Lord Krishna
Divine TeacherThe Supreme Lord, the charioteer and divine guide of Arjuna. Krishna delivers the eternal wisdom of the Gita, revealing the nature of the soul, duty, and the path to liberation.
Speaking: Chapter 2, Verse 22
Verse 22
Hard VerseSānkhya Yoga — The Yoga of Discernment
As a person casts off worn-out garments and puts on new ones, so the embodied soul casts off worn-out bodies and enters into new ones.
Context & Meaning
As a person discards old clothes and wears new ones, the soul discards old bodies and takes new ones.
Scholar Commentaries
2 commentaries · Public domainAdi Shankaracharya
Advaita VedantaThe simile of discarding worn garments for new ones is the most famous illustration of transmigration in all Sanskrit literature. Note the word "dehī" — the embodied one — which distinguishes the Atman as the wearer from the body as the garment. A garment is not the person wearing it; nor is the body the Self inhabiting it.
Ramanujacharya
VishishtadvaitaThe soul does not disappear at bodily death; it merely takes up a new body as naturally as changing one's clothes. From the Vishishtadvaita perspective, both the soul and the body are real: the body is the instrument through which the eternal individual self (jīva) experiences and serves the Supreme.