avyaktadini bhutani vyakta madhyani bharata

avyakta nidhanan yeva tatra ka parivedana

There is nothing to grieve about life travelling between birth and death.

O bharata – arjuna
Bhutani – beings
avyakta adini – being not manifest in the beginning
Vyakta madhyani – manifest in the middle
avyakta nidhanani – not manifest in the end
eva – indeed
tatra – there
ka – what
parivedana – grief

O Arjuna ! Al beings are unmanifest in the beginning, manifest in the middle and again unmanifest in the end. What is there to grieve?

The beginning of all beings is unknown. So is when the end. In between what we see is life. It is like an arrow that has left already and it is travelling now. Can we catch the arrow midway or turn the direction? No. We cannot.

We do not see the soul enter the body nor leave the body. If we had known then we would choose which body we want right?
If we had the power we would have even asked yama to give extension. But unfortunately we can’t do that.

Life is like a moving arrow between life and death. So why lament?

But we do lament. This is because of our ignorance. Even though life is a flicker wr still have division and are concerned about children their marriage etc

This ignorance is deeply rooted in our association with the ‘I’. I’m small, I’m fat etc. We are so deeply associated with our body that we forget that the inner self is the real ‘I’ and not the body mind and sense.

We cannot physically separate body and atma but cognitively separate them. By placing or shifting the ‘I’ on the inner self we feel no pain. As we saw before no weapons pain pleasure can touch atma.

But this is a mental recognition which is practiced by continuous shravanam Mananam and nidhidhyasanam.

The next few verses till verse 37 is all about krishna admonishing arjuna that if he does not fight he is not doing his future as a kshstriya. What will the world think of him when he does not fight. We know that duryodhana is a epitom of adharma. He will say to everyone that arjuna git scared and laid down his arms etc etc.

But the main teaching about the body mind sense complex and how atma is different concludes.