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50 Bhagavad Gita Quotes On Karma, Life, And Death

Bhagavad Gita Quotes On Karma, Life, And Death:

Introduction

Bhagavad Gita is one of the most sacred Hindu religious scriptures.

In the book, Krishna is talking to Arjuna before the Kurukshetra War begins.

It is composed of 700 Sanskrit verses or shlokas spread over 18 chapters.

When I read the Bhagavad Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous,” said Albert Einstein.

List Of 50 Bhagavad Gita Quotes On Karma, Life, And Death:

#1 “The Gita is not a book of commandments but a book of choices.”

#2 “When your mind has overcome the confusion of duality, you will attain the state of holy indifference to things you hear and things you have heard.”

#3 “Everything we do produces karma in the mind. In fact, it is in the mind rather than the world that karma’s seeds are planted.”

#4 “Actions do not cling to me because I am not attached to their results. Those who understand this and practice it live in freedom.”

#5 “When the mind constantly runs after the wandering senses, it drives away wisdom, like the wind blowing a ship off course.”

#6 “All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts; it is made of our thoughts.”

#7 “The law of karma states unequivocally that though we cannot see the connections, we can be sure that everything that happens to us, good and bad, originated once in something we did or thought.”

#8 “The immature think that knowledge and action are different, but the wise see them as the same.”

#9 “Death is no more traumatic than taking off an old coat.”

#10 “Just as the dweller in this body passes through childhood, youth and old age, so at death he merely passes into another kind of body. The wise are not deceived by that.”

bhagavad gita quotes on karma in sanskrit

Ancient Hinduism god sculpture on Sri Lanka

#11 “Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness.”

#12 “The true goal of action is knowledge of the Self.”

#13 “Those established in Self-realization control their senses instead of letting their senses control them.”

#14 “Pleasures conceived in the world of the senses have a beginning and an end and give birth to misery, Arjuna.”

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#15 “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.”

#16 “I am time, the destroyer of all; I have come to consume the world.”

#17 “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. We are made of our thoughts; we are molded by our thoughts.”

bhagavad gita quotes

Arjuna Statue located at the roundabout in Ubud, Bali – Indonesia – NattapolStudiO/Shutterstock

#18 “There was never a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be.”

#19 “Our mistake is in taking this for ultimate reality, like the dreamer thinking that nothing is real except his dream.”

#20 “We never really encounter the world; all we experience is our own nervous system.”

#21 “The wise unify their consciousness and abandon attachment to the fruits of action.”

#22 “Asceticism is giving up selfish activities, as poets know, and the wise declare renunciation is giving up fruits of action.”

#23 “Reshape yourself through the power of your will; never let yourself be degraded by self-will.”

#24 “Selfish action imprisons the world. Act selflessly, without any thought of personal profit.”

#25 ”Fear of failure, from being emotionally attached to the fruit of work, is the greatest impediment to success because it robs efficiency by constantly disturbing the equanimity of mind.”best Bhagavad Gita Quotes

#26 ”The world of the senses is just a base camp: we are meant to be as much at home in consciousness as in the world of physical reality.”

#27 “We are not cabin-dwellers, born to a life cramped and confined; we are meant to explore, to seek, to push the limits of our potential as human beings.”

#28 “I am the Atma abiding in the heart of all beings. I am also the beginning, the middle, and the end of all beings.”

#29 “Performing the duty prescribed by (one’s own) nature, one incurreth no sin.”

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#30 “Feelings of heat and cold, pleasure and pain, are caused by the contact of the senses with their objects. They come and they go, never lasting long. You must accept them.”

bhagavad gita facts

Arjuna’s Penance a large rock relief carving in mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, India – Jayakumar/Shutterstock

#31 “It is Nature that causes all movement. Deluded by the ego, the fool harbors the perception that says  – I did it.”

#32 “Perform all work carefully, guided by compassion.”

#33 “We behold what we are, and we are what we behold.”

#34 “The embodied soul is eternal in existence, indestructible, and infinite, only the material body is factually perishable, therefore fight O Arjuna.”

#35 “He is the source of light in all luminous objects. He is beyond the darkness of matter and is unmanifested.”

#36 “For the senses wander, and when one lets the mind follow them, it carries wisdom away like a windblown ship on the waters.”

#37 ” There was never a time when you and I and all the kings gathered here have not existed and nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist.”

#38 “The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.”

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#39 “Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward.”

#40 “The nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.”

bhagavad gita quotes

Statue of Krishna and his devotee Arjuna at Rishikesh, North India – Nila Newsom/Shutterstock

#41 ”You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction.”

#42 “You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work.”

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#43 “Hell has three hates: lust, anger, and greed.”

#44 “Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye.”

#45 “The peace of God is with them whose mind and soul are in harmony, who are free from desire and wrath, who know their own soul.”

#46 “The happiness which comes from long practice, which leads to the end of suffering, which at first is like poison, but at last like nectar – this kind of happiness arises from the serenity of one’s own mind.”

#47 “Anyone who is steady in his determination for the advanced stage of spiritual realization and can equally tolerate the onslaughts of distress and happiness is certainly a person eligible for liberation.”

#48 “No one who does good work will ever come to a bad end, either here or in the world to come.”

#49 “A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return.”

#50 “It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.”

Images credit – Shutterstock & Getty Images

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References

https://yogananda.org/the-hidden-truths-in-the-bhagavad-gita
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bhagavadgita

Partha Datta

Monday 17th of July 2023

Immensely profound eternal truths which on sincerely putting into practice in daily life one can attain a blissful state of mind to which any form of suffering cannot create a dent.

Tuesday 15th of March 2022

Just two things I'd like to say here 1) Kṛṣṇa is god himself not an incarnation of Vishnu. 2) We should not understand Srimad Bhagavad Gita according to our own understanding, better find someone authority who could help you to understand Srimad Bhagavad Gita as it is. One should accept it without any adulteration or mental concoction.

Ayushi Jain

Sunday 22nd of November 2020

Hello, This is beautifully scripted. Thanks for sharing. I have a question regarding point 4. Does Geeta actually say that our actions are not attached to us? Or is it my misinterpretation? Or is the translation of the heart of Sanskrit Geeta has not been appropriate here? There might be other option as well.

Will be thankful for the response. Would definitely be useful for mu understanding and understanding of so many others who have been trusting your source.

Tuesday 15th of March 2022

@Ayushi Jain,

Hi Hope you are doing well!

I'd suggest you to read on the way to Krishna then science of self realisation by HDG SRILA PRABHUPADA before reading Srimad Bhagavad Gita as it is. If you are really looking out for happiness in your life.

Thank you Hare Krishna 🙏