Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 13: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Just as the ātman (self), while remaining the single unchanging witness, passes through the three mutually distinct states — kaumāra (boyhood), yauvana (youth), and jarā (old age) — without itself being born or destroyed at each transition, so too the passage to a new body is merely the arrival of another state for the same unmodified ātman. Śaṅkara is precise: the self does not perish when childhood ends nor arise anew when youth begins; what is seen is only the successive acquisition of states by what is immovably changeless (avikṛiya). The dhīra (person of steady wisdom) who has grasped this does not fall into moha (confusion), though worldly grief arising from loss of pleasure or contact with pain may still appear — that secondary grief is the problem Kṛṣṇa addresses next.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads the verse as an argument for steadfast resolve in varṇa-appropriate duty: just as the buddhi (discriminating intellect) of a wise person does not grieve when the self moves from kaumārāvasthā (boyhood-state) to yauvana (youth), recognizing that the ātman is unchanged, so the buddhimān (person of discernment) does not grieve when the self acquires a new body. The selves are nitya (eternal) but are bound by anādi-karma (beginningless karma) and hence necessarily contact the sense-objects — cold, heat, pleasure, pain — that accompany varṇa-prescribed action such as yuddha (warfare); these contacts are to be endured (kṣantavya) until one's scriptural duty is fulfilled. The verse thus grounds kainkarya (service) within Bhagavān's order: grief at bodily transition is precisely the delusion that blocks sva-varṇocita-karma (duty fitting one's station).

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva frames the verse as positive proof of the jīva's (individual soul's) existence as a distinct, indestructible īkṣitṛ (seer/witness): a material body cannot experience kaumāra and jarā, since at death consciousness departs with the vital currents (vāyu-ādi); therefore the experiencer is necessarily non-material and persists. He then turns polemical: the analogy of childhood-to-old-age surviving bodily change refutes Cārvāka materialism (deha eva ātmā), Buddhist momentariness (kṣaṇikaṃ vijñānam), and Jain middle-size soul theories in a single stroke — all are overturned by the self-luminous authority of Śruti, which alone establishes both nitya (eternity) and vibhutva (all-pervasiveness) of the ātman. The dhīra who holds firm against such kutarka (specious reasoning) does not grieve, because grief at bodily death presupposes the false belief that the eternal jīva — distinct from Brahman and fully dependent on Hari — can be destroyed.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Having established in the preceding verses the *aśocyatā* (non-grievability) of the *ātman* by the argument of non-origination — *evam ātmanām aśocyatām anutpattyā upapādya* — Kṛṣṇa now states the *aśocyatā* of the *deha-ātmādi* (body, self, and the rest): *dehina iti*. By a *laukika-nidarśana* (worldly illustration): just as in *asmin sthūla-dehe* (this gross body) the *kaumārādy-avasthā-prāpti* (attainment of childhood and subsequent states) is *niyata* (ordained), so too *dehāntara-prāpti* — attainment of another body — is ordained for the *ātman*. Therefore the *dhīra* (the steady one) *na muhyati*, *na tatra śocati* — neither falls into confusion nor grieves over it. In the *puṣṭi-mārga* (path of grace), where Kṛṣṇa's *prasāda* (grace) governs all movement, the passage across bodies is as natural and un-lamentable as passage across the stages of a single life; the devoted *dhīra* simply abides in that trust.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara addresses an implicit objection: granted that Kṛṣṇa as Īśvara (Lord) transcends birth and death, yet birth and death of jīvas (individual selves) are empirically observed — does the verse resolve that? His answer turns on pratyabhijñāna (recognition-memory): the fact that one says 'sa eva aham' ('I am the same one') across radically different bodily states — child, adult, elder — proves that the ātman is not a product of those states. The passage to a new body at death, he notes, is supported by the phenomenon of jātamātra (the newborn) responding to stimuli through pūrva-saṃskāra (impressions from previous lives), which would be impossible if the ātman were new at birth. The dhīmān (wise one) who grasps this does not commit the error of thinking 'the ātman itself is born; the ātman itself has died.'

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana mounts the most architecturally elaborate response in the panel, refuting five rival positions — Cārvāka (body-only ātman), partial-materialists (ātman = senses + mind + prāṇa), Buddhist momentary-consciousness, Digambara Jain (body-sized soul), and Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika aṇu-ātman (atomic soul) — before affirming that only vibhu (all-pervading) nitya (eternal) ātman accommodates the unbroken pratyabhijñāna across all three states and across bodies in dream and yogic vision. His synthesizing move: if the ātman were merely co-extensive with each sequential body, the recognition 'I, who knew my parents in youth, now know my grandchildren in old age' would be impossible; but that recognition holds, and therefore the 'I' is neither atomic nor bounded nor momentary. The dhīra, recognizing no real distinction between slayer and slain because all bodies share one bhokta (experiencer), does not fall into the confusion Arjuna exhibits — and this jñāna, held with Kṛṣṇa-bhakti (devotion), is the complete resolution.