Chapter 5 · Verse 7·Spoken by Krishna
योगयुक्तो विशुद्धात्मा विजितात्मा जितेन्द्रियः। सर्वभूतात्मभूतात्मा कुर्वन्नपि न लिप्यते
yoga-yukto viśhuddhātmā vijitātmā jitendriyaḥ sarva-bhūtātma-bhūtātmā kurvann api na lipyate
Joined to yoga, pure in mind, master of himself, his senses subdued, he knows his Self as the Self of all beings. Though he acts, he is not stained.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
he verse paints the portrait of the karma-yogi, the one joined to yoga, and most commentators read this opening word the same way: yoga here means action done in the right spirit. It is the disciplined performance of the works prescribed by scripture, offered without aiming at their fruit. Several glossers add the inner posture that makes it yoga rather than mere busyness: the act is offered to the Lord and is free of craving for its results. This is the same path the chapter has been teaching, now embodied in a person.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
From that yoke of right action a chain of inner purifications follows, and the commentators lay it out almost as a sequence. First the self becomes purified (vishuddhatma): the inner organ, the mind, is cleansed of the agitations of rajas and the dullness of tamas, the qualities that color and cloud it. Then the self is conquered (vijitatma): with a purified mind, the body and the mind itself come under control. And from that the senses are conquered (jitendriyah): the outer senses no longer rove, because the mind that was their door is mastered. Each step makes the next possible; this is why the verse stacks the terms in this order.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
The decisive turn of the verse is the phrase sarva-bhutatma-bhutatma, rendered as one whose self has become the Self of all beings. For most commentators this is the fruit of the purification just described: such a person has come to see his own self in all beings, from the highest god down to a clump of grass, recognizing that the conscious self in every body is of one form, since its single nature is knowledge and the bodily differences belong only to matter. This is direct realization of the undivided Self, not a belief held about it but a seeing.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
Because of this realization, the verse concludes, such a one acts and yet is not stained (kurvann api na lipyate): the actions do not bind him, do not cling to him as merit or sin. The commentators give the reason in terms the chapter has been building toward: the actions he does, often for the holding-together of the world (loka-sangraha) and the welfare of others, leave no residue because the doer no longer takes himself to be the agent. Seeing the Self as distinct from the body and senses that act, or in the highest truth seeing that the Self does not act at all, he is free of the false identification with the non-self that would otherwise make action stick.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Śrī Puruṣottama
Several commentators frame the whole verse as Krishna's answer to a standing objection: if action is what binds, then surely the sage who has reached realization, yet is still seen acting, would be bound all over again, and the chapter's promise that the yoga-joined attains Brahman would collapse. The verse settles the worry by locating bondage not in the deed itself but in the doer's stance. Once the inner conditions are met, the continuing activity, even action carried on past the point of realization by the momentum of past karma, simply does not bind.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The non-staining rests finally on the truth that, in the highest reckoning, the realized one does not act at all. His self has literally become the Self of all beings: the one inmost conscious Self that is the substrate of everything from the creator down to a blade of grass, like gold that is the single substance underlying all its ornaments, the cause non-different from its effects. Knowing this, agency itself is sublated, cancelled as false; and even when in the after-state of meditation the sense of being a doer reappears, it has lost its power to bind, like a snake whose fangs have been drawn. The phrase sarva-bhutatma-bhutatma is read as genuine identity of one's self with the Self of all, and the simpler single reading of the compound is preferred over forced splitting into sentient and insentient.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This is not identity of selves but likeness of form. The one who dwells on the truth of the self comes to see that the self in every body, of a god or anyone else, is of one and the same form, because each self has knowledge for its single nature and the differences of god, human, and the rest are only particular transformations of matter that cannot touch the form of the self. So 'the self of all beings' means the self that is alike in all, not one self numerically. On the inner terms, the two atma words before jitendriya are taken to mean the mind, since the senses are already named separately; the mind is the one principal seat to be conquered, and when it is, the outer senses follow as a consequence, since the mind is the very door of their roving. The non-tainting is the fruit of this inner stance, not of pulling the hand back from the deed.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
The Self that has become the self of all beings is the supreme Lord himself, not the individual soul raised to identity with the Supreme. The phrase means: he whose very self is that Lord, who, having become his self, draws him into His own presence. The reading is explicitly etymological and guarded against the impression that the individual self shares one nature with the Supreme Self, an impression set aside by the word 'of all'. The difference among all selves stands; what the verse states is the Lord's indwelling and lordship over the devotee, who acts unbound because of this relation.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Bhakti
The Gaudiya reading turns 'self of all beings' toward love rather than metaphysical identity. The realized householder becomes the very self, the dear and beloved object, of all living beings: his self, taken here as his body, belongs to all, and all beings feel affection toward him. Oneness of the individual self with all selves is expressly denied as Krishna's meaning, since elsewhere he affirms the perpetual mutual difference of all selves, and since even a teacher of oneness could not erase the difference between the knower and the ignorant. He is unstained because he contemplates the Self as distinct from the non-self, never identifying the two; and so the yoga of action is shown to be the better path. (Vishvanatha also reads the three inner terms as three grades of knower, each preceding grade superior to the next.)
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
Śuddhādvaita
The Pushtimarga reading makes the verse a portrait of the Lord's own yoga working itself out in the devotee. 'Yoga-joined' is the one possessed of conjunction with the Lord; the purified self is the inner organ emptied of longing; and strikingly, 'self-conquered' (vijitatma) is read as the one who has won the very form of the Lord and made it his own, while 'senses conquered' means the senses, themselves of the shape of his own enjoyments, are mastered. 'Self of all beings' means the one whose self is the Lord, who is the self of all. Such a one, doing work at the Lord's command for the holding-together of the worlds, is not bound by the enjoyment of its fruit. The distinctive note is that even works which on their face must bear their fixed worldly fruit cease to bind, once the doer has been turned in every layer into a vessel of relation with the Lord.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
The freedom from staining is grounded in a firm settled conviction that one is not the doer. The yogi, even while seeing and the rest, holds with determination: 'if the eye and the other senses are engaged in their own objects, what has come upon me? one is not stained by what is done by another.' That very stance is the casting of all actions upon Brahman. Its outward mark is freedom from attachment, and so the yogins do their actions with the bare body and senses, unattached and not dependent on one another, because attachment is absent. The verse is read as firm establishment in the denial of non-action.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
The modern commentators keep close to the plain sense and stress the practical condition. The harmonized yogi purifies the mind by devotion to action, conquers body and senses, sees his Self as the Self of all, and so is untouched by the merit or sin of action even while acting for the welfare and protection of the masses, to set an example. Ramsukhdas presses on jitendriya specifically: the senses being under control means they are free of attraction and aversion (raga-dvesha); with those gone, the senses can no longer unsettle the mind, and the seeker can turn them as he pleases. For the karma-yogi this control is indispensable, since his connection with action is closer and his path requires action as service for others' welfare; without mastered senses, karma-yoga is hard, which is why Krishna repeatedly urges restraining the senses within the karma-yoga teaching.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the very same actions everyone else does will bind me, how can performing them leave the realized person completely untouched, and what exactly is the difference that breaks the binding?
The difference is not in the deed but in the doer's inner condition, and the verse names that condition as a built-up sequence. The mind has been purified of agitation and dullness, the body and mind brought under control, and the senses mastered so they no longer rove. Bondage was never in the action itself; it was in the agitated, grasping inner state that the action expressed. Change that state and the same outward act no longer leaves a residue.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
The deepest part of the change is who you take yourself to be while acting. The realized one has come to see the Self as the same in all beings, distinct from the body and senses that do the work; he no longer identifies the Self with the non-self that acts. In the Advaita reading this goes all the way: in the highest truth the Self does not act at all, agency is seen through as false, so even when a sense of doing reappears it has lost its power to bind, like a snake with its fangs removed. Other schools keep the selves distinct, but they agree the binding breaks because the doer stops falsely owning the deed.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
It also matters what the action is for and in what spirit it is offered. Such actions are typically done for the holding-together of the world and the welfare of others, not for private gain, and they are offered without craving for their fruit. So the very thing that usually makes action stick, the grasping for a result, is simply absent. The deed passes through without clinging.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Sivananda · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
If you want a single handle on this verse, take it where Ramsukhdas does: the senses under control. He does not mean clamping them shut; he means freeing them of raga and dvesha, of liking and disliking. When a sense reaches its object and there is no grasping pull toward the pleasant and no recoiling push from the unpleasant, that sense loses its power to unsettle the mind. Then you can turn it, calmly, to whatever your duty asks. Notice this is exactly the equipment the verse names before it speaks of acting unbound. For the path of action, says Ramsukhdas, this control is not optional but necessary, precisely because your work keeps you in constant contact with things and people; the karma-yogi's connection with action is the closest of all. And the work itself is service, doing your duty for the welfare of others. So the practice is humble and concrete: in the next thing you do for someone else, watch the small tugs of like and dislike, and let the act go forward without them. That is where the chain the verse describes actually begins.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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