Verse-13
Chapter 2 — Sānkhya Yog
Verse 13
🕉 Original Sanskrit Shloka
dehino'sminyathā dehe kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
tathā dehāntaraprāptirdhīrastatra na muhyati
🕉 English Translation
📜 Translation
English
Just as in this body the embodied being passes through the states–childhood, youth and old age, similarly it acquires another body. The calm and wise man is not deluded by this.
In this section of the Gita there are two points of consideration. The impermanence of the body and the world and permanence of the soul and Supreme Soul (Lord). The body is ever changing. On the embodied being there is not even an iota of effect. It is beyond all kinds of changes! Infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, adulthood, old age–all these are related to the body and not to the soul. Observe a child and side by side an old body. Deliberate thereat some time this old person must have been a child. Between this childhood state and old age state how many changes have taken place in this body. But all these changes are of the body and not of the soul.
Not just limited to the body but this cycle of change is visible everywhere outside. Observe the world. Change of the circumstances is always ancillary. Summer and winter, honour and dishonor, gain-loss, victory defeat, day-night, full-moon night and new moon night, union and separation, life and death, happiness and sorrow–all these are the evident glimpses of this ever changing world. One after the other, the cycle of these circumstances presents itself. It has never happened that the day has not been followed by night, or winter has asserted its ego that it won't go away. Here there is no importance for egoism of any kind. The cycle of change is ever there and is with everything. To become egoistic or despondent because of this is not being wise.