Chapter 14 · Verse 16·Spoken by Arjuna
कर्मणः सुकृतस्याहुः सात्त्विकं निर्मलं फलम्।रजसस्तु फलं दुःखमज्ञानं तमसः फलम्
karmaṇaḥ sukṛitasyāhuḥ sāttvikaṁ nirmalaṁ phalam rajasas tu phalaṁ duḥkham ajñānaṁ tamasaḥ phalam
They say the fruit of good action is pure, born of sattva. The fruit of rajas is pain. The fruit of tamas is ignorance.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
he verse lays out a simple law of correspondence: each kind of action carries a fruit that matches the quality (guna) that drove it. Sattva is the quality of clarity and goodness; rajas is the quality of restless activity and craving; tamas is the quality of darkness and dullness. So well-done, sattvic action yields a sattvic fruit; rajasic action yields pain; tamasic action yields ignorance. The commentators stress that the effect always resembles its cause, so the moral character of a deed shows up again in the character of what it produces.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vedānta Deśika
The fruit of well-done (sukrita) action is called nirmala, stainless or spotless. Several commentators read this stainlessness as freedom from the stains of rajas and tamas, that is, free of any trace of pain and of delusion, and they identify the positive content of the fruit as happiness, light, and knowledge. The word sukrita means action done well, the meritorious or auspicious deed, and its reward is a clean, untroubled state in which sattva itself is realized.
Braided from 12 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
The fruit of rajasic action is pain (duhkha). Many commentators explain why: rajasic merit is mixed with sin, and rajasic activity is bound up with the craving for results, so even its enjoyments are tangled with sorrow and lead back into the round of birth and death. The fruit conforms to its restless, desire-driven cause, so it is described as full of sorrow with little real happiness in it.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
The fruit of tamasic action is ignorance (ajnana). The commentators describe this as the state of non-discrimination, of stupefaction, of being unable to tell right from wrong, and some add that it brings rebirth in dark, low forms of existence such as animal births. Tamasic action is unrighteous action, adharma, and its harvest is a deepening of the very darkness and confusion that produced it.
Braided from 12 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Several commentators flag a small grammatical point: the verse literally says the fruit 'of rajas' and 'of tamas', but it really means the fruit of rajasic and tamasic action. The qualities are named to stand for the actions they produce, a familiar figure of speech in which the cause is named for its effect. Some illustrate it with stock examples, such as the word for 'cow' being used to mean the milk that comes from the cow. Because the topic here is action and its fruit, 'rajas' and 'tamas' should be heard as the deeds these gunas drive.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Ānandagiri
Divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This school reads the verse as being about what happens at the moment of death and the next birth it shapes. Well-done action means action done with no eye to its fruit, as worship offered to the Lord, by one who dies while sattva is dominant; its stainless fruit is rebirth, free of any trace of pain, into a family of those who know the self, born of a still greater sattva. The fruit of rajas grown strong at death is birth into a family attached to result-seeking action, which is the transmigratory round itself: action aimed at fruit, the tasting of that fruit, rebirth, more rajas, and again result-seeking action, on and on, and so mostly pain. The fruit of tamas grown strong at death is a continuing succession of ignorance. The reading thus ties this verse to the next two, mapping each guna onto its own fruit, its own dispositional birth, and its own upward, middle, or downward trajectory.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
This school refuses to read 'pain' as pure, unmixed pain. The word sorrow here means a small happiness mixed with pain, not sorrow alone. The reasoning is twofold. First, a cited branch of scripture says that from rajas there arises a measure of both happiness and pain, which is why such people are called both happy and unhappy. Second, if rajas yielded pure pain, which is exceedingly grievous, then tamas could not be counted as more painful than rajas; yet the very next verse places the rajasic in the middle and sends the tamasic downward. So the slight pleasure in rajas is left unmentioned only because it is too small to count separately, not because it is absent.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
This school presses two distinctive points. First, the timing: the stainless fruit of sattvic action is enjoyed here and now, in this very life, not deferred to the time of death. Second, the framing in terms of the Lord: the well-done deed is the deed done by the Bhagavan's command, which causes the Lord's gladness, so its sattvic fruit takes the form of Vishnu's grace (Vishnu-prasada), and the fruit of tamasic action is ignorance in the form of being turned away from the Lord. This school also notes a tension with an earlier verse that assigned action only to rajas, and explains that crediting sattva with 'well-done action' here is a secondary or borrowed way of speaking, following the manner of another school.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This voice does not expound the verse. It treats this stretch of text as disconnected, concocted verses that merely repeat what has been said and so are simply to be discarded; what matters instead is the conduct that goes beyond the three qualities altogether, for that alone serves for release.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
This non-sectarian devotional voice adds a foundational clarification: actions in themselves are not sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic; in themselves all actions are simply activity (kriya). It is the doer (karta) who is sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic, and the deed takes its color from the doer. This voice also draws out the consequences as a settled conclusion: into whatever situation a sattvic person comes, pain cannot touch him; into whatever situation a rajasic person comes, real happiness cannot touch him; into whatever situation a tamasic person comes, discernment cannot arise in him, only dullness. So long as one stays bound to the gunas and to action, no situation can make a person truly happy; once that bond is gone, no situation can make him suffer or bind him.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If good action only buys a pleasant rebirth and even good rajasic effort just feeds the wheel of pain, is there any doing that actually frees me rather than just relocating me within the gunas?
First, take the verse's warning seriously: every deed driven by a guna pays out a matching fruit, and that fruit keeps you inside the system. Rajasic action, however energetic and even meritorious, is bound up with craving for results, so its rewards come tangled with sorrow and lead straight back into birth and death; that is exactly why its fruit is called pain.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas
Sattvic action is genuinely better, but notice what kind of better it is. Its fruit is stainless, clear, and full of light and knowledge, and some commentators describe that fruit as a finer rebirth among those who know the self. Yet a fruit, even a luminous one, is still a fruit; it is a station within the gunas, not freedom from them.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
The opening this verse leaves is to act without grasping at the fruit at all. Where one reading describes well-done action precisely as action done with no eye to its reward, offered to the Lord, another reminds us that as long as connection with the gunas and with result-seeking persists, no situation can make a person truly happy, but once that connection falls away the doer-status itself dissolves and the deeds become non-binding. The path beyond mere relocation, then, is not a still cleverer action within the gunas but the loosening of the bond to fruit, which the chapter goes on to develop as rising past the three qualities altogether.
Rāmānujācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Notice where this verse puts the weight: not on the action by itself but on the one who acts. The same deed is sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic depending on the quality alive in the doer, so the real work is to watch what is moving in you as you act. When sattva is present, the result it brings is clean and untroubled; pain cannot reach a person who acts from that clarity. When you act from restless craving, even the comforts, honors, and pleasures you win are a womb of sorrow, because they carry rebirth and loss inside them. When you act in dullness, blind to consequences, you only deepen your own confusion. The deeper invitation is to see that as long as you stay tied to the gunas and to result-seeking action, no outer situation can finally make you happy. The aim is not a better grade within the wheel but to loosen the bond itself, for once that bond is gone, no circumstance can make you suffer or hold you.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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