Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 12: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Never was there a time when I did not exist — I always was, just as ākāśa (space) persists unchanged through the arising and perishing of pots and jars. The plural pronouns — 'I,' 'you,' 'these kings' — track the succession of bodies, not any real multiplicity of ātman; as the bhāṣya states, the plural follows the difference of bodies, not the intent of difference among ātmans (dehabhedānuvṛttyā bahuvacanam, nātmabhedābhiprāyeṇa). In all three times — past, present, future — the one ātman-svarūpa (the nature of the Self itself) is eternal, and grief over its supposed birth or death is founded on nothing.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  I, the supreme Lord (sarveśvara), have always existed before this present moment, and you — together with all these kings who stand as My governed selves (kṣetrajñāḥ, īśitavyāḥ) — have equally always existed and shall always continue to exist. As Rāmānuja's bhāṣya declares, the very grammar of this verse — 'I,' 'you,' 'these,' 'all we' — shows that Bhagavān Himself here directly asserts real difference (bheda) between Himself and the individual souls, and this distinction is not provisional but ultimate and natural (svābhāvikaḥ). The Śvetāśvatara (6.13) confirms: 'the one eternal conscious being among many eternal conscious beings sustains their desires' — many real, permanent selves governed by one supreme self.

• Madhvadvaita

  Kṛṣṇa speaks here as Īśvara (the eternally self-existent Lord) to establish His own eternal nature as the illustrative standard: just as I am eternal — a fact proclaimed throughout all the Vedānta texts (sarvaveданteṣu prasiddhaḥ) — so too are you, Arjuna, and these kings likewise eternal, each as a distinct, real, permanently individuated jīva. There is no hint here of a non-dual collapse; the comparison is explicit and polemically precise. The Lord's eternity serves as the measure against which the real — not illusory — eternity of the plural souls is confirmed.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Bhagavān removes even the possibility of arising or perishing for the ātmans: just as in 'I, you, the citizens of Dvārakā' (ahaṃ yūyaṃ satyavārya ime ca dvārakaukasaḥ), the Lord negates birth-and-death in all three times together for all conscious beings equally. Those whose birth and death can be spoken of are the sharable objects of grief; but these ātmans — eternally pure, conscious, unborn — fall outside that category entirely. The Kaṭha and Śvetāśvatara śruti confirms: 'the eternal among eternals, the conscious among the conscious' — all vikāra (modification), including the notion of origination itself, is here dissolved at the root.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Even through the apparent appearing and disappearing (āvirbhāva-tirobhāva) of Bhagavān's own playful divine form (līlā-vigraha), He was never absent — 'I always was, being beginningless (anāditva).' You, Arjuna, were always; and these kings always were — because they are portions of the Lord (madaṃśatvāt). This is the ground for their being beyond grief: they have no birth and no death, and therefore there is no occasion for sorrow — the verse establishes aśocyatva by rooting each soul's permanence directly in its relationship to the Lord from whom it derives.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  The word 'tu' (but) in the verse signals the decisive distinction of ātman from body and other non-selves (dehādi-vyatireka); Madhusūdana reads the verse as a structured proof that ātman has no prāgabhāva (prior absence — it was never not, hence it did not arise) and no dhvaṃsa (posterior absence — it will never not be, hence it does not perish). Since the ātman possesses existential conjunction (sattāyoga) in all three times, its difference from the impermanent body is established — and this is the reason Arjuna should not grieve. Grief belongs only to what arises and perishes; the self that was, is, and will be is structurally beyond the reach of grief.