वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि।तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही॥
vāsānsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāyanavāni gṛhṇāti naro ’parāṇitathā śarīrāṇi vihāya jīrṇānyanyāni sanyāti navāni dehī
Word by word
The verse says
As a person puts aside worn-out clothes and takes new ones, so the one who lives in a body puts aside worn-out bodies and goes into new ones.
In plain words
The most famous image in the chapter, and the plainest.
You change your clothes. You do not mourn the shirt.
What makes it land is the word worn-out. Krishna does not say bodies are worthless. He says they wear out, which is something everyone has watched happen.
Where you've felt this · in grief
Clearing out a parent's wardrobe after they die. The clothes are unbearable to handle and also, plainly, just cloth. Both of those are true at once, and neither cancels the other.
Going deeper
This image is quoted so often that its edge has worn off, so it is worth sharpening.
The comparison is not saying the body is unimportant. Clothes matter. You choose them, care for them, and they carry a great deal about who you are. What the image denies is one specific thing: that the clothes are the wearer.
There is also something the image quietly concedes. Clothes wear out through being used. The Gita is not describing a soul that floats free of its body, untouched. It describes something that inhabits, uses, and wears through — which is why the next chapters can take action so seriously.
And a caution about how this gets deployed. As consolation offered to someone grieving, said too early, it is close to cruelty. The Gita does not offer it that way. Krishna is not standing at a graveside. He is talking to a soldier about an act he is about to commit, and the question is what that act can and cannot accomplish.
Context changes what a sentence does. This one is aimed at the killer, not the bereaved.