Radhanath Swami on Cause for Lamentation

As the embodied soul passes in this body from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly accepts another body at the time of death. It is simply another change. There are so many changes in life, and death is one of the inevitable changes. The Vedic scriptures explain that death is not to be lamented because the soul never dies. It is the bodily conception of life that is the source of all misery and suffering. The problem is not birth, old age, disease or death. The problem is that we are identifying ourselves with the body that is going through these changes. We cannot avoid it. We can at the most postpone it for a few years. Therefore Vedic scriptures like Bhagavad Gita and the other great scriptures of the world teach us how to become free form the cycle of birth and death.