The Second Teaching: Philosophy and Spiritual Discipline

In this second teaching we learn about a lot of topics. First of all, Krishna talks to Arjuna about reincarnation and death. Krishna tries to convince Arjuna to fight by telling him that killing someone is not a reason to feel guilty since life is a cycle and we all die and are born again.

“Death is certain for anyone born,
and birth is certain for the dead;
since the cycle is inevitable,
you have no cause to grieve!” pg 35

I found this very contradictory since in the first teaching Krishna tells Arjuna not to fight and in this second teaching he is telling him the opposite. It is really weird how someone can change its mind so quickly.

By talking about death and reincarnation, Krishna, gave me a completely new concept about life since according to him/her death is very natural and killing someone is not bad. She talks about death as if it was just a process to become another person through reincarnation.




“As a man discards
worn out clothes
to put on new
and different ones,
so the embodied self
discards
its worn-out bodies
to take on other new ones. “pg 35

I really liked this part of the teaching since Krishna compares death to the simple act of changing clothes and looking different. This is telling us that reincarnation is becoming a new self and that dying is nothing to be afraid of.

When I read this I couldn’t stop thinking about my religion. The Catholic church does not believe on reincarnation, but in resurrection so I really liked this other point of view shown I the book. It is completely different the way that all of us, human beings, look at death. For many, death is so natural, for others it is horrible and we are scared of it, and others just look at it as rebirth and reincarnating into another person. These topics can turn out to be very controversial since none of us knows what really happens when you die, and we will never know that until the day we have to leave this world and our lives end.

After this, Krishna talks about his duty to kill them. She tells him that he has to fight and kill them in order to fulfill his duty and overcome all his fears. I totally disagree with this because Krishna is completely forcing him to do something he does not want to do. I see this as an example of how religion manipulates us. Everyone should be free to do what he thinks is best and not what they force you to do.