Chapter 18 · Verse 6·Spoken by Krishna
एतान्यपि तु कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा फलानि च।कर्तव्यानीति मे पार्थ निश्िचतं मतमुत्तमम्
etāny api tu karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā phalāni cha kartavyānīti me pārtha niśhchitaṁ matam uttamam
But even these actions should be done by giving up attachment and the fruits. This is my firm and final conviction, Arjuna.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna here gives his final verdict on the three purifying acts named just before: sacrifice (yajna, worship and offering), giving (dana, charity), and austerity (tapas, self-discipline). His conclusion is not that they should be dropped, but that they 'are to be done' (kartavyani). The word 'even' (api) carries the weight: even these very acts, which bind a person who is attached to them and craves their reward, are still to be performed by the seeker of liberation. So the verse settles a tension the chapter has been building. Action is not the enemy; it is to be kept, not abandoned.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The two things to be released are 'attachment' (sanga) and 'the fruits' (phalani). Sanga is the inner grip of doership, the feeling 'I am the doer, this act is mine.' Phalani is the craving for results, whether gross rewards like heaven or even subtler aims. The act itself stays exactly the same; only the disposition in which it is carried out changes. As several put it, the class of action does not change; what changes is the frame of mind in which it is borne. This is why the same act binds one person and frees another: the fault is never in the action itself but in the expectation of reward and the conceit of agency.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Performed in this way, these acts purify the inner instrument (the mind, the antahkarana) and so do not obstruct liberation. When action is done without craving for reward, the restless and dull tendencies of the mind are worn away and purity arises; the binding, fruit-bearing power of the act is scorched, like a seed roasted so it can no longer sprout. The point of keeping the action is precisely this cleansing: a purified mind is what makes liberating knowledge possible. So the verse is practical, not merely permissive; it shows the manner by which ordinary duties become instruments of freedom.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
Krishna stamps this teaching with unusual force: it is his 'settled' (nishchitam) and 'highest' or 'best' (uttamam) judgment. This is the very 'determination' he promised earlier to declare. Several commentators note that 'uttamam' marks it as superior to the partial views of the various schools, because it alone holds together both halves of the truth: the action is to be done (not dropped), and it is to be done in a particular manner (without grip on agency or fruit). The seeker is invited to take this single verse as the practical key to the whole chapter's teaching on action and renunciation.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse against the backdrop of a scholarly dispute about which actions 'even these' refers to. They reject the reading that takes 'even these' to mean the optional, desire-prompted rites (rather than the obligatory daily duties of sacrifice, giving, and austerity). Their reasoning: the seeker of liberation has no business with desire-prompted rites, which scripture has condemned and whose binding nature is settled; and the demonstrative 'these,' pointing to what is near at hand in the discussion, cannot reach those optional rites mentioned far back. They also reject the objection that the obligatory rites are 'fruitless' and so cannot have fruits to renounce, since the previous verse already established that these very acts are purifying. The whole teaching is set for 'the ignorant man qualified for action who seeks liberation,' for whom purified mind is the road to knowledge. One voice in this group reads the renunciation as renouncing even the conceit 'if I do not do these, sin will fall on me,' so that the act is done with a Brahman-firm, unattached nature, retaining the form of action while renouncing its attached aspect.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
For these commentators the acts are to be done 'in the form of the worship of Me,' that is, as the worship of the Lord. Sacrifice, giving, austerity and the rest are to be performed by the seeker day by day, until departure from the body, for the accomplishing of that worship, with attachment and the sense of 'mine' toward the action given up along with the fruits. The renunciation here is specifically an inner stance of fruit-renunciation; this inner relinquishing is the true renunciation (tyaga), while the outward acts continue lifelong as ongoing service.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhakti
These commentators frame the giving up of agency as a turning of the act into worship of the Lord: one does the acts 'purely as worship,' with the self-asserting sense of doership released and the fruit released, and it is this double release that earns the verse its closing word 'supreme.' One offers a string of homely images for egoless action: the hired pilgrim who feels no personal merit in the pilgrimage; the soldier who, acting on the king's authority, cannot boast of the victory; one who crosses a river clinging to another's swimming cannot claim to be the swimmer; the family priest who distributes his master's charity is not himself the donor. So too one should move the chess-piece of action at the right moment without letting the conceit of doership touch oneself, like a wet-nurse feeding another woman's child with a blank mind, or a cowherd grazing the village cows with no desire for the milk. Whoever acts thus gains the vision of the Self.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the verse as the heart of the chapter's discipline of action: the obligatory acts are retained, the inward grip on agency and fruit is released, and the whole is offered up to the Lord, done 'as my command.' The attachment to be given up is the obsession with one's own doership, and the fruits to be given up are those whose lure lies in the gunas (the qualities of nature, here the pull of pleasures like heavenly happiness). They stress 'uttamam' as naming the highest position among all schools, the view held by the discerning.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
These commentators read the verse as the compact summary of the whole doctrine of Karma Yoga taught throughout the Gita: the defect is never in the action but in the hope of reward and attachment. One develops the social and cosmic side: the Gita rejects the renouncer's claim that all action is faulty and to be abandoned, and counsels giving up only desire-prompted action; even the scripturally prescribed sacrifices and charities can be done desirelessly and for universal welfare, so that the wheel of the world keeps turning and yet the doer is not bound. Another draws out a fourfold practical reading: 'even these' removes the complacence that merely doing the acts is enough because they are purifying on their own; the plural 'fruits' is deliberate, demanding that every kind of desire for result, seen and unseen, be given up, since a single retained craving still binds; and 'settled, best judgment' marks Krishna's view as superior to the partial views of the philosophical schools because it covers both the doing of the act and the manner of doing it. This group urges the seeker to hold the verse as the practical key of the chapter, this being sattvika tyaga (renunciation in the mode of goodness) in its true sense.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If I keep doing all the same actions and only change my attitude inside, how is that real renunciation, and how can a mere shift of intention actually free me?
The change is not 'mere' attitude; it is the removal of the two things that actually do the binding. What binds is not the act but the inner grip of doership, the feeling 'I am the doer, this is mine,' together with the craving for the act's reward. Pull those out and the very thing that fastened you to the act is gone, while the act itself continues. This is exactly why the same deed binds an attached person and frees a detached one: the fault was never in the action.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
This inner relinquishing is itself the true renunciation the chapter is defining. Renunciation does not mean fleeing your duties; it means letting go of attachment and fruit while the outward acts go on, day by day, even as worship offered to the Lord. So you are not keeping the same life untouched; you are emptying it of the self-assertion and the wanting that made it a cage.
Vedānta Deśika · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas
And the shift genuinely works on you over time, it is not just a private mood. Acting without craving wears down the restless and dull tendencies of the mind and fills it with purity; the fruit-bearing power of the action is scorched like a roasted seed that can no longer sprout. That purified mind is what opens onto liberating knowledge. So the inner change is the actual mechanism of freedom, not a substitute for it.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Rāmānujācārya
Contemplation
Carry the action and drop the credit. Jnaneshwar offers a gallery of pictures to make this concrete. Act the way a hired pilgrim walks to the holy place: he goes the whole distance, yet feels no swell of 'I am the one making this pilgrimage.' Act the way a soldier sent on the king's authority overcomes the enemy single-handed and still cannot boast 'I am the conqueror.' Act the way the family priest hands out his master's charity without taking on the airs of the donor. Move the piece of action at exactly its right moment, but do not let the thought 'I am the doer' so much as touch you, and do not let the mind even glance at the fruit. Be like the wet-nurse who feeds another woman's child with a blank, unclaiming mind, or the cowherd who grazes the whole village's cows wanting none of the milk for himself. Those who act in this spirit, he says, come to a meeting with their own Self. And he repeats it with feeling: anyone tired of this fettering life and longing for release should not neglect this counsel.
Sit with this · Sant Jñāneśvar
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