Chapter 18 · Verse 15·Spoken by Krishna
शरीरवाङ्मनोभिर्यत्कर्म प्रारभते नरः।न्याय्यं वा विपरीतं वा पञ्चैते तस्य हेतवः
śharīra-vāṅ-manobhir yat karma prārabhate naraḥ nyāyyaṁ vā viparītaṁ vā pañchaite tasya hetavaḥ
Whatever action a person performs with body, speech, or mind, whether right or wrong, these five are its causes.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
he verse names where action comes from and how widely the rule holds. A person sets going every action through three doors: the body (sharira), speech (vani or vak), and the mind (manas). Krishna covers the whole range with one pair of words: 'nyayyam,' which the commentators gloss as right, lawful, and in keeping with scripture (dharma), and its opposite 'viparitam,' which is wrong, unscriptural, and against dharma (adharma). Whatever a person takes up through those three doors, of either kind, the five factors set out in the previous verse (18.14) are its causes. The teaching is deliberately total: nothing of deed, word, or thought stands outside this fivefold ground.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Several commentators meet an objection that the verse seems to raise against itself. The previous verse listed factors like the seat or basis, the agent, the instruments, and so on, yet here Krishna speaks only of action done by body, speech, and mind, which looks like a narrower or different list. The reply is that there is no real conflict. Every action that scripture enjoins or forbids has body, speech, and mind as its chief means, so all action can be gathered into those three heaps. Actions are named bodily, verbal, or mental simply by which of the three predominates in a given act; the threefold naming is by predominance, not by exclusion.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Sivananda
The commentators stretch the rule to cover even the small involuntary actions that merely sustain life, such as blinking or winking, seeing, hearing, and the like. These too fall under 'right and its opposite,' because they are the effects of merit and demerit (dharma and adharma) done in the past, and so they are already morally accounted for. Such living-actions are not a separate class outside the fivefold causality: they are subordinate to the chief actions of body, speech, and mind, carried out by the very limbs and senses that belong to those chief actions. So the five causes reach all the way down, leaving no flicker of activity ungrounded.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda
The point of insisting that the same five causes produce both right and wrong action is moral honesty about doership. If a person claims to be the doer (karta) when the action is good and scripture-sanctioned, that same person must also claim to be the doer when the action is wrong and against scripture, since both kinds are accomplished by exactly the same five factors. The self cannot selectively own the good and disown the bad. The honest move is to release the pride of doership (kartrtva-abhimana) for both. This does not abolish responsibility but locates it correctly: the seeker's part is in choosing rightly which actions to engage, with discernment and without attachment, while the carrying-out of the action, once begun, belongs to the play of the five.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse chiefly as resolving an apparent inconsistency between this verse's three doors and the previous verse's list of factors. Their whole effort is to show that body, speech, and mind exhaust the field: all enjoined and forbidden action takes them as its chief means, the life-sustaining actions like blinking are subordinate effects of past merit and demerit, and the threefold naming is only by predominance. At the time of fruit too, the result is enjoyed through those same instruments, so the fivefold causality is never broken. The aim is to establish, on the way to the next verse, that the Self is not in truth the agent at all.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Sivananda
Dvaita
This reading, glossing the deeper analysis of the factors, holds that the supreme agency rests with the Lord (Vishnu), not with the individual soul standing on its own. The individual soul is admitted as agent only in a dependent sense; independent agency is denied to it. The factor 'daiva,' which others try to identify with the indwelling Lord or with the sun and other helpers of the senses, is here taken instead as the unseen force (the unseen fruit of past acts), since the Lord is already covered by 'the agent' and the helping powers by 'instrument.' Even meditation and the like need an effort of the mind, working through the lasting latent impressions of past mental acts; so effort belongs among the genuine factors of every action.
Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators make the Lord himself the decisive fifth and highest factor, the inner ruler (antaryamin) who completes every act, while the soul's real but participated agency is a share of his master-agency. They then reread 'nyayya' and 'viparita' in terms of the Lord's will. An action is truly 'right' only when done in line with his command and desire; one undertaken merely for the enjoyment of one's own fruit is 'wrong.' Strikingly, the two 'va... va' particles are taken to mean that without knowledge of his will even a Veda-enjoined act becomes in fact wrong, while with that knowledge even what is normally wrong becomes right. The carpenter-maxim is invoked: the same Lord can ride in the chariot of action he has made and also stand apart from it, so no fault attaches to him, since he carries the work to its fruit only after the soul has first made its own effort.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
This non-sectarian devotional reading presses the verse for its practical ethical edge. Because both right and wrong actions issue from the same five causes, a person cannot consistently take credit as doer for the good while disowning the bad. The right response is to drop the pride of doership for both kinds alike. Yet this does not dissolve moral responsibility; it relocates it. The seeker's genuine responsibility lies upstream, in choosing with discernment (viveka) and without attachment (sanga) which actions to engage; once engaged, the accomplishment of the action is by the play of the five factors, not by a separate ego claiming to be the sole doer.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Bhakti
This commentary expands the bare statement into a chain of vivid natural images to show how action arises and what makes it rightful. As spring causes new leaves, flowers, and fruit, or as the eastern sky gives birth to dawn, dawn to sunrise, and the sun to full daylight, so the mind is the efficient cause of all thoughts and ideas of action; these ideas kindle the lamp of speech; and when speech lights the path, the doer sets about acting through the body and its organs. The body is at once the material and the instrumental cause of bodily action, as the sun is both source and instrument of its own light. The decisive teaching is that combining the causes produces only blind action; what makes an act truly rightful is conformity to scripture. Acting on erratic whim, however technically named an action, is not a true action at all but a product of sin, just as wealth taken by thieves cannot be entered in the ledger as charity, and as reciting all the letters of the alphabet without understanding the heart of the hymn yields no fruit.
Sant Jñāneśvar
A Seeker Asks
If the same five impersonal factors produce both my good and my bad actions, in what sense am I still responsible for what I do?
The commentators do not use the fivefold causality to cancel responsibility; they use it to expose dishonesty about responsibility. The trap is selective ownership: taking credit as the doer for good, scripture-sanctioned action while disowning wrong action as something that just happened. Since both kinds arise from exactly the same five causes, that split is incoherent. So the first move is honesty: drop the pride of doership for both kinds equally rather than only for the convenient half.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Dropping the pride of doership does not abolish your responsibility; it relocates it to where it truly belongs. Your genuine responsibility is upstream, in the choosing: to engage rightly with discernment and without attachment which actions to take up. The accomplishment of the action, once you have engaged it, is by the play of the five factors, not by an ego that needs to claim it. Responsibility lives in the decision and the disposition, not in a private claim to be the sole author of the outcome.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Other commentators reinforce that the choosing is exactly where it matters by pointing out that what makes an action right is not the bare combination of causes but its conformity to scripture and rightful intent. An action driven by erratic whim, even if technically performed, is not a true action but a product of sin; and even a normally proper, Veda-enjoined act can go wrong when done merely for one's own fruit rather than in line with the Lord's will. So the moral weight of an act turns on the orientation you bring to the choosing, which is precisely the part that is yours.
Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrī Puruṣottama
Contemplation
Watch how you keep your moral books. It is easy to call yourself the doer when the deed is good, generous, or praised, and to quietly disown the deed when it is wrong, weak, or harmful, as though some other force did that one. This verse closes that escape. The same five factors carry out both your right and your wrong actions, so you cannot own one without owning the other. The honest path is to set down the pride of being the sole doer for both alike. This is not a license to stop caring. Your real responsibility lives upstream, in the choosing: engage the right actions, with discernment and without clinging to the fruit. Once you have chosen and begun, let the action be accomplished by the play of the factors, and stop adding the extra weight of 'I alone did this.'
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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