Chapter 4 · Verse 32·Spoken by Krishna
एवं बहुविधा यज्ञा वितता ब्रह्मणो मुखे। कर्मजान्विद्धि तान्सर्वानेवं ज्ञात्वा विमोक्ष्यसे
evaṁ bahu-vidhā yajñā vitatā brahmaṇo mukhe karma-jān viddhi tān sarvān evaṁ jñātvā vimokṣhyase
So many kinds of sacrifice are spread out before Brahman. Know them all to be born of action. Knowing this, you will be freed.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna is closing his long catalogue of sacrifices. He says these many kinds of yajna (sacrifice or self-offering) are 'spread out in the mouth of Brahman.' Most commentators take 'Brahman' here to mean the Veda, and 'mouth' to mean its doorway or place of utterance: these sacrifices are not Krishna's private invention but are taught, enjoined, and made known through the Veda itself. Several note that this line answers an unspoken doubt, namely whether the long list of sacrifices rests on real scriptural authority or on mere supposition; Krishna is grounding them in revealed scripture.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Know all these sacrifices to be 'born of action' (karma-ja). The commentators specify that this means born of the action of body, speech, and mind. They are activities one performs; they belong to the realm of doing, not to the changeless reality. This is the central instruction of the verse: see that every form of sacrifice, however exalted, arises from these three instruments of action.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Krishna closes with the promise: 'knowing this, you will be freed.' Liberation from samsara (the round of birth and death) follows from this knowing. The whole point of cataloguing so many sacrifices was to lift up knowledge as their crown and fruit: the works are praised because, rightly understood, they carry the doer toward release from bondage.
Braided from 16 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read 'born of action' as the decisive contrast with the Self, which is actionless. The sacrifices arise from body, speech, and mind; but the Self (atma) is free of all activity. So the right vision is to see: 'These are not my doings; I am actionless, indifferent, the untouched witness.' Liberation comes precisely from this discernment, that the Self never acts and is never touched by these works. They take 'not akarma' to mean these works are not the actionlessness of true naishkarmya; the Self alone is beyond karma's reach, and knowing this one becomes established in knowledge and is freed.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read the verse without the Self-versus-action contrast. The sacrifices are 'disciplines of action' that stand as means to attaining the self as it truly is. 'Born of action' is glossed as born of the obligatory and occasional actions to be performed day by day. The stress falls on continued daily performance: knowing this, and performing these works in the manner described, one is wholly freed. One source adds that this daily, never-ceasing karma-yoga also sustains the body and supports a daily sattvic rise.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators take 'in the mouth of Brahman' to mean in the mouth of the supreme Self, not merely the Veda; they argue the explanation 'expounded by the Veda' makes the word 'mouth' purposeless. The Lord is the enjoyer and lord of all sacrifices (citing 9.24). They press a difficulty: since contemplative worship and the like are not literally born of physical action, calling them all 'born of action' must include mental action. The decisive turn is practical: even the contemplative worship Arjuna might take up after abandoning the war would itself be action; therefore what is enjoined, namely the war, is not to be given up. Knowing all is action-born, the very wish arises to do one's own enjoined duty for the sake of liberation, so that giving up action is no escape.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the sacrifices as the Lord's own portions, laid out from the very beginning of the Veda (citing Vedic verses on the gods worshipping by sacrifice). One frames the verse as answering Arjuna's 'what is left for me to do?': the many kinds of yajna are given so that one is not attached to any single one, and knowing them rightly one is freed from the obstructions to attaining the Lord. One source reads the fruit in terms of the absence of suffering and presence of happiness as the human goal, with moksha as the crowning aim.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators stress that the Veda is the Lord's own mouth: the sacrifices have been clearly declared by him through his own mouth, as means to attaining the distinct Self. One develops the fruit as realization arising from rightly understanding and practicing these works, by which one beholds the duality of the Self and is liberated. One adds that the whole world of sacrifice is rooted in the action of Brahman, and once this is realized the taint of action will not bind the soul.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads the sacrifices as being in the mouth, the door, the means, of Brahman. Knowing that there is in them a 'following-along of actions,' one comes to release from bondage. The accent is on recognizing the action-nature woven through these means, and being freed thereby.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
These commentators each draw out a distinct emphasis. One reads 'action' as mental, physical, and spiritual action together, insisting that no sacrifice and no salvation is possible without this triple working in unison, used in the service of mankind; to spare body or mind is to be only a partial sacrificer. One explains the imagery: ordinary fire-sacrifices reach the gods through fire as their mouth, but these symbolic sacrifices are performed into the mouth of Brahman itself, and grasping this broader meaning, beyond the narrow Mimamsa definition, lifts the mind toward the form of Brahman. One distinguishes the desire-driven (sakama) Vedic rites, which yield only perishable fruit and return one to birth and death, from the desireless (nishkama) yajnas, including study, reflection, meditation, breath-control, and absorption, by which the supreme is attained; it is these latter that are meant here.
Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If every sacrifice is just 'born of action,' how can merely knowing that fact set me free, rather than the doing of the sacrifices themselves?
The knowing is not a stray fact but a change of vision. For one stream of commentators, to see that all these works are 'born of action' is at the same time to see that the Self is actionless: the works belong to body, speech, and mind, while you, the witness, are untouched. That right vision, 'these are not my doings, I am free of activity,' is itself what loosens the bondage of birth and death.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda
Other commentators do not set knowing against doing but join them. The freedom comes through knowing these works rightly and then performing them as means, day by day, in the manner taught; one is freed by realization arising out of that very practice, not by knowledge floating free of action.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Mahatma Gandhi
And the catalogue was never meant to make you stop acting. To know that even the contemplation you might retreat into is also action is precisely what tells you that abandoning your own enjoined duty is no shortcut to release; the knowing returns you to right action rather than excusing you from it.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Let this verse become a quiet audit of how you live. Action here means body, mind, and spirit together. No real offering is possible unless all three work in unison, and they cannot be used well unless they are kept pure. So do not give your intellect alone and spare your body, and do not strain your body while leaving your mind and heart out of it. Turn every faculty you have toward the service of others, in one harmonious working. To know this and to put the knowledge into practice is itself to know the secret of sacrifice; concentrate, then, on developing, purifying, and turning to their best use all the gifts you have been given.
Sit with this · Mahatma Gandhi
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