata," the name of the mythic father of the Indian people, came to be the name for India itself. Thus the title announces the great story of India. Indeed, scholars believe they can see references in the poem to the founding of Indian civilization through the competition that seems to have taken place between different tribes moving into the valleys of the Indus and Ganges Rivers in about 1200 B.C.  The bards who sang of the past turned the story of this competition into poetry. Because it is a work of the imagination rather than a record of history, the Mahabharata does not relate an accurate narrative of rival tribes, but like all epic poems, it personalizes their conflict instead. Out of dimly remembered history the work distills primal universal themes, recounting a tale of sibling rivalry and family strife that culminate in a war between cousins for the legendary kingdom of Kurukshetra.

The main hero of the poem, Arjuna, comparable to Achilles in many ways, is a brilliant warrior who suddenly has doubts about the virtue of war. In the portion of the Mahabharata known as the Bhagavad-Gita (meaning the Lord's Song), Arjuna seeks a justification for shedding the blood of his relatives. The Lord in question is Krishna, one of the incarnations (or avatars) taken by the god Vishnu. The Hindu religion teaches that existence is cyclical; gods and human beings may change form and re-enter the world in different ages, moving along an endless continuum of time. Here Krishna presents himself to Arjuna as his charioteer. Anguished by his obligation to fight his cousins, Arjuna halts his chariot in the middle of the field of Kurukshetra before the battle begins. With tears in his eyes, he asks Krishna to explain how it can be right for him to shoot his magic bow in such circumstances. Arjuna receives from his "charioteer" the essence of Hindu philosophy so that he is prepared spiritually to act as his duty ("dharma") requires.

The Bhagavad-Gita consists of eighteen chapters in which, while action is suspended, Krishna instructs Arjuna--and the audience--in the discipline (or "yoga") appropriate to the warrior. Here is the portion of the second chapter, as recently translated by Barbara Stoler Miller, in which Krishna explains why it would be cowardly of Arjuna not to fight.
 
 
 

EXCERPT FROM THE  BHAGAVAD-GITA  You grieve for those beyond grief,  and you speak words of insight;  but learned men do not grieve for the dead or the living. Never have I not existed,  nor you, nor these kings;  and never in the future shall we cease to exist.  Just as the embodied self enters childhood, youth, and old age, so does it enter another body;  this does not confound a steadfast man.  Contacts with matter make us feel heat and cold, pleasure and pain.  Arjuna, you must learn to endure  fleeting things--they come and go!  When these cannot torment a man, when suffering and joy are equal for him and he has courage,  he is fit for immortality.  Nothing of nonbeing comes to be,  nor does being cease to exist;  the boundary between these two  is seen by men who see reality.  Indestructible is the presence  that pervades all this;  no one can destroy  this unchanging reality.  Our bodies are known to end,  but the embodied self is enduring,  indestructible, and immeasurable;  therefore, Arjuna, fight the battle!  He who thinks this self a killer  and he who thinks it killed both fail to understand;  it does not kill, nor is it killed.  It is not born, it does not die  having been,  it will never not be;  unborn, enduring, constant, and primordial,  it is not killed  when the body is killed.  Arjuna, when a man knows the self  to be indestructible, enduring, unborn, unchanging, how does he kill or cause anyone to kill?  As a man discards  worn-out clothes  to put on new and different ones, so the embodied self  discards  its worn-out bodies  to take on other new ones.  Weapons do not cut it,  fire does not burn it,  waters do not wet it,  wind does not wither it.  It cannot be cut or burned;  it cannot be wet or withered;  it is enduring, all pervasive,  fixed, immovable, and timeless.  It is called unmanifest,  inconceivable, and immutable;  since you know that to be so,  you should not grieve!  If you think of its birth and death as ever-recurring, then too, Great Warrior, you have no cause to grieve!  Death is certain for anyone born, and birth is certain for the dead; since the cycle is inevitable, you have no cause to grieve!  Creatures are unmanifest in origin, manifest in the midst of life, and unmanifest again in the end.  Since this is so, why do you lament?  Rarely someone  sees it,  rarely another speaks it, rarely anyone hears it--  even hearing it, no one really knows it. The self embodied in the body of every being is indestructible;  you have no cause to grieve  for all these creatures, Arjuna!  Look to your own duty;  do not tremble before it;  nothing is better for a warrior  than a battle of sacred duty.  The doors of heaven open  for warriors who rejoice  to have a battle like this  thrust on them by chance.  If you fail to wage this war  of sacred duty,  you will abandon your own duty  and fame only to gain evil.  People will tell  of your undying shame,  and for a man of honor  shame is worse than death.  The great chariot warriors will think  you deserted in fear of battle;  you will be despised  by those who held you in esteem.  Your enemies will slander you,  scorning your skill  in so many unspeakable ways--  could any suffering be worse?  If you are killed, you win heaven;  if you triumph, you enjoy the earth;  therefore, Arjuna, stand up  and resolve to fight the battle! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Be intent on action,  not on the fruits of action;  avoid attraction to the fruits,  and attachment to inaction! Perform actions, firm in discipline,  relinquishing attachment;  so seek refuge in understanding--pitiful  are men drawn by fruits of action.  Disciplined by understanding,  one abandons both good and evil deeds;  so arm yourself for discipline--  discipline is skill in actions.  Wise men disciplined by understanding  relinquish the fruit born of action;  freed from these bonds of rebirth,  they reach a place beyond decay.  When your understanding passes beyond  the swamp of delusion,  you will be indifferent to all  that is heard in sacred lore.  When your understanding turns  from sacred lore to stand fixed,  immovable in contemplation then you will reach discipline.