Chapter 6 · Verse 1·Spoken by Krishna
अनाश्रितः कर्मफलं कार्यं कर्म करोति यः। स संन्यासी च योगी च न निरग्निर्न चाक्रियः
anāśhritaḥ karma-phalaṁ kāryaṁ karma karoti yaḥ sa sannyāsī cha yogī cha na niragnir na chākriyaḥ
Whoever does the work that must be done, without depending on its fruits, is a renunciate and a yogi. Not the one who lights no sacred fire and does no work.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his verse opens the sixth chapter, and the commentators read it as a deliberate bridge. At the close of the fifth chapter Krishna had pointed ahead, in a few compressed lines, to dhyana-yoga, the yoga of meditation. Chapter six is the unfolding of that hint. But meditation needs a qualified person, and what qualifies a person for it is karma-yoga, the path of action done as duty. So Krishna does not begin with meditation; he begins with praise of action. He anticipates a worry: if the goal is renunciation and stillness, and if action is bound up with toil and trouble, a seeker might conclude that action is inferior and rush to drop it. These two opening verses head off that mistake by exalting the man who keeps acting.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Yāmunācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Madhvācārya
The heart of the verse is a single test, and almost every commentator states it the same way: what makes a person a true renouncer (sannyasi) and a true yogi is internal, not external. The mark is renouncing the fruit of action. 'Not leaning on the fruit of action' (anashritah karma-phalam) means being free of craving for any reward, free of any aim at heaven, cattle, sons, or gain. The one who acts in that inner freedom, while still performing the duty that simply must be done, is the renouncer and the yogi. The one who has merely put out the ritual fires or merely stopped moving is not. The whole weight of the verse is shifted off the outward sign and placed on the inward gesture.
Braided from 18 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Madhvācārya
Several commentators unpack the two key words. Renunciation (sannyasa) means the giving up, the relinquishing; here it is the giving up of the fruit. Yoga means the gathering or steadying of the mind, the absence of distraction; here it is freedom from the mental scatter that takes the form of thirst for the reward. The desireless worker has both at once: he has let go of the fruit, so he is a renouncer; and his mind is no longer pulled apart by craving, so he is a yogi. The verse therefore names one and the same person by two titles, because the single inner act of dropping fruit-attachment is at once both renunciation and yoga.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Sivananda · Dhanapati Sūri
The second line, 'not the one without fire, not the one without action' (na niragnir na cha akriyah), is read as a pointed correction, often with attention to the two negatives in turn. The 'fireless' man has dropped the fire-rites such as the daily agnihotra, the sacred offerings made with consecrated fire. The 'actionless' man has dropped even the works that need no fire: austerity, gift, and the meritorious public works like digging wells or feeding the poor, or even all bodily movement, sitting still with half-closed eyes. The verse insists that simply omitting these, without the genuine inner renunciation, makes no one a renouncer or a yogi. The empty outward form is rebuked; the inner freedom is what counts.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Mahatma Gandhi
A point that many draw out, against the danger of premature withdrawal: this verse teaches that desireless action is not a lower stage to be discarded but is itself the path, even superior to mere outward renunciation. One should not suddenly abandon action in the rush toward stillness; the work that purifies the mind should be kept up even by one already engaged in the practice of yoga. The Yoga of works, the inner renunciation of desire held together with continued activity, is what the Gita advocates, since for an embodied being action cannot in any case be entirely escaped.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sri Aurobindo · Sant Jñāneśvar
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators take the titles 'renouncer' and 'yogi' here in a secondary, figurative sense (gauna), not the primary one. In their reading the truly fireless and actionless person, the one who has formally given up all rites, is the renouncer well known to scripture and to the yoga treatises. So when this verse calls the man who still has fires and still acts a 'renouncer and yogi', it is speaking by a figure of praise, to declare his excellence over those who act with desire. The comparison offered is like saying that cows and horses alone are real wealth, so that other beasts 'are no real wealth': the two negatives are made to fit by the rhetoric of praise. Renunciation in name comes to the desireless worker by his giving up the resolve aimed at the fruit; yoga in name comes by his doing action as a limb of yoga with that same fruit-resolve let go. Real, primary renunciation and yoga are then bound to follow for such a man, but the words as used in this verse are figurative, not literal.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here the two titles are not figurative but mark two real standings that the desireless worker holds together. The renouncer is the one settled in the discipline of knowledge (jnana-yoga); the yogi is the one settled in the discipline of action (karma-yoga). Crucially, action is understood as worship: the doing of action is itself the task, because action is the worship of the supreme Person, who is our friend, and is His purpose, not a mere means to some other gain. Holding that 'the doing is itself the task', and not relying on the fruit, the worker is settled in both disciplines, which are together the means to the beholding of the self. By contrast the man of knowledge alone, without sacred fire and without enjoined rites, has only the one standing; the karma-yogi has both. The verse thus teaches that within the discipline of action there is knowledge too. The opening verse is also read as a deliberate restatement of the prior chapters, framing sannyasi and yogi as one and the same agent so that the eight limbs taught later rest on this base.
Yāmunācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators flatly reject the figurative reading and the idea that this is mere praise of the householder. They hold that even the person in the fourth order, the formal renunciate, has a fire and an action of his own. They cite a passage that 'the fire is Brahman, and the worship of Him is the action prescribed in the renunciate order', so the renunciate is not literally fireless and actionless at all; his being 'without fire' refers only to the absence of the external ritual fire. Therefore the verse's conclusion is taken at full literal force: one who genuinely has no fire and does no action is no renouncer and no yogi whatsoever. The renunciation Krishna means is marked by the abandonment of desire, and the yoga by worship of the Lord through performing one's own prescribed action. Reading the verse this way sets aside the qualified candidate accepted by the Samkhyas and by the rival school, and prepares to name who is truly fit for the meditation about to be taught.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Bhedabheda
This reading agrees that the independent, fruit-free performer of obligatory action is the renouncer and the yogi, and reads the two titles through the Gita's own phrases: he is the renouncer in the sense of 'all actions offered to Me', and the yogi in the sense of 'offering to Brahman'. It then turns sharply against the one who deliberately abandons action. The Samkhya's famed abandoner of action, the man of the fourth order who does not do what ought to be done, is precisely the one this verse rejects; for the non-doer there is no connection with knowledge at all, and such deliberate non-performance is not even true membership in an order but calls for expiation. The judgment is severe: those who carry the single staff, finding such an abandoner of action, set their foot upon his head.
Śrī Bhāskara
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the verse as teaching the single, shared aim of sankhya and yoga within the field of action. The one who takes no refuge in the fruit and yet performs his required act, the agnihotra and the rest, because it stands as what is to be done, shows in himself the single-purposed fruition of both: by renouncing the fruit he is a sankhyin, by doing the work he is a yogin. The work is understood as service enjoined by Bhagavan; the very doer of works, keeping his deeds up as the Lord's own service while letting go of every claim on their fruit, is the one the Lord approves. One of these voices frames the whole chapter's need: even after full renunciation, walking about inert one does not gain bhakti, so the Lord teaches dhyana-yoga; and through such dhyana of Bhagavan, the indwelling of Bhagavan, the very being-pervaded by Him, is the true fruit, while the mere loosening from objects is not yet the fruit.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators press the inward reading with devotional warmth and concrete imagery. The man who works on as duty enjoins, with the Lord alone as his audience, has in that very motion become both renouncer and yogi. One offers the image of the earth, which out of her own natural stuff sprouts trees and plants without expecting any fruit or gain: that is how the yogi acts, grounded in his vision of the Soul, according to his own station, letting no attachment for the action-fruit so much as touch his mind. The same voice warns against a foolish double bondage: to renounce all the usual and occasional duties out of fear that they bind, while getting newly fettered in other actions, is like washing out one coating with another; everyone is already burdened with worldly duty, so rather than hastily loading on a fresh burden of renunciation, one should discharge that duty with even-tempered application, and this itself is the path to happiness.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Kashmir Shaivism
This reading treats 'renouncer' and 'yogin' as outright synonyms of each other, two names for one reality. Its emphasis is on their inseparable mutual dependence: without yoga, renunciation does not come about, and without the renunciation of intention, yoga does not hold good; so yoga and renunciation are perpetually bound together. 'What is to be done' is what is enjoined by one's own class and station. The second line is read as pointing to a marvel: this man is not without fire, and not without action, and yet he is a renouncer. The note ends on that wonder, holding the two negatives not as a rebuke of the formal renunciate but as a paradox to be savored.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
The modern commentators keep the inward test and apply it to lived life. One takes 'fire' to mean all possible instruments of action, since fire was simply the instrument sacrifice once needed; on this reading, if spinning the wheel were the means of universal service in this age, a man would not become a renouncer by neglecting it. Another gives a plain restatement: the man who performs his enjoined duties without taking shelter in the fruit, keeping no 'home' in the mind in the shape of hope of reward, is the true renouncer and yogi, while the one who has merely dropped the fire-ritual or who sits absolutely quiet is not. A third develops the verse into the larger teaching that the Yoga of works, inner renunciation of desire joined to continued activity, is better than the physical renunciation of works, since action cannot be escaped while in the body. A fourth, reading non-sectarianly, expands 'not leaning on the fruit' into not taking shelter in anything perishable at all: the very three bodies, gross, subtle and causal, are themselves 'fruit of action', belonging to the world and not to one's own true self, so the seeker should take refuge in none of them but turn each to the good of all; to give back to the world, in service, what one received from the world is itself to become a renouncer.
Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Sri Aurobindo · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If true renunciation is only inner, does it matter at all what I outwardly do, or whether I keep up my duties or drop them?
The verse answers directly: keep doing the work that must be done. It does not say outward action is irrelevant; it says the inner stance is what makes that action renunciation rather than bondage. The one praised is precisely the person who 'does the work to be done' while not leaning on its fruit. Dropping your duties is not the shortcut to freedom.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
In fact several commentators warn that hastily abandoning action is a trap, not a gain. For an embodied being action cannot be fully escaped anyway, so the one who renounces his proper duties often ends up fettered in other actions instead, like washing out one stain with another; meanwhile the desireless work he gave up was the very thing that purifies the mind and qualifies him for meditation. The path is to keep acting, not to stop.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Sri Aurobindo
So the inner and the outer are not rivals; the inner stance transforms the outer act. Do your enjoined duty with the Lord alone as your audience, as service rather than for private reward, and that very same activity becomes both renunciation and yoga at once. What changes is not whether you act but the craving you bring to it; remove the thirst for the fruit, and ordinary work itself carries you toward freedom.
Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Take the test of this verse into your ordinary day. The point is not to flee your work but to stop leaning on what it might bring you. One commentator widens 'not leaning on the fruit' all the way out: your very body, mind, and inner faculties are themselves the fruit of past action, and they belong to the world, not to your true self. So treat them as instruments lent to you. With the body, do the world's work, using actions and objects in service rather than for private gain. With the mind, think how others may be helped, how all may be at ease. Even the steadiness you win in deep stillness, offer it for the good of all. To give back to the world, in service, what you received from the world is itself to become a renouncer; and to drop the sense of 'mine' in what was given to you is itself to let go. Acting this way, no new attachment forms, the old attachment wears away, and freedom, which was already your nature, quietly becomes your lived experience.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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