Always Been Here: The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verses 12-13

Join us as we explore the Bhagavad Gita. This week, we will be diving into Chapter 2, verses 12-13. In these weekly lectures, we focus on specific ancient teachings that we can all apply to our day-to-day lives and personal spiritual journey!

Transcript

So we are exploring the Bhagavad Gita. This particular translation that I'm using is Stephen Mitchell's, But you don't have to use this book. You can use any version you'd like or no version at all and just follow along and ponder and contemplate. So this is part of a much greater story called the Mahabharata and if you ever want to wonder how big it is I actually have a copy of the Mahabharata. So for anyone listening I'm holding a book that probably is about I don't know two inches wide. This is volume two. So there are four of these bad boys and this is the the length of the epic of the Mahabharata and it is very small print so if you were to imagine this is a true Indian epic and the Bhagavad Gita is a very very tiny little book inside of this great story. Some say that it actually was inserted that it doesn't necessarily have to be there but it was a an insert and some say that this tiny little book holds all the teachings of the Vedas, The Upanishads, And all the Hindu teachings which is very cool. So it's very concise. It takes place in this great civil war within the Mahabharata. Arjuna is our hero and Arjuna is on a great white chariot pulled by white horses and Krishna is his charioteer and at one point before the battle begins Arjuna says Krishna take me to the center of the field let me look upon this battle and he goes out and he sees all of his countrymen, Family, Friends on all sides of the civil war. It's not really a civil war but if you do imagine a huge area just split almost randomly in the middle and everyone is battling and he looks around and he's like I don't want to fight. I don't want to kill these people. No good can come of this and he sinks down into the chariot in despair. What's beautiful is that the battle that he is looking upon is the same struggle we have inside of our hearts every day trying to understand what this world is all about because it's a confusing world. It's hard. For whatever reason we didn't come to earth because it was a utopia even though in our hearts we're seeking that. We're seeking joy and abundance and love and kindness and all these things but this isn't necessarily the world we dropped into and so there's always this strange dissonance and strange frustration inside of us almost on an existential level like what are we doing here? On a good day we enjoy the sunshine chocolate and good friends but on a struggling day or a struggling month or a struggling year we so easily can look around and say I don't understand and we may very easily give up and it doesn't mean that we end our life or something but we may kind of push the clutch in on life you know instead of making choices and doing the battle whatever you want to call the battle whether it's overcoming old habits or having that hard discussion or doing the thing that we really want to do but we're afraid to do instead of staying in gear and making it happen we tend to just throw the clutch in and just let life go by. So at the point we are right now in the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna has given up he at first he was like I can't do it like and we all have that moment in our life where we're like no but you don't understand you know this is our victim story you know like you don't understand how hard my life is you don't understand how hard my life has been if you knew if you could walk one hour in my shoes you would know how hard it is and his teacher Krishna is is kindly listening because Krishna loves him they're good friends they're family they're they're all the things and then eventually Arjuna says okay I don't want to talk about everything I don't have anymore I don't want to talk about everything I think I know is right I'm ready to listen and this is a very interesting place to be and this is where we are here in the Gita and this is where Krishna begins to teach this is why the Gita perhaps is within the Mahabharata this is like okay now let's get down to business so today we're going to look at verses 12 and 13 of chapter 2 and again if you don't have to have a book to follow along I will read so just backing up a little Arjuna says I am weighed down by pity Krishna my mind is utterly confused tell me where my duty lies which path I should take I am your pupil I beg for your instruction for I cannot imagine how any victory even if I were to gain the kingship of the whole earth or of all the gods in heaven could drive away this grief that is withering my senses having spoken thus to Krishna Arjuna said I will not fight and I fell and he fell silent as Arjuna sat there downcast between the two armies Krishna smiled at him and then spoke these words although you mean well Arjuna your sorrow is sheer delusion wise men do not grieve for the dead or for the living never was there a time when I did not exist or you or these kings nor will there come a time when we cease to be just as in the body the self passes through childhood youth and old age so after death it passes to another body so these are the verses that we're going to look at today and if you're new all those previous verses we've dove deep into into other recordings which you can all find on insight timer here so today we're going to look at never was there a time when I did not exist or you or these kings nor will there come a time when we cease to be just as in this body the self passes through childhood youth and old age so after death it passes to another body what does that make you feel like when you hear that that you have always been here that everyone here has always been here and we are going to leave does it bring you peace is it confusing relief dread it feels weird endless suffering it fills me with hope and peace I'm 67 I understand the word continuum continuum hopeful validation to why some things feel familiar because I have such exhaustion of being a human but I know that the eternal does not feel the way it feels to be in form so now it delights me mm-hmm it brings me peace life death rebirth so this is one of the foundational teachings of the Gita because of course we hear about it all the time in spirituality how in all spiritual teachings you know that we don't want to have attachment to the world around us that we are an eternal being and everything around us is always changing everything our bodies are changing the seasons are changing the people in our lives are changing whether they're in our lives are changing you know last week we did a meditation where if you are to imagine your soul and to imagine that there may be times in your life where you are very wealthy and then there are times that you may not have enough money for rent and then you may just have a little bit of money and then a bit more and then none or you may have times in your life where you have lots of people in your life and other times that you are quite solo and sometimes when you have an intimate partner and sometimes when you're alone and you may have times in your life where you are very physically fit and other times when you perhaps have gotten overweight or underweight or sick it's always changing there's always something shifting on the outside but within all of those changes there is an eternal self you can often think of it within a single life because reincarnation isn't just about i'm katrina in this lifetime but then there was also a time when i was miranda and another time back in the 1300s where i was john because that's very hard to imagine like we can intellectually imagine it but we can also imagine it in this lifetime we can imagine all the people we've been already like if you were to think of your life up until this point how many existences have you had that seem to have nothing to do with anything else when i think of myself as a very young child before age of 12 i was this happy kid this happy girl guide a little girl who read and played with her friends and you know and then high school came and it was like that little girl didn't exist anymore now it was just this horrible pimple ridden bullying and trying to be cool and drugs and alcohol and all the horrible things like you wouldn't even recognize the child i was before 12 and the frustrated human i was between 14 and 19 and then when i was 23 i married a dairy farmer and i moved to the middle of nowhere and i became a farmer i grew up in toronto i went to school for mathematics i was a computer programmer and not that that's interesting but it is so far from the life of a farm wife literally milking cows with babies on my back covered in manure feeding the men folk for 17 years that is an entirely different life and then we sold the farm we moved into town and i bought a train station where i taught kundalini yoga and tantra and dance and all the things of my heart it was the most beautiful thing you can google it east street station katrina this was my train station i wasn't even the same person that i was depressed and despairing on that farm and then fast forward to today to 2026 my kids are grown i've been divorced for 10 years i live with william i am utterly free independent i write books i hang out with you guys it's not even remotely the same life as back on that farm waking up in the morning to milk the cows and get the kids on the bus and do all the things they don't feel like me like when i look back at who i was in those different stages on the outside you wouldn't even recognize me but on the inside i was always katrina all the way back to this four-year-old little girl who taught herself how to read all the way through all the hard years and on the outside if you were to write books about each chapter some are a comedy some are a tragedy some are stories of hardship but there is a common thread me but you know what i mean there is something inside of me that i can touch that existed even in the hardest years of high school when i was hiding in the library from the girls that were bullying me all the way forward to today what's interesting is that authentic katrina the soul of katrina she doesn't have qualities she's not five seven she's not 56 years old she's not married she's not happy she's not sad she's just katrina she's like an observer of life so now imagine if we can imagine that in my little 56 years here on earth can i extend that to 200 years that there was a time before i was a child that i also lived a life that i can't fathom any more than i can fathom today moving to a farm can i fathom that can i fathom that that katrina that soul inside was also the farmer or the politician or the slave or the king i can fathom that i can fathom that whatever that formless being that i truly am could also have inhabited other lives that don't seem very connected but there was a common thread this is what krishna is saying that you have always been here maybe in different forms maybe having different experiences but you have always been here this is something to not be philosophical about but to truly think of in your own life right now imagine that you have always been here you are not 40 you are not 20 you are not 70 you have always been here can you feel the sobriety of that the sincerity the wisdom in that and then when we do look at the life we're living right now it's easier to imagine wow it really is always changing huh i guess i don't have to be so upset about it or maybe it helps us become more courageous maybe that thing i want to try isn't so scary or maybe leaving this difficult situation isn't so scary because all things change but i will always be here whether i have money or i don't have money or i have people or i don't have people or i i have always been here just for a moment let's close our eyes and just repeat that to yourself i have always been here over and over again what does that feel like in your heart to know that you have always been here immense grounded safe safe deeply connected wise grateful expansive beautiful reassured it's a strange feeling because i wonder why we can't remember our other lives in form curious in awe i was in a temple today feeling just that pure awe and energy yes so it makes me wonder about visiting the grave of past incarnations it's a great question and obviously i don't know the answer but i can tell you a thought about why we can't remember so my teacher jim teacher and friend who i've talked about before he was the one who helped me when i was sick 30 years ago or longer so he was electrocuted in 1987 he was carrying an extension ladder and he hit a power line and the energy came through the body and it shorted out all of his joints everything and he essentially died and then when he came back he was different he was able to heal people he was able to do all kinds of things and he also could remember all of his past lives all of them but that really messed him up i have to tell you it wasn't like oh now i can remember this and i can remember that and i can remember this it actually really really messed him up because he didn't know how to function as jim it was like he suddenly was no longer jim and the reality is we don't have the philosophy to handle that like for example he has this one lifetime that's his favorite cheng lao who was this tibetan mercenary and he was a real jerk and he wasn't a jerk for bad reason like he was tortured it was dark these aren't memories that you want to have you know it's like we want to have all the memories like i want to know that i was a witch or i want to know that i was a king or i want to know that i was a slave or i want to know that i was whatever but do you do you really want to know all the darkness and the good and everything of thousands of lives really because you know he tells me stories of cheng lao and he was truly merciless he in the end he had no conscience he didn't care he you know he would just kill you as soon as look at you jim loves cheng lao he's his favorite it's his favorite lifetime another of his favorite lifetimes where he says that he truly learned love was he was born on an african desert and his mom was starving and his brothers and sisters were all starving and his mom birthed him on the desert and left him to die but in that moment jim says that he knew love he knew a true mother's love in that moment because she didn't want him to suffer she loved him that much now as i tell this story this could be very triggering and i apologize for it so please forget it if it's triggering for you but imagine what it would take in in your philosophy of life to be able to internalize that to be able to live with that memory many of us struggle to even put into context our childhood of this life things that people did wrong to us things that happened that we wish had never happened we struggle to handle this one and stay happy and optimistic i don't know that we have it in us to handle two and i mean two complete pictures let alone a thousand and it took jim quite a while and he actually met a very specific teacher who helped him sew himself back together and allow him to actually become just jim again husband of sheila father of three children so there's something of a blessing of getting to just be katrina just being me is complicated enough and i get to then focus on this assignment you know it's kind of like we often think of life being like a play we are actors on a stage so now imagine when eternal katrina decides to play let's not even call her katrina let's just call her the eternal one decides to play the role of katrina boss born katrina harding this is her life she's going to be born to two teachers in toronto ontario canada she's going to have two little sisters she's going to go on to school she's going to marry a dairy farmer she's going to be a people pleaser philosopher she's going to want this and she's going to struggle with this so the eternal one has to really embrace this journey of this soul if they're going to play the role properly and it's funny i was talking to a friend of mine the other day who's gotten into acting and she said it's so wild because she really gets into the role and when she's in the role like it takes her some time to get into the role but then it takes her time to get out of the role in one of the roles she had to play this racist woman and she had to become racist she's becoming it because that's who she is and she said it was really hard she goes it was a you know a good role and everything but she says it really took me time to stop being in that consciousness so imagine how hard it would be in this life to also be a racist to also be a killer to also be a mother to also be a king you know what i mean i'm not even sure we would be able to learn anything or enjoy anything so imagine that it's actually quite a blessing to get to be just you but we have the awareness that we are eternal that awareness we are allowed to have we may not have all the details and all the pictures of every life we've ever lived but we know that it's true we know that we've been many things so even imagine the power of that imagine the power of knowing that as much in this lifetime you may be a victim of life you may really like whatever this was this is a toughie this is a tough life that you're existing in right now to really deeply understand that in another life you may have been a tyrant that caused suffering and in another life you may have been a shaman who helped people heal and in another life you might have been and so on it brings a different perspective to the world it brings a different perspective to people we judge you know that whole when you look at someone and you're like wow can you believe that guy can you believe that guy why does it bother us so much why does it can another person say well you know that's just them and you're like no it's wrong one of the last times i i talked to jim my teacher we went out for lunch and i was struggling with some health issues and and he said he goes well i'll help you and the big thing he taught me in that moment was that i had been a tyrant for more lifetimes than not not a nice person and i'm still digesting that but i'll tell you it has taken the wind out of any sails of judgment inside of me as soon as someone says can you believe that can you believe this person did that can you believe that person did that a big part of me sits quietly and says you know how can one be so how can how can i judge how can i judge maybe that was me in a past life maybe that was you in a past life we don't know but we do know that there is an eternal spark inside of us and we do know that we have always been here so to imagine in a very practical sense how does knowing that change how you live your day for me studying the gita or any spiritual path it has to apply to life how does this change how you live how does it change how you see your life perspective this too shall pass i'm studying ancestral trauma this makes some sense it also allows everything around us to come and go it allows people to come and go it allows situations to come and go it's not even like nothing is forever in a negative way it's not meant to be forever we're meant to have new experiences in the second one that we're looking at krishna says just as in this body the self passes through childhood youth and old age so after death it passes to another body and one of the teachings about this is that if you look at your life right now do you grieve the different stages of life that you've had when you think of your childhood do you grieve because that's what he talks about here wise men do not grieve for the dead or for the living do we grieve our high school years when we enter into adulthood do we grieve for the time that if you had children that they were young and now they're gone to grieve that time because if we do if we grieve for parts of our life we have to look at that we have to deeply look at why we are attached to particular times of our lives when we think of certain times and we think oh those were the best years of my life i was young i was able i was surrounded by people i loved or oh i loved that time i didn't have all the responsibilities i have now i hadn't married that person i didn't have this and that if we have this this is very important to look at because what it means is for some reason we are not living now that eternal self is still here why was i only able to live in that time was it really just because i was able-bodied and healthy but now i'm getting older and there's other things going on or has something crept into my mind that limits me we are always capable of being alive we are always capable of making new friends and new choices i was talking to my sister who is in the middle of changing her career and she's feeling very isolated because she's not you know she doesn't have that big work thing going on and there's something going around like it's a trend called 52 coffees i'd never heard of it when she was telling me about it where this person i don't even know where it came from but their goal was to have coffee with one new person every week for the year 2026 so she put out on facebook on linkedin on everything she said here's what i want to do i want to meet new people i want to have new conversations and i'm booking one coffee with not and not not romantic or anything i'm going to make one coffee date with a new person every week that's a fascinating thing can you imagine how different your life would be after 52 weeks of having coffee with all these different people we all can do that right now we all can do that we all can live right now because this is the curious thing about having an eternal self in every single moment of our life no matter how we find ourselves we can always make a dynamic change right now and if there are thoughts in our mind that says we can't then we have to look at those because we are an eternal being and if for some reason we can't make the choices we want to make right now because that's the thing too that's a real thing then there are internal choices to make there are ways that we can see the world differently for many many years on the farm i was very depressed and i never felt that it was right to leave it never felt right to make that big change and i would pray about it and the answer would be stay so i assumed that there were things that i had to discover that there were there was growth that i had to have so what krishna is presenting to us is this inner person the permanent inner person so to close our eyes for a moment and connect with your permanent inner self really connect with that person breathe life into them let them weave into your physical body your world and then we live we live we experience we love we cry like this is the other thing about not knowing our other lifetimes and only being this life because the limitations that we have are what makes life emotional and feeling you know even in suffering and struggle it's funny my partner and i were talking about this yesterday we were talking about being self-employed lots of people want to be self-employed but it isn't easy it's like you're always hustling because if people aren't buying what you're selling you don't have rent it's very very different than working for someone else and we were talking about how the difficult times as a self-employed person or a business owner of any kind it is actually the hard times that make us very wise it isn't when everything's going your way in life but just imagine for all of us if life is always just sunshine and lollipops we don't learn a lot but in the hard times and the difficult times we get down to some real core basics of being alive it's different i always laughed because i was born a philosopher and i've been reading philosophy writing i have a journal here that i started writing when i was 18 and it's all about love and death and god and i have all these little essays that i wrote not for school or anything these were just essays i wrote in my bedroom so i am a perennial philosopher and then for some reason my life took the turn that i was to marry a farmer move to the country be extremely isolated be surrounded by difficult family difficult lives long hours and it knocked the stuffing out of me it knocked that philosopher out of me for good or for ill but it was good i can't even imagine how different my life would be if i hadn't had that deep suffering because what it did is even as i teach is if i'm teaching tantra i'm teaching yoga i'm teaching the gita or whatever i don't want to hear a theory i don't want to hear the ritual i don't want to hear the belief i want to know how does this help how does this help us expand our lives how does this help us experience love with strangers on the street and people close to us how does it help us find meaning in life because when push comes to shove those are the things that we seek so desperately in the dark times and so there's something really wonderful about that deep sobriety why does growth have to come through pain if i ruled the world it wouldn't be that way isn't that the question right that is the great philosophical question long covid has completely changed my life and i'm working hard to accept my life as it is now to appreciate my good experiences of the past my broken body doesn't even work make me worthless well this is just it like it's like i i think of like i'll never forget i was writing tantric intimacy and i was downtown toronto sitting in a starbucks which is my favorite place to write i'm sitting in the window and i've got my headphones on classical music playing my computer there and i'm writing the chapter all about self-love and i was struggling with it because i don't i don't like saying things that are kind of irrelevant and a man starts navigating the sidewalk in a electronic wheelchair and i don't know whether he had cerebral palsy or something but he you know was he only had that kind of one arm that he was navigating and his legs were atrophied and he's navigating downtown toronto through the this the crowd and then he had to wait and then cross across at the at the light and i'm watching him and i'm looking at me with my able body and i was thinking how different our lives are and how to find self-love no matter what how to find that inner connection to our eternal self whether i am fully able-bodied independent whatever or my life is in a wheelchair one life is not better than another one life is not more important than another that person has a rich inner world they may have friends they may have struggles they may have all the things but their life is beautiful do you know what i mean but we have this weird attachment to what the outside looks like but we all have the same inner world with all the same feelings and hopes and dreams and potential when we go inside and and is there struggle sure are they the same struggles that i've had no do they have any idea what i struggled with on the farm and in depression and struggle no do i have any idea of their struggles no but they're all just part of it you know one's not better or worse than another i'm just going to reread the stanza before this one so i'm going to read verses 11 to 13 so let's just close our eyes for a moment just breathe although you mean well arjuna your sorrow is sheer delusion wise men do not grieve for the dead or for the living never was there a time when i did not exist or you or these kings nor will there come a time when we cease to be just as in this body the self passes through childhood youth and old age so after death it passes to another body i would love to know what you're taking away from all of this how would you like to be different in your life how does knowing that you have always been here change things love hope energy light gratitude release of the anger i feel about my existence not a big one to keep in the forefront that i have always been it's grounding courage feeling vibration trusting the path and process then i must let them go accept what it is let go of what was and have faith in what will be no need to feel pain it's just drama of this life nobody is lost by in death to have more compassion for people i hope that next time i come back in a body that can move i've experienced this before and survived i'll survive again so delighted for me that means everything is a continual flow and for me not to look at every single task in such a fine way a raindrop making its way to the ocean nothing is permanent i hope you have a wonderful week thanks everybody

Reviews

I’m wondering about the meaning of the word “body” at the end of the last verse you read. When I was young, I felt intrinsically eternal. I wasn’t aware of death. I wasn’t questioning eternity. Life felt like eternity. Then Christianity brought up the notion of “being saved” and the image of going to “heaven” formed in my mind. As I grew older, as people died around me, my dear grand-maman first, then eventually my parents, I became aware of my spirit not changing, being the one constant in my life. So when I look inside of me I can be aware of my spirit being one with the Universe. I’m wondering if you know what the word “body” here can be translated into from the original language?