Samsara

Bhagavad Gita • Chapter 2

Just as the soul passes through childhood, youth, and old age in this body, so too it passes into another body at death—the wise are not bewildered by this.

Bhagavad Gita • Chapter 2

What is inevitable requires no grief - death follows birth as night follows day, and resisting this truth is the source of all sorrow.

Bhagavad Gita • Chapter 2

Beings emerge from the unseen, flash briefly into visibility, then dissolve back into mystery—what in this cycle truly warrants grief?

Srimad Bhagavatam, Canto 5, Chapters 7-14

King Bharata renounced his kingdom but became attached to an orphaned deer, causing rebirth as a deer. In his final birth, he pretended to be dull to avoid worldly entanglements. When robbers tried to sacrifice him, goddess Kali emerged and destroyed them.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chapters 2.4 and 4.5

When Yajnavalkya prepares to renounce worldly life, wife Maitreyi rejects wealth, asking instead for immortality. Yajnavalkya teaches that all love is really love for one's own Self, and immortality comes through knowing the Self, described as 'neti neti' - beyond all descriptions.

Krishna & Ashwatthama

Vengeance creates cycles that can never be broken. Becoming the monster you fight is the greatest defeat. Some punishments are worse than death—living forever with the memory of what you have done.

Karna & Arjuna

We cannot invoke rules we refused to follow. War makes everyone into things they never wanted to be. Victory over those we have wronged brings no peace—only completion.