Wise words are not the same as wisdom.

This is Krishna's opening salvo — direct, even apparently harsh. He does not immediately comfort Arjuna with gentle words. Instead, he identifies the fundamental error: Arjuna is grieving over things that do not ultimately warrant grief.

This may seem cold. How can Krishna say there is nothing to grieve over? But the teaching goes deeper than it first appears.

Krishna is not denying that loss is painful, or that the situation is difficult. He is questioning the premise: that death is the tragedy Arjuna thinks it is. The soul, as he will explain in the next verses, cannot be killed.

What Arjuna grieves for — the destruction of the body — is inevitable for everything material. Grief rooted in that misunderstanding is not wisdom, whatever wise-sounding words accompany it.

For modern life: how much of our suffering comes from grieving over things that are inevitable, natural, or even necessary? We grieve over aging, over change, over the impermanence of relationships and situations. Krishna invites us to examine whether our grief is rooted in clear vision or in attachment to what was never permanent in the first place.