“Why, brother-in-law, this weeping like a coward? Because Bhīṣma, Droṇa and the rest will die? Your weeping is not simply because Bhīṣma, Droṇa and the rest will die. It is ‘mamakāra’, the feeling ‘they are mine’, that makes you weep. Of all who weep in the world, three quarters do not weep for the deaths; they weep out of ‘mamakāra’, the feeling ‘those who die are mine’. Brother-in-law! How many who were not your own have you killed before this? Where did this weeping go then? It is ‘mamakāra’, the feeling ‘these people I see are mine’, that has thrown you down into such sorrow. The cause of that mamakāra is Ahaṅkāra. In sleep there is no Ahaṅkāra. That is why one knows nothing at all of what has become of, or is becoming of, one’s own body lying there, the bodies of one’s own people, and the wealth, gold, possessions and vehicles one has amassed. ‘Aham’ is the first case; it is there first, and ‘mama’, the sixth case, comes after. Is that not natural? Madman, to take the body, which is not oneself, for oneself is ignorance itself. To think the anātma to be the Ātma is inverted knowledge; it can never be Jñāna. The notion that the body is the Ātma is itself ignorance. So, Arjuna, nothing else you do will end your ignorance. For this, Jñāna alone is the divine medicine.” With these words He took up the teaching of Ātma-jñāna at the very start. That is the eleventh śloka of the second chapter. From there onward, ‘Ātma-jñāna’ He began. In the pārāyaṇa of the Gītā this śloka is to be regarded as the ‘seed śloka’.