After a loss
This sequence is a reading, not a comfort, and not a stage of anything. If your loss is recent, this may be the wrong week for it — three of these seven verses say plainly that the wise do not grieve, and there is no obligation to meet that argument now or ever. The Gītā's consolation for death is metaphysical. It was spoken to a man on a battlefield, not to someone recently bereaved, and it may be unwelcome — which is a reasonable response to it. Nothing here asks anyone to grieve less or faster, and reading is not a substitute for support.
A reading suggestion from Devdarshan Bastola, GMBPsS, counselling psychologist — not treatment, not a description of anyone reading it, and not a substitute for care you are already receiving. Nothing here asks you to hurry anything you feel.
If you are in crisis, or having thoughts of ending your life, please contact your doctor, your therapist, your local emergency number, or a crisis line in your country now. That is a better use of the next hour than reading on alone.
एवमुक्त्वाऽर्जुनः संख्ये रथोपस्थ उपाविशत्।
Sanjaya said, Having thus spoken in the midst of the battlefield, Arjuna cast away his bow and arrow and, his mind overwhelmed with sorrow, sat down…
Śoka, grief, arrives first in the Gītā, and it stops everything. He casts down the bow and sits. The path begins here because the text does, and because nothing is asked of him in this verse.
न हि प्रपश्यामि ममापनुद्या
I do not see that this sorrow that burns up my senses would be removed, even if I were to attain prosperous and unrivaled dominion on earth or…
His own words for it: a śoka that dries up the senses, which no unrivalled kingdom and no lordship over the gods would touch. Grief is named as unreachable by circumstance before any consolation is offered.
अशोच्यानन्वशोचस्त्वं प्रज्ञावादांश्च भाषसे।
The Blessed Lord said, "You have grieved for those who should not be grieved for; yet, you speak words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the…
The turn, and it is hard: the wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. Read to a bereaved person this is cold, and context does not soften it. It is here because leaving it out would misrepresent the text.
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय
Just as a man casts off worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, so too the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters others that are new.
The famous image — the body set aside like worn clothing. Consolation as picture rather than as instruction. Some readers find it steadying. Some find it dismissive of the particular person they have lost.
जातस्य हि ध्रुवो मृत्युर्ध्रुवं जन्म मृतस्य च।
For the born, death is certain, and for the dead, birth is certain; therefore, you should not grieve over the inevitable.
Death is certain for the born; do not grieve over what cannot be helped. This is the line most often said at funerals. A statement can be true and still be of no use for a long time.
मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदुःखदाः।
The contact of the senses with the objects, O son of Kunti, which causes heat and cold, pleasure and pain, has a beginning and an end; they are…
Cold and heat, pleasure and pain come and go, and the verse asks that they be borne — titikṣasva. It asks for endurance, not for removal. Placed late, because early grief is not endured on request.
सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज।
Abandon all duties and take refuge in Me alone; I will liberate you from all sins; do not grieve.
mā śucaḥ, do not grieve, are among Kṛṣṇa's last words, after the whole conversation and directly after a promise about sin. Quoted alone it reads as an instruction to a mourner. In place, it is not addressed to bereavement.
The Gītā's answer to death is an argument about what does not die. It is not an answer to missing someone, and it does not claim to be. Whether the argument is any use, and when, is not something the text decides for its reader.