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T

he Bhagavad Gita’s story of the warrior-soul, Arjuna, and the 

divine Friend, Krishna, begins with Arjuna’s confusion, grief 

and despair and ends with his clarity and joy. Their dialog 

begins, and concludes eighteen chapters later, with the same advice: 

do not grieve. How are we to understand this? What could possibly 

bring that kind of even-mindedness? What is it that transforms 

Arjuna’s despair to joy, confusion to clarity, and doubt to faith? 

Krishna, as the higher true Self, directs Arjuna, the seeking 
soul, to recognize the spiritual truth about life:

 

Invisible before birth are all beings and after death  
invisible again. They are seen between two unseens. Why 
in this truth find sorrow? The Spirit that is in all beings is 
immortal: for the death of what cannot die, cease to grieve. 

(Gita: 2.28 & 2.30)

When we really look at grief, it becomes clear why the Gita, a sacred 

text that is a manual for how to live a spiritually conscious life, would 

emphasize it so. Grief pervades our lives. It attends every party we 

ever give, and in every heart’s pleasure, grief’s pulse also beats. Grief 

starts the moment we leave the womb, continues as we are weaned 

from the mother’s breast, lose our favorite toy, and are introduced 

to the word, “No.” From the time we enter this world—from our 

first lessons as a baby to the final departure from the body—we are 

all being schooled in the art of letting go. All of life’s experiences 

are about letting go. And so it should be. Releasing our illusionary 

grip of control on people and circumstances is necessary to expand 

into the true Self, the infinite, higher reality. Letting go helps us to 

realize that the things in life can only give that which they are and 

nothing more. That which is temporary, changing and impermanent 

in nature—relationships, circumstances, and things—ultimately must 

leave us, or we must leave them. If we are not conscious of this, we 

will grieve deeply. However, grief, when encountered, embraced, and 

released consciously, is a doorway to Love, to the experience of the 

all-pervading presence of the one Reality.