Bhagavad Gita 2.63 · BG 2.63
Chapter 2Verse 63
Sankhya Yoga
क्रोधाद्भवति सम्मोहः सम्मोहात्स्मृतिविभ्रमः। स्मृतिभ्रंशाद् बुद्धिनाशो बुद्धिनाशात्प्रणश्यति॥
krodhād bhavati sammohaḥ sammohāt smṛti-vibhramaḥ, smṛti-bhraṁśād buddhi-nāśo buddhi-nāśāt praṇaśyati
Translation
From anger comes delusion, from delusion comes confused memory, from confused memory comes loss of discernment, and from loss of discernment one is ruined.
Anger left unchecked slowly clouds the mind. Notice it before it grows.
What does this mean?
A chain reaction, traced step by step: unchecked anger clouds judgment long before it shows on the surface.
In simple words
This picks up where the last verse left off. Anger clouds your judgment. Clouded judgment scrambles your memory of what matters. That scrambling wrecks your ability to reason. And without reason, you come undone. Krishna is showing that anger does its damage well before it's visible on the surface.
The deeper idea
The verse is a step-by-step account of how a person unravels from the inside. Each link is the loss of a specific faculty: clarity, then memory, then discernment, then the capacity to function at all. The important claim is about timing. By the time anger shows up in your behavior, several of these internal steps have already happened. Understanding the sequence is what lets you treat anger as an early warning rather than a late one.
How it applies to life
Think of a time you sent a message while furious and regretted it within the hour. In the moment it felt justified and clear. Looking back, you can see your judgment was already gone, you'd forgotten what you actually wanted from the situation, and you argued yourself into something that cost you. This verse is the case for building in a delay: once anger is running, the parts of you that would catch the mistake are already offline.