bhūta-grāmaḥ sa evāyaṁ bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate
rātryāgame ’vaśhaḥ pārtha prabhavatyahar-āgame
bhūta-grāmaḥ — the multitude of beings;
saḥ — these;
eva — certainly;
ayam — this;
bhūtvā bhūtvā — repeatedly taking birth;
pralīyate — dissolves;
rātri-āgame — with the advent of night;
avaśhaḥ — helpless;
pārtha — Arjun, the son of Pritha;
prabhavati — become manifest;
ahaḥ-āgame — with the advent of day
In this verse, Krishna is talking about how life works in cycles, similar to the way our days and nights pass. He explains that there is a constant pattern in the universe where during the day everything seems lively and active. This is like when we wake up in the morning, go to work, and carry out our day-to-day activities. All living beings are busy and participate in the world around them. Then, when night arrives, everything comes to a standstill. Living beings become inactive and enter a state of rest or even sleep.
Krishna is using this day and night metaphor to illustrate a bigger picture about life. Just like how everything is active in the daytime and then stops functioning when night falls, living beings are born, live their lives, and eventually die. After death, they go through a process where they lose their form and individuality, much like how a day transitions into night. This represents a phase where they return to a state of nothingness or unmanifest, where they are not active or alive in the way we understand it.
Krishna points out that every living being gets caught up in this repetitive cycle of birth, living, dying, and being reborn. It’s as if we are stuck on a merry-go-round that keeps going round and round. We don’t have much control over this cycle; we cannot stop it or escape it on our own. It highlights how temporary our lives are in this physical world, and it reminds us that nothing here lasts forever.
The purpose of this verse is to convey that one should not focus solely on the temporary things in this world. Instead, Krishna encourages looking beyond this cycle of life and death. He is suggesting that true freedom or liberation comes by turning inward, seeking spiritual understanding, and aiming to connect with the part of us that is eternal and does not change. In other words, while the world around us follows this endless cycle, we have the potential to step away from it and seek something higher, something lasting that goes beyond the ups and downs of life.