What is Re-Birth?

Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2 Verse 22

6 min readApr 6, 2023

Introduction

Bhagavad Gita is a conversation between Krishna and Arjun. This dialogue begins just before the war of Mahabharata is about to begin. On seeing his family in opposition, Arjun is gripped with fear and confusion and wants to run away, but Krishna convinces him to fight and tells Arjun why he today raise his weapons to kill his brothers and relatives in this war.

Bhagavad Gits teaches us how to live life!

The core message of the Bhagavad Gita is considered very powerful for it can fundamentally transform the way you live your life. Bhagavad Gita is also called a summary of Vendantic Knowledge or simply ancient Knowledge.

Bhagavad Gita is crystallized form of the Hindu thought.

Bhagavad Gita is 700 verses long, spread across 18 chapters. Here we will understand Verse 22 Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita.

Verse 2.22

वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय
नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि |
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा
न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही || 22||
vasansi jirnani yatha vihaya
navani grihnati naro aparani
tatha sharirani vihaya jirnanya
nyani sanyati navani dehi

Translation

Like a man discards torn and old clothes and replaces them with new ones, in the same way, the “Dehi” (~ Soul) discards the old and damaged body and adopts a new body.

Commentary:

Krishna is telling Arjun that while the body gets old and eventually gets destroyed due to death, the Soul continues to exist, for it can not be destroyed.

The body is nothing but a container for the Soul. It is like Soul wears a body like a man wears clothes. Like we change clothes, once the clothes get old and worn out, similarly, the Soul changes the body, when the body is destroyed, and adopts a new body.

So the container of the Soul changes, but the content i.e. the Soul continues to exist.

Re-Birth: The cycle of life and death

Here Krishna is indirectly telling Arjun about the concept of re-birth, which basically means that the soul manifests again as a living being with a body, which is not necessarily human, again after death.

Vendant says that each action we do in life leaves an imprint on our body and mind. This imprint is called as Samskaras. Thus Samskara can be called as the direct result of Karma. These Samskaras in effect mold our mind and body and they define our future thoughts and action. The accumulation of Samskara thus forms the character of a man.

Simply said,
Samskaras are the imprint of the memories of our body and mind.

Now when a man dies, his body dissolves back into the elements, and the memories attached to the body vanish. This happens as the body is gross. It has a material nature.

But the mind behaves differently, for the mind is much finer in its nature. When we say “Mind” we not referring to the organ which we call “Brain”, for the brain is a part of the body and is gross in nature and thus vanishes after death.

Mind is a collection of thoughts and memories.

To take a modern analogy, we can think of the mind like an operating system of a phone or a computer. The phone will have a limited memory which will be linked with the capacity of its hardware which we call as storage. And the operating system is nothing but a computer program, which is in essence Data. This data occupies a limited portion of the memory of the phone. That is why when you buy a new phone, most of its storage is empty. But as start using the phone, for various activities like clicking photographs, shooting videos, storing apps, games etc, the storage of the phone is gradually occupied due to usage.

Each picture you click is stored as memory or DATA on the phone, and as you keep on clicking images, there will come a time when the memory is full. This means the storage is exhausted, and now you must delete some data to free up memory. If we format our phone completely, all this data is lost, and we can again use the freed-up storage.

Similarly, the mind is like an operating system, and the brain is like a storage device.

Whenever we perform any action, whether physical or mental, we are creating an imprint in our Minds in the form of Samskaras. We also create memories and store them in our brains, which the mind can access whenever there is a need. So thoughts and memories take up maximum storage of our brain and at the same time make up our mind.

So when the brain dies on death, the storage is effectively gone. The memories and thoughts are wiped off. But the mind still remains, for it is nothing by Data, and data is a form of energy.

This mind is pure energy which contains data in form of the Samskaras which define our character and nature.

In a sense, such Samskaras are similar to Meta Data.

“Meta Data” means data that gives qualitative information about the over data stored in a device.

To simplify, if your phone is full of photographs, Metadata can tell you that most of these photographs are family photos, followed by pictures of food, followed by selfies, most photos are taken during travel etc.

Thus Meta Data qualitatively defines what type of data is stored in your phone.

Similarly, Samaskaras act like Meta Data and define what was the nature of the soul at the time of death.
Thus the “Soul” which is left after death, is nothing by this subtle mind, which contains these Samskaras.

These Samskaras determine the quality of the soul and thus determine what kind of birth this soul will have again.

These Samskaras act like a seed that has the potential to grow into a tree when planted in fertile soil.

So when this subtle mind, this pure energy, this Soul, enters into a new body, then it acts like a seed that grows into a tree, defining the nature and character of that living being. These old samskaras give a direction to this new man’s life by defining his most fundamental likes and dislikes, giving birth to his most fundamental desires, which act as the foundation of the building of life which is later built brick by brick as the man takes actions in his life.

Thus over a period of time, these Samskaras change, and by the time this new man is about to die, this new set of Samskaras are ready to transfer to another body along with the soul.

This is the law of Re-birth or “Puran Janm”

Moksha- the ultimate freedom

As man gains wisdom, his desires decrease, and with these reducing desires, the samskaras also start fading, until a time comes, after many births, when a man reaches true wisdom, and attains a state of Desirelnessness. In this state, he has no selfish desires, and thus the samskaras vanish. In this state, there is nothing to be passed on, and thus the cycle of birth and death comes to a halt. This is called Moksha.

This is when the soul attains true liberation, by getting freedom from the cycle of death and birth. In absence of Samskaras, in absence of Desires, this Soul, the pure energy, becomes part of the universal energy, of what we call the Divine, what we call a God, what we call as Universe.

If a soul is like a drop of the ocean, then on Moksha, this drop mixes with the ocean and becomes the Ocean itself!

Thus, Krishna points out to Arjun, that the Soul never dies, for it is pure energy and it shall always remain, either by wearing a new body, or being liberated and becoming the universe itself.

And thus Arjun claim to kill the body, but never the soul!

The End!

I have translated Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit to English and shall be publishing here verse by verse. If you like what you read and would like to read Bhagavad Gita, then please subscribe to this account.

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