Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 18

अन्तवन्त इमे देहा नित्यस्योक्ताः शरीरिणः । अनाशिनोऽप्रमेयस्य तस्माद्युध्यस्व भारत

antavanta ime dehā nityasyoktāḥ śarīriṇaḥ | anāśino'prameyasya tasmādyudhyasva bhārata

Translation

These bodies of the embodied (Self) who is eternal, indestructible and unknowable, are said to have an end. Do fight, therefore, O descendant of Bharata.

— Alladi Mahadeva Sastri

Word meanings

antavantaḥ

having end

ime

these

dehāḥ

bodies

nityasya

of the everlasting

uktāḥ

(are) said

śarīriṇaḥ

of the embodied

anāśinaḥ

of the indestructible

aprameyasya

of the immeasurable

tasmāt

therefore

yudhyasva

fight (thou)

bhārata

O Bhārata

Śaṅkarācārya's commentary

It is said by the enlightened that these bodies of the Self — who is eternal, indestructible, and unknowable — have an end, like objects seen in dreams or produced by a juggler. The end of such illusory appearances consists in the cessation, on investigation, of the false idea of reality once associated with them; so also these bodies have an end. ("Eternal" and "indestructible" are not redundant. The physical body undergoes two sorts of destruction — outright disappearance when reduced to ashes, and transformation through sickness — and the Self is subject to neither.) The Self is unknowable — not determinable by the senses (pratyakṣa) or any other means of knowledge — for the Self is self-determined (svataḥ-siddha): when the knower (pramātṛ) has been determined, only then is a search for other means of knowledge possible. The Scripture (śāstra) is authoritative regarding the Self not as revealing what was wholly unknown, but as eliminating the superimposition (adhyāropaṇa) on the Self of attributes alien to Him. As the śruti says, "That which is the Immediate, the Unremote, the Brahman, which is the Self, which is within all" (Bṛ. Up. ii.4.1). Because the Self is thus eternal and immutable, do thou fight — do not abstain. The Lord here enjoins no new duty; Arjuna had already been engaged in fighting and abstained only because grief and delusion overpowered him. The Lord removes that obstruction; He does not issue a fresh command.