Chapter II

Arjuna expresses his internal conflict about fighting in battle, questioning how he can kill revered elders like Bhishma and Drona, and declares it is better to live humbly with loved ones alive than to survive by killing them.

Krishna reproaches Arjuna for displaying cowardice and weakness unbefitting a warrior, urging him to cast off feebleness and assert his warrior nature.

Krishna establishes that the soul is eternal and indestructible, never being born and never ceasing to exist, and that all beings have always existed and always will exist.

Krishna explains that the physical sensations of heat, cold, sorrow, and joy are brief and mutable experiences that should not be grieved over, and wisdom consists in bearing them with equanimity.

Krishna teaches that only what truly exists cannot cease to exist, and only through understanding the distinction between substance and shadow can one grasp that the indestructible life cannot be diminished or changed.

Krishna clarifies that those who believe they have killed or been killed understand nothing, for life itself cannot kill or be killed, establishing that the spirit is birthless, deathless, and unchanging.

Krishna uses the image of a person discarding old clothes and putting on new ones to illustrate how the eternal spirit lightly casts off its physical form and assumes a new one.

Krishna declares that weapons, fire, water, and wind cannot harm the soul, which is impenetrable, invisible, and eternally stable in its nature.

Krishna argues that birth and death are predetermined cycles where living beings exist between these two events, and therefore mourning what is natural and inevitable is unjustified.

Krishna instructs Arjuna that as a Kshatriya (warrior), his duty is to fight in lawful war, and that refusing this duty would constitute sin and bring infamy to his line.

Krishna advises Arjuna to approach conflict with indifference to pleasure or pain, victory or defeat, and through this mental state of equanimity, he will not sin.

Krishna indicates that his previous teachings were from the Sankhya perspective and now introduces the deeper path of Yog, which frees one from the bondage of karma and brings liberation.

Krishna condemns those who are weakly devoted to ritual practices and outcomes, desiring heaven or material rewards, describing their teaching as specious and lacking wisdom.

Krishna instructs Arjuna to become free of the three qualities of nature and the pairs of opposites (pleasure/pain, gain/loss), and to be self-ruled and self-satisfied rather than calculating righteousness.

Krishna teaches that one should perform right action for its own sake, casting aside concern for gain and merit, maintaining equanimity toward good and evil outcomes.

Krishna asserts that the right-thinking mind devoted to pure devotion and meditation is superior to right action, and such devotion brings liberation from bodily bondage.

Krishna explains that once the firm soul shakes off doctrinal confusion from priestly lore and other teachings, it transcends to a state of peaceful, unwavering meditation.

Arjuna poses a question to Krishna about identifying markers of someone who has achieved a confirmed, meditative state and whether they appear different from ordinary people.

Krishna establishes that the true yogi finds complete comfort in the soul, remains unaffected by sorrow or joy, and dwells in a state beyond passion, fear, and anger.

Krishna identifies true wisdom as the capacity to regard good and evil things with equal indifference, neither desponding nor exulting in response to either.

Krishna uses the image of a tortoise drawing in its limbs under its shell to illustrate how the wise person withdraws the five senses from the external world under the protection of the spirit.

Krishna explains that when the mind is self-governed, things that solicit the senses lose their hold, and appetites depart, though even a controlled mind can sometimes be assailed by sense-storms.

Krishna traces the destructive sequence from pondering sense objects to attraction, desire, passion, recklessness, loss of memory, and ultimately the ruin of purpose, mind, and person.

Krishna teaches that one who neither loves nor hates sense objects but uses them freely under a serene spirit achieves tranquility and the healing of earthly pains through a governed will.

Krishna asserts that without self-governance, one cannot have self-knowledge, and without self-knowledge, serenity and happiness cannot arise.

Krishna uses the metaphor of a ship driven to wreck and death by whirlwind waves to illustrate how the mind that follows sense appearances loses its wisdom and is destroyed.

Krishna describes how the truly wise perceive what appears as darkness to the ignorant as illuminating day, and what seems like day to the unenlightened is thick darkness to their true-seeing eyes.

Krishna compares the perfect soul to an ocean that receives rivers from all lands without overflowing or being diminished, just as the enlightened soul receives the streams of sense experience without being moved.

Krishna declares that one who shakes off the bondage of physical flesh, transcends pride and passion, and becomes free from the ego attains the state of Brahm and passes to blissful Nirvana.