He Who Knows, Does Not Grieve
The 22nd mantra from the Dviteeya valli of the first chapter of Kathopanishad -
अशरीरँ शरीरेष्वनवस्थेष्ववस्थितम् ।
महान्तं विभुमात्मानं मत्वा धीरो न शोचति ॥
ashariram sharireṣhv anavastheshv avasthitam
mahaantam vibhum atmaanam matvaa dhīro na shochati
Close your eyes for a moment. You feel the heart beating, breath flowing, body resting. But beneath all this rhythm… there is someone who watches. Someone who doesn’t breathe, doesn’t age, doesn’t move — and yet, is present everywhere.
That is what the Rishi declares here — a truth that shatters all worldly illusions:
Ashariram sharireṣhu —
The Atma is bodiless, yet abides in all bodies.
It wears this body like a traveler dons a cloak — never becoming the cloak, never bound by it.
Anavastheshv avasthitam —
It is stable, even amidst the unstable.
Bodies change — from womb to child, youth to age, joy to disease — like clouds drifting across the sky. But Atma? It is like the sky itself — unshaken, unmoved, eternal.
Mahaantam vibhum atmaanam —
Realize this Atma is mahantam — great, not in size but in essence. It is vibhu — all-pervading, not stuck in your skull, not buried in your chest, but present in every flicker of life across the cosmos.
And now, the thunder rolls:
Matvaa dhīro na shochati —
The wise one, knowing this, does not grieve.
Why should he?
What is there to lose when the real you can never be cut, burned, drowned, or destroyed?
When the core of your being is not touched by death, not dimmed by sorrow, not stained by sin?
The dhira — the one of steady wisdom — sees this truth, like lightning splitting the dark clouds of ignorance. He knows:
I am not this body.
I am not these shifting moods.
I am the witness, eternal, formless, free.
And in that knowing, grief drops like a shed skin.
English
Kathopanishad
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