Shloka 45
Sāṅkhya Enumeration of Tattvas, Distinction of Puruṣa–Prakṛti, and the Mechanics of Birth and Death
सोऽयं दीपोऽर्चिषां यद्वत्स्रोतसां तदिदं जलम् । सोऽयं पुमानिति नृणां मृषा गीर्धीर्मृषायुषाम् ॥ ४५ ॥
so ’yaṁ dīpo ’rciṣāṁ yadvat srotasāṁ tad idaṁ jalam so ’yaṁ pumān iti nṛṇāṁ mṛṣā gīr dhīr mṛṣāyuṣām
မီးအိမ်၏ အလင်းရောင်သည် အလင်းတန်းများ မရေတွက်နိုင်အောင် အခဏခဏ ပေါ်လာ၊ ပြောင်းလဲ၊ ပျောက်ကွယ်နေသော်လည်း မောဟဉာဏ်ရှိသူက ခဏတစ်ခါမြင်သည့် အလင်းကို “ဒီဟာပဲ မီးအိမ်အလင်း” ဟု မမှန်ကန်စွာ ပြောတတ်သည်။ စီးဆင်းနေသော မြစ်တွင် ရေသစ်များ အမြဲတမ်း လွန်သွားနေသော်လည်း မိုက်မဲသူက တစ်နေရာကိုကြည့်ပြီး “ဒီဟာပဲ မြစ်ရေ” ဟု ဆိုတတ်သည်။ ထိုနည်းတူ ကိုယ်ခန္ဓာသည် အမြဲပြောင်းလဲနေသော်လည်း မာယာကြောင့် လူတို့သည် ကိုယ်ခန္ဓာအဆင့်တစ်ခုချင်းကို မိမိ၏ အမှန်တကယ် အတ္တဟု ထင်မြင်ကြသည်။
Although one may say, “This is the light of the lamp,” there are innumerable rays of light being created, transformed and destroyed at every moment; and although one may speak of the water of the river, there is an ever-new supply of different water molecules passing by. Similarly, when one meets a young child, one accepts that particular transitory phase of the body as the actual identity of the person, considering him to be a child. One also considers an old body to be an old person. In fact, however, the material body of a human being, just like the waves of a river or the radiation of a lamp, is merely a transformation of the three modes of material nature, the potency of the Supreme Lord. The real identity of a person is spirit soul, part and parcel of Lord Kṛṣṇa, but as Lord Kṛṣṇa proves in this verse, a conditioned soul is incapable of observing or understanding the subtle movements of time. With the gross vision of material consciousness one cannot ascertain the subtle segments of material manifestation, which are impelled by the Lord Himself as time. The word mṛṣāyuṣām in this verse indicates those who are uselessly wasting their time in ignorance without understanding the instructions of the Lord. Such persons gullibly accept any particular phase of the body to be the actual identity of the spirit soul within the body. Because the spirit soul is not subject to material transformation, when he engages himself in the eternal variegated pleasure of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, loving service to the Supreme Lord, he will experience no further ignorance and suffering.
FAQs
This verse explains that calling someone the “same person” is a conventional but ultimately false notion, like calling a changing flame or flowing river the same; it points to the need to distinguish the eternal self from changing body-mind states.
Krishna teaches Uddhava discrimination (viveka): the body and mental conditions constantly change, so identifying the self with them produces illusion; understanding this supports detachment and devotion grounded in truth.
Treat shifting moods, roles, and bodily changes as temporary processes; anchor your identity in the observing self and in devotion to Bhagavan—this reduces anxiety, possessiveness, and ego-based conflict.