Chapter 3 · Verse 22·Spoken by Krishna
न मे पार्थास्ति कर्तव्यं त्रिषु लोकेषु किञ्चन। नानवाप्तमवाप्तव्यं वर्त एव च कर्मणि
na me pārthāsti kartavyaṁ triṣhu lokeṣhu kiñchana nānavāptam avāptavyaṁ varta eva cha karmaṇi
In all the three worlds there is nothing I must do, Arjuna, nothing unattained for me to attain. Yet I keep working.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna turns from teaching about others to offering Himself as the living proof of His point. The previous verse said that even an accomplished person should keep acting to hold the world together; now Krishna says, in effect, watch Me. He is the prime example, and the commentators stress that this is no incidental remark but the deliberate setup of the next three verses, in which He presents His own conduct as the model Arjuna is being asked to take up. The lesson lands harder when the teacher does what He asks.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
Krishna has literally nothing left to do. In the three worlds (the realms of gods, men, and the rest), there is no duty (kartavya) pending for Him, nothing whatever that He must accomplish. The reason is given in the same breath: there is nothing unattained (anavapta) that He still has to attain (avaptavya). He already possesses everything that any action could ever win. Several commentators draw the underlying logic out: people act only in order to gain something they lack; where nothing is lacking, no action is necessary. Since Krishna lacks nothing, no action is required of Him at all.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Bhāskara · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
And yet, having no need to act, Krishna still acts. The verse pivots on this 'even so': despite having no duty and nothing to gain, He remains continuously engaged in action (karma). The commentators underline that He never steps out of action; the word 'api' (even, yet) carries the sense that He never ceases working. This is the crux of the whole teaching. Action freely undertaken by one who needs nothing is the very pattern of selfless work that the chapter has been urging on Arjuna.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Vedānta Deśika · Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak · Mahatma Gandhi
Because the one who needs nothing still works, His example becomes an unanswerable argument. If even Krishna, who has everything, keeps acting, then no one who still has something to gain can claim that action is unnecessary. The force of the example flows from Arjuna's nearness to Krishna: several commentators read the address 'Partha' (son of Pritha, that is, Kunti) as a hint that Arjuna, as Krishna's own kinsman of pure warrior descent, is fully fit to conduct himself exactly as Krishna does. Take My part; follow My path.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Puruṣottama
Divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita
The 'Me' of the verse is read as the supreme Lord, the controller of all, deliberately set apart from every soul bound by karma. This Lord is all-knowing and of unfailing resolve (satya-sankalpa), every one of His desires already fulfilled (avapta-samasta-kama). Even when He takes embodiment among karma-bound gods, humans, and animals, the contraction of knowledge and the thwarting of will that afflict them never touch Him. The shruti and smriti are His own command; He is no one's pupil who might fear demerit for failing to act. So His acting is purely for the protection of the world (loka-raksha), done out of compassion, and the source recalls Parashara's verses describing how the Lord of beings puts forth all His powers in play (lila), acting for the world's benefit through an activity that is unobstructed and all-pervading, not born of any karmic cause.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhakti
The Lord acts though He is Himself the ground and goal of all fruits. Action is something only the fruit-seeker needs; but the Lord is the very substratum of every reward and is Himself the supreme fruit, so for Him action could never be a means to anything. Whatever fruit any action anywhere could win is already His and His alone. One source presses the example concretely: Krishna performs the prescribed duties with complete dispassion, and points to His own unmatched power, recalling how He brought the preceptor's son back from the realm of death, to show that He acts not to secure anything for Himself but freely, in the same detached spirit He asks of Arjuna.
Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Śuddhādvaita
The accent falls on the model itself: the Lord, who lacks nothing, still acts, and His work is precisely the model and not a striving after any end. He abides in action for the sake of loka-sangraha, the holding-together of the world. The point is that genuinely exemplary action is action done while needing nothing from it.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
The verse is read against the objection that God, being formless and impersonal, could not perform physical activity. The answer is that the unceasing movement of the sun, moon, and earth is itself God in action, physical and not merely mental. Though formless, God acts as though He had body, and is ever in action yet free from action, unaffected by it. The human lesson follows: just as Nature's processes run with mechanical regularity yet are guided by Divine Intelligence, a person should bring daily conduct to steady, precise regularity but do it intelligently, perceiving the divine guidance behind the processes and imitating it. Withdraw the self and all attachment to fruit, and one gains not only precision but security from all wear; acting so, a person stays inwardly fresh to the end, the body perishing in time while the soul remains unwrinkled.
Mahatma Gandhi
Advaita Vedānta
One source spends its comment defending the received text rather than expounding doctrine. The verb 'varte' (I remain, I am engaged) is noted to take a middle-voice ending, and some readers therefore propose a variant. This source argues that since the Gita, like the histories and Puranas, is a fifth Veda full of Vedic-style usage, importing such variants everywhere only ruins the ancient reading; the established reading should stand.
Śrī Bhāskara
A Seeker Asks
If Krishna has nothing to gain and no duty left, why act at all, and how can that model anything for me, who still do have things I need?
Notice first what the verse is actually doing. Krishna is not describing a remote God indifferent to the world; He is deliberately holding Himself up as the example for Arjuna, the model the seeker is asked to imitate. The whole force of the passage is that the teacher does the very thing He asks.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas
He acts not for Himself but for the world. Having no duty pending and nothing left to attain, He still remains continuously engaged in action, and the commentators say plainly that this is for the protection and holding-together of the world, done out of compassion, never to secure anything for Himself.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Baladeva
And that is exactly why the example reaches you. The logic is turned into an argument you cannot wriggle out of: if even the one who needs nothing keeps working, then you, who still do have things to gain, certainly cannot claim that action is unnecessary. The example does not ask you to already lack nothing; it asks you to do your work in the same selfless spirit, acting for the sake of the world rather than clutching at the fruit.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda
Contemplation
Take the picture of Nature seriously as your teacher. The sun, the moon, the earth move ceaselessly, with perfect regularity, and yet they grasp at nothing; behind their mechanical precision is a quiet Intelligence. Your own life can be brought to that same steady, reliable rhythm. The point is not to turn yourself into a machine, but to act with that regularity while staying awake to the divine guidance behind it, imitating it intelligently rather than dully. The single move that frees you is to withdraw the self and let go of any attachment to what your action will fetch you. Do this, and you gain not only precision but a kind of protection from wear and tear; the work no longer grinds you down. The body will wear out in its time, but the one who acts this way stays inwardly fresh, evergreen, without a crease or a wrinkle, to the very end of his days.
Sit with this · Mahatma Gandhi
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