Why We Cannot Hold the Truth of Death

It has been known, in every tradition, in every culture, across every age of human history. We are born and we die, this is certain. And yet, we grieve as though death were an accident. As though the person we lost had been taken from us by some unfair force that had no right to take them.

The suffering in grief is not caused by love. It is caused by the gap between what we know and what we are willing to accept. We know death is certain but somewhere beneath the knowledge, we have not accepted it.

There is another dimension to this verse that is easy to miss. Shri Krishna does not only say death is certain for the born, he adds, birth is also certain for the dead.

It is a cosmological statement. The Soul, having left one body, takes another. The cycle of saṃsāra — the wheel of birth, death, and rebirth turns without interruption. What we call death is not an ending. It is a transition, the Soul moving from one form of embodied existence to the next.

The Gita is not asking us to live in the shadow of death. It is asking us to live in the light of it.