Chapter 18 · Verse 2·Spoken by Krishna
काम्यानां कर्मणां न्यासं संन्यासं कवयो विदुः। सर्वकर्मफलत्यागं प्राहुस्त्यागं विचक्षणाः
kāmyānāṁ karmaṇāṁ nyāsaṁ sannyāsaṁ kavayo viduḥ sarva-karma-phala-tyāgaṁ prāhus tyāgaṁ vichakṣhaṇāḥ
Krishna said: The wise know renunciation to be the giving up of actions driven by desire. The discerning call the letting go of the fruits of all actions relinquishment.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
he whole chapter turns on telling apart two words that sound almost the same. Sannyasa means renunciation, and tyaga means giving up or relinquishment. Both clearly carry the sense of letting go, which is exactly why Arjuna asked about them as if they were one thing. Krishna's answer here begins to drive a wedge between them: they overlap in feel, but they are not identical in meaning, and the rest of the chapter depends on seeing the difference.
Sant Jñāneśvar · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Ānandagiri
The cleanest line drawn between the two is this: sannyasa is the giving up of action itself, while tyaga is the giving up only of the fruit of action while the action is still performed. In other words, one term points to dropping works, the other to keeping the works but releasing one's grip on their results. Several commentators state this contrast almost word for word.
Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrī Puruṣottama · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Ramsukhdas
These two paths are not invented out of nowhere; they answer to what the earlier chapters of the Gita actually taught. Some earlier verses praised renouncing all action and sitting at ease in the self, the path of giving up works. Other earlier verses urged doing one's work while abandoning attachment to the fruit, the path of giving up only the fruit. So the verse is gathering up two strands already running through the teaching and naming them, which is why Arjuna's confusion was reasonable in the first place.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama
The verse frames these definitions as the considered view of those who truly know. The wise (kavayaḥ) understand one term, and the discerning or clear-sighted (vichakṣaṇaḥ) declare the other. This matters because Arjuna is not being handed mere opinion. Krishna is reporting how those with real insight settle the meaning of these words, so that Arjuna can verify his own intuition against authoritative teaching rather than guesswork.
Śrī Puruṣottama · Dhanapati Sūri
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse mainly through Arjuna's question that prompted it. Arjuna asked to know the truth of sannyasa and the truth of tyaga separately, treating formal renunciation of action and the mere giving-up-of-fruit as two things worth distinguishing. One source presses a subtle logical point: by asking to know the two separately, Arjuna's own words betray that he does not really see them as separate in meaning, since one only asks about what is genuinely doubtful. On the settled portion there is no doubt, so the question, as he posed it, still stands in good order. The emphasis here is on clarifying exactly what was and was not in question.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Dhanapati Sūri
Bhakti
This reading anchors the two definitions in specific scriptural passages from earlier in the Gita. It points to verses that taught renouncing all works and resting self-mastered in the self as the basis for sannyasa, and to verses that taught doing works while abandoning attachment to the fruit as the basis for tyaga. The concern is to show that both terms are not abstract categories but each rests on actual lines of Krishna's own prior teaching.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Śuddhādvaita
This reading sets the verse against the backdrop of Arjuna's spiritual transformation. After seventeen chapters, the Lord's words have torn through the darkness of delusion in Arjuna's heart, and he has become convinced that both sannyasa and tyaga are, by themselves, means of attaining the Lord. His own intellect has already leaned toward sannyasa as the supreme path of knowledge, and now he wishes to test that settled conviction against Krishna's express teaching. The accent falls on both renunciation and relinquishment as ways toward God.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
This reading works from the word's roots. Sannyasa is parsed as samyak nyasah, a laying down well: the surrender of every thing belonging to prakriti, that is, primal nature or matter, back into prakriti, and the cutting off of one's own connection with prakriti through viveka, discrimination between the self and what is not the self. Tyaga, by contrast, is simply the giving up of asakti, attachment, both to the action and to its fruit. So sannyasa here becomes an inner severing from matter itself, deeper than merely releasing results.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If both sannyasa and tyaga just mean letting go, why split hairs over them, and which one is Krishna really asking of me?
The two are not the same act, and that is the whole point of the verse. Sannyasa is the giving up of action itself, the path of renouncing works. Tyaga is keeping the works but giving up only your attachment to their fruit. They feel alike because both involve release, but one lets go of the doing and the other lets go of the wanting.
Sant Jñāneśvar · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Ramsukhdas
This is not a fresh dilemma Krishna invents here; it is the tension already woven through the earlier chapters, where some verses praised renouncing all action and others urged acting while abandoning the fruit. By naming both, the verse honors both as genuine ways toward the Lord rather than forcing a single rule.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama
As for which one is asked of you, the verse itself only lays out the definitions as the view of the wise and the discerning; it does not yet pronounce a winner. The deeper move the sources point toward is inward: the relinquishment of attachment to action and fruit, which you can begin now without abandoning your duties at all.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
Contemplation
Notice where the real work of letting go happens. According to this reading, tyaga is the giving up of asakti, attachment, both to the action you are doing and to its fruit. You do not have to abandon your duties to begin. You can keep working and still loosen the grip of wanting, the quiet insistence that this must turn out a certain way. And sannyasa, taken to its root, is a laying down well: a gentle, deliberate handing back of everything that belongs to nature into nature, while you, through clear discrimination, stop identifying yourself with any of it. Begin small. In the next task you take up, watch for the inner clutch on the result, and set it down. That single act of release is the whole teaching in miniature.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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