Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.54.47
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
-
kalānām
—
of the phases
Genitive plural of kalā. A kalā is a sixteenth-portion of the moon. The Bhāgavatam will use the same word for partial incarnations (kalā-avatāra) — phases of the Lord's full disc. Here, phases of the body, never of the soul.
-
indoḥ
—
of the moon
Genitive of indu. Soma — the moon. In Bhāgavata cosmology, Soma is also the source of the gandharva-juice and the food of pitṛs. Balarāma chooses the moon because its 'death' is the most popular astronomical illusion.
-
kuhūḥ
—
the new-moon day
Kuhū — the dark of the moon. The day when the moon is invisible. Even kuhū is not death — it is invisibility. Balarāma re-trains Rukmiṇī's vocabulary: what looks like brother's death is brother's invisibility-to-her at this moment of crisis.
-
vikriyāḥ
—
transformations
Plural of vikriyā. Vi (apart) + kriyā (action). 'Modifications.' In Sāṅkhya, vikāra is a technical term for modification of prakṛti. Balarāma uses vikriyā loosely synonymous — the body undergoes vikriyā; the soul does not.
-
mṛtiḥ
—
death
From √mṛ. The bare noun for death. Balarāma uses the technical word and then dissolves it: there is no mṛti of the self, only kalā-vikriyā of the body. Cf. BG 2.20, 'na jāyate mriyate vā kadācit.'
Lord Balarāma here explains how the conditioned souls identify with the body and how this identification should be given up. Certainly every ordinary person considers himself or herself young, middle-aged or old, healthy or sick. But such identification is an illusion, just as the waxing and waning of the moon is an illusion. When we identify ourselves with the material body, we lose our power to understand the soul.
Since the soul has no contact with birth and death, these must only be characteristics of the body. But how can that be, for the awareness of being born, being a child, of aging, is a perception of the self or soul, not the body. This is explained with an example. Just as there are birth and other many phases of the moon, but these is no the birth of the moon which has unlimited phases, and just as the new moon phase is not the death of the moon, so we talk about death of the self, but actually it is death of the body connected with the soul.
The moon, said to be a shadow of the sun and a disk of water, gradually increases and decreases in its phases. But it is always the moon. This is the comparison with the ātmā which remains while the body changes. There is another meaning. “Since I have been born in this family, why connection and disconnection with family members not occur for me?” If changes do not exist for the ātmā, what can be said of you, the svarūpa-śakti of the Lord, with a form of eternity, knowledge and bliss?
Birth of the body is illustrated. Birth, existence, growth, change, decay and death are six transformations (vikriyā) of the body. Even perfected persons as a pastime sometimes manifest these changes. “The body, using the senses, definitely undergoes these changes, being non different from changes in one’s father etc. But the ātmā also dies at death since it appears that there is no consciousness.” There is even death of the moon. It seems that moon is destroyed since one does not see its disk at the dark moon phase. At other times it seems that the moon is born and undergoes changes because one can see the moon. Similarly the body, not having consciousness, dies at death but not the ātmā. Or “At the dark moon there seems to be death of the moon, since the moon is not present.” The destruction of the phases of the moon is apparent death. It is not real death.
The moon does not die on the new-moon night; only its phases vanish. Birth and death belong to the body's phases, never to the soul. Balarāma's lunar image is perfect: we say 'the moon has died' on amāvāsyā, but no Sanskrit astronomer believes the moon has ceased to exist. So with the self.
My note
Source: vedabase.io