Verse 12

¹²How hard it is, and how against all right, that you, the sons of Dharma, should have had to live in such distress, though your shelter was the brahmanas, dharma, and the Unfallen. ¹³When Pandu, that great chariot-fighter, had died, Prtha, a young wife with small children, met with many troubles again and again for your sake, having children to keep. ¹⁴All that has been unwelcome to you I take to be the work of time, in whose power the world stands with its guardians, as a bank of cloud stands in the power of the wind. ¹⁵Where the son of Dharma is king, where Vrkodara holds the mace, where Arjuna bears the weapons and the Gandiva is the bow, and Krsna himself is the friend, and even from there came calamity.

¹⁶King, no man ever knows what he intends; even seers, set on finding it out, are bewildered. ¹⁷Therefore, bull of the Bharatas, settle it that this stands under the rule of fate, and follow that rule; and as their protector, lord, guard the people who have none. ¹⁸This is the Bhagavan himself, the first Person, Narayana, who bewilders the world with his maya and moves hidden among the Vrsnis. ¹⁹King, his power, which is the most hidden of all, is known to the revered Siva, to the divine sage Narada, and to the Bhagavan Kapila himself. ²⁰He whom you take for your mother's brother's son, your dear friend, your best of well-wishers, whom out of friendship you made your counsellor, your messenger, and then your charioteer:

²¹in him, the self of all, of equal sight, without a second, without I-ness and without fault, no unevenness of mind is anywhere brought about by such offices. ²²Yet see, king, his compassion towards those devoted to him alone: as I am giving up my life, Krsna himself has come into my sight. ²³The yogin who, letting go of his body, has set his mind upon him in devotion and sings his name with his voice, is freed from desire and from its works. ²⁴Let that god of gods, the Bhagavan, wait until I let this body go: he whose lotus face shines with a gracious smile and reddened eyes, who is himself the path of meditation, four-armed.