Chapter 12 · Verse 11·Spoken by Krishna
अथैतदप्यशक्तोऽसि कर्तुं मद्योगमाश्रितः।सर्वकर्मफलत्यागं ततः कुरु यतात्मवान्
athaitad apy aśhakto ’si kartuṁ mad-yogam āśhritaḥ sarva-karma-phala-tyāgaṁ tataḥ kuru yatātmavān
If you cannot do even this, then take refuge in My yoga. With your mind controlled, let go of the fruits of all action.
Word by Word
Saved for this reading session
Three movements · tap a label to switch
Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
Synthesis · a glossed leaf
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
his verse is the next step down in a descending ladder of practice that Krishna has been laying out. He has already offered higher options: fix the mind wholly on Me; if not, practice repeatedly; if not even that, perform all your actions for My sake. Now He turns to the seeker who cannot manage even that last option. To this person He says: at least take refuge in Me and give up the fruit of everything you do. Several commentators stress that this is the lowest, easiest rung, the bottom of the practical ladder, deliberately placed within reach so that no candidate is left without a means; the higher rungs remain there to be climbed once the footing is steady.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Sant Jñāneśvar
The heart of the instruction is sarva-karma-phala-tyaga: the renunciation of the fruit of all action. This does not mean stopping action. The commentators are clear that you keep doing your duties, including the prescribed rites such as the daily worship and the fire offering, but you let go of the aim at their result. You give up the craving, the expectation, the personal stake in the outcome, while the doing continues.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Krishna ties this renunciation to a specific inner stance named in the verse: mad-yogam ashritah, having taken refuge in My yoga. The fruit is not simply discarded into nothing; it is handed over, the burden laid upon the Lord, who alone holds the results. So even at this lowest rung the seeker does not stand alone. He renounces the fruit but does not renounce the support, the refuge in God. The act is one of self-surrender, casting the whole weight upon the Lord while continuing to act on His command.
Braided from 7 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Vallabhācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śaṅkarācārya
The verse also asks the seeker to be yatatmavan: one of restrained or self-controlled self. The commentators read this as a mind held steady and the senses brought under discipline, often by discrimination, so that the letting-go of fruit can actually take hold. This is the inner condition that makes the practice real rather than merely a wish.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda · Śrīla Baladeva · Vedānta Deśika
Many commentators see this renunciation not as a dead end but as a gradual ladder upward. By performing one's commanded actions with no eye to their fruit, the mind is purified; on that purified ground knowledge of the self becomes firmly seated; and from that knowledge the higher devotion to the Lord arises of itself. So the humble bottom rung is quietly continuous with the summit; what looks like the smallest practice opens, in time, onto the greatest.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read the verse against the architecture of the whole Gita. The fruit-renouncing action named here is identified with the discipline of the imperishable self taught in the first six chapters, which dwells on the nature of the self and breeds the higher devotion. The reasoning is that the conviction that the Lord is dear and is alone to be attained can arise only in one whose sin is worn away and whose self and mind are mastered. So action done with no eye to fruit, as the worship of the Lord, accomplishes self-knowledge, ends the concealment of ignorance, and lets the inmost self, whose single nature is to be subordinate to the Lord, be directly beheld; then supreme devotion arises of itself. This is supported by appeal to later verses, from worshipping Him by one's own action a man finds consummation through to one who, become Brahman, gains the supreme devotion to Me.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhakti
These commentators frame the verse by the two halves of the Gita: the first six chapters taught desireless action offered to the Lord as the means to liberation, the second six taught the yoga of devotion as the means to attaining the Lord. They explicitly rank the candidates. Those who can fix the inner faculty on the Lord by remembrance, reflection, or constant practice, and those who can hear and glorify Him, are the highest; the desireless worker who only renounces the fruit, described in this verse, is openly called inferior to these. One source adds a concrete picture of the obstacle: a person may be hindered by high birth or station from even the easiest pleasing service such as cleansing the Lord's temple, and to such a one this fruit-renunciation is given, through which, by realizing oneself as subordinate to the supreme Principal, even the higher devotion gradually arises. Another source carries the renunciation to its furthest reach, urging that not only the fruit but even the very notion that the Lord must be remembered or that the action is done for one's own account be extinguished into the great Void, the actions made motive-free as a father is free of craving toward his daughter, so that with the dropping of the body there is no return to birth.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read my yoga as a relationship and a person rather than only a method. One takes it as the bond of being served and serving in relation to the Lord, the path of refuge taught by the supreme teacher at the Lord's command, in which performing one's own duty according to one's power, accompanied by giving up the fruit, becomes happiness; laying the load upon the Lord, by renouncing every other path of knowledge or duty, brings fulfillment in His refuge. The other reads taking refuge in my yoga as taking refuge in the devotee in whom there is union with the Lord, so that by acting on the Lord's command with desire for fruit let go, the mind is purified, the knowledge taught by His devotee becomes firmly seated, and through that, success in the Lord's work comes about.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads the inability addressed in the verse as the inability of the unlearned who do not know the sequence of action laid down in the scriptures. The remedy is to lay all that down into the Lord by way of self-surrender. The whole emphasis falls on surrender as mercy: whatever in one's worship is deficient, excessive, unknown, out of right sequence, done without attention, or slipped from the understanding, all of it is offered to the compassionate Lord to be forgiven, and by this yoga of praise the devotee surrenders his very self. This same self-surrender is said to be the purport of the Saiddhantika scriptures of the supreme Lord.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
These commentators stress that the two rungs, acting for the Lord's sake (the prior verse) and renouncing the fruit of all action (this verse), are kept distinct as two independent and complete paths to attaining God. Where action is done for the Lord with devotion predominant, the path may be called bhakti-yoga; here, where the stress falls solely on giving up the fruit of every action, it can be called karma-yoga, the yoga of dedicating everything to the Lord. The emphasis is on the Lord's tenderness in the very structure of the ladder: at every rung the seeker who cannot manage the previous step is offered something a little easier, and even at this final rung the whole weight still rests on the Lord, since the seeker renounces the fruit but not the refuge.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Sivananda
A Seeker Asks
If I simply keep doing my duties but stop caring about the results, how is that a spiritual path and not just resigned indifference?
The difference is where the fruit goes. This is not throwing the result away into nothing and shrugging; it is handing it over. You take refuge in the Lord and lay the burden of every outcome upon Him, who alone holds results. So the inner movement is not detachment from caring but a transfer of trust: you keep acting, you release your personal stake, and you let the result rest in God's hands.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Ramsukhdas
It is also not passive. The verse asks you to be self-controlled, holding the mind steady and the senses disciplined by discrimination, and to keep performing your duties, including the daily observances. Indifference lets everything slide; this practice keeps you fully active while changing only your relationship to the outcome.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda
And far from being a dead end, it is the foot of a real ascent. Action done with no eye to its fruit purifies the mind; on that ground self-knowledge takes hold; and from that, the higher devotion to God arises by itself. What looks like mere giving-up is the seed of the highest attainment.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Contemplation
Here is a way to carry this verse into an ordinary day. You do not have to fix your whole mind on God, and you do not have to stop your work. Simply do what is yours to do, as far as you are able, because it is right and because it has been asked of you. Then let the result go. Whether the outcome you can see, or the unseen merit you cannot, the fruit lies in the Lord's hands, not yours. Cast the burden there. Keep acting, but release your grip on what comes of it. The promise is gentle and definite: doing this, abandoning your clinging to fruit while you continue to act, you become fulfilled by His grace.
Sit with this · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.