The fruit always wears the face of the quality that produced it.
A stainless result, a painful one, a bewildering one: none of these arrive by chance. Each is the exact signature of the sattva, rajas, or tamas alive in the deed that produced it.
They say the fruit of a well-done, sattva-born deed is stainless. The fruit of a rajas-born deed is pain. The fruit of a tamas-born deed is ignorance.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just named the three gunas and shown how each one binds you, sattva to happiness, rajas to action, tamas to carelessness. Now he states, in the plainest terms yet, what each one's action finally yields.
The teaching
A simple law governs what follows. The fruit of any deed matches the quality alive in the one who did it. A well-done, sattvic deed yields a fruit that is stainless, free of any trace of pain or delusion, a clean and settled result that more than one reader calls happiness or light in its own right. A rajasic deed, one driven by craving and restless striving, yields pain, because the very unrest that drove the deed reappears in what the deed brings back. And a tamasic deed, one done in dullness and confusion, yields ignorance, a deepening of the very darkness that produced it rather than any escape from it. The effect always carries forward the signature of its cause. Notice, too, that more than one source treats this verse as a hinge rather than a resting place: it states its law compactly and moves on, some deferring finer detail to later chapters, one source going so far as to set the passage aside as repetition and point past it entirely, toward what lies beyond the three qualities altogether.
The doubt that rises
If even a well-done, sattvic deed only earns a stainless result, is that stainless result itself the goal, or is it still one more fruit growing on the same tree as pain and ignorance, just a cleaner branch of the very same wheel?
Where the paths divide
Read as a plain, settled law of cause and effect.
Shankara treats this as a spare statement of correspondence: the fruit always matches the quality that produced it, sattvic action to a stainless fruit, rajasic action to pain because the deed itself was full of striving, tamasic action to ignorance as the fruit proper to an unrighteous act. He offers little further argument here, moving immediately to ask what else the three gunas produce, so the verse functions for him as a settled premise rather than a place to linger.
Read as a teaching about the moment of death and the birth it shapes.
Ramanuja hears this as describing what happens at death and the rebirth that follows. Dying with sattva strong yields rebirth among those who know the self, stainless and free of pain, born of a still greater sattva. Dying with rajas strong yields rebirth into a family bound to result-seeking action, the wheel of rebirth itself: a deed begun for its reward, tasted, then followed by rebirth and renewed craving. Dying with tamas strong yields a continuing, unbroken succession of ignorance. Even the sattvic fruit, on this reading, is still a rebirth, not an escape from birth.
Read against taking the pain of rajas as pure, unmixed sorrow.
The surviving comment attributed to Madhva makes one distinctive correction. The pain named as rajas's fruit is not sorrow alone but a small happiness folded together with pain, following a cited scriptural branch that calls people driven by rajas both happy and unhappy. His reasoning is structural: if rajas gave pure, unmixed pain, tamas could not be ranked as more painful still, yet the very next verse plainly ranks tamas lower. Beyond this one correction, the extant note does not expand further on sattva or tamas.
Read honestly as a source that sets this passage aside rather than expounds it.
Abhinavagupta's surviving fragment here is thin by his own explicit judgment. He states that this verse opens a stretch of loose, stray verses mixed into the received text, verses that merely repeat what has already been said, and he declines to expound their fruit-by-fruit content. What he affirms instead is that the conduct which rises past all three gunas together, sattva no less than rajas and tamas, is what actually serves for freedom. Any fuller Kashmir Shaiva reading of the three fruits as tiers of contracted consciousness would be a labeled extension beyond what he himself says here, not his recorded words on this verse.
Read as continuing directly from the prior description of the gunas themselves.
Sridhara reads this verse as the natural next step: having described sattva, rajas, and tamas in themselves, Krishna now states how each, through its own proper action, becomes the cause of a matching fruit. He glosses the sattvic fruit as spotless, light-filled pleasure, the rajasic fruit as pain, and the tamasic fruit as stupefaction, and defers the finer marks distinguishing each guna's action to their fuller treatment in the eighteenth chapter, treating this verse as compact and mostly definitional.
Read as a technical clarification about the verse's own language.
Madhusudana adds a careful point with a modern-facing resonance. The words rajas and tamas here are used for their effect, meaning the action each drives, by the same figure of speech that lets the word for cow stand for the milk it gives, or the word for grain stand for the rice it yields. Since action is the topic of the verse, he insists, it is action, not the bare abstract quality, that is meant wherever rajas or tamas is said to bear a fruit.
The sources agree on the law of correspondence but leave open what the stainless, sattvic fruit is actually worth. Is it, as Ramanuja suggests, still a rebirth within the same wheel that produces rajas's pain and tamas's ignorance? Or is there something in the clean fruit itself that already points beyond the wheel? Abhinavagupta's own verdict, thin as his comment is, names the conduct beyond all three gunas as what serves for freedom, but does not say whether the stainless fruit is a step toward that or simply a nicer room within the same house. This page leaves that question standing.
A question to carry
The next time a clean, untroubled result comes to you, will you rest in it as an achievement, or use it only as a sign of the clarity that produced it, and then keep walking?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May you come to see your own fruits clearly, and let each one teach you the truth about what was moving in you when you acted.
Each school is voiced from the commentators named above. Their full words, every translation, and where the schools agree and differ wait in the reading desk just below. Open the commentary desk.
Having named the three gunas and what each binds you to, Krishna now states, fruit by fruit, exactly what each one's action yields.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
A well-done, sattvic deed yields a fruit that is stainless: free of pain, free of delusion, and described by more than one source as happiness or light in its own right.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
All six sources agree on the verse's basic law: a deed's fruit always carries the signature of the quality that produced it. A well-done, sattvic act yields a sattvic fruit; a rajasic act yields pain; a tamasic act yields ignorance. The effect resembles its cause, so the moral and psychological color of the doing reappears in what it brings back.
A rajasic deed yields pain, because the craving that drove the deed reappears in what the deed brings back; the fruit always inherits the restlessness of its cause.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The fruit of well-done, sattvic action is called stainless, free of any trace of the pain that marks rajas or the delusion that marks tamas. Several sources gloss this positive content directly as happiness, clarity, or light, so the reward for clear, well-executed action is a clean and untroubled state rather than a mere absence of harm.
A tamasic deed yields ignorance, a deepening of the very confusion that produced it, not any correction of the dullness that set the deed in motion.
Across Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
The fruit of rajasic action is named pain, and the sources that expand on why converge on one mechanism: rajasic merit is entangled with craving for its own results, so even its rewards come threaded with sorrow rather than arriving clean. Whatever the exact intensity of that pain, its cause is agreed to be the restlessness that drove the original deed.
More than one source treats this verse as a hinge rather than a destination, moving quickly toward what comes next instead of resting here.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The fruit of tamasic action is ignorance, described as a stupor or a failure to distinguish one thing from another. This is read as the deepening of the very darkness that produced the deed in the first place, an unrighteous act whose harvest is more confusion rather than any correction of it.
Even the stainless, sattvic fruit is still a fruit within the wheel of the gunas; the more radical opening, on at least one reading, is the conduct that rises past all three together.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, Bhakti, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Madhva · Śrīdhara · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 2 others’ words
More than one source treats this verse chiefly as a compact, transitional statement rather than as an occasion for extended argument. Shankara moves straight on to what else the gunas produce; Sridhara defers the finer marks of each guna's action to the eighteenth chapter; Madhva confines himself to one correction about rajas; and Abhinavagupta goes further still, setting the passage aside as repetition. The verse functions, across these readings, as a hinge rather than a destination.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja reads the whole verse as describing the moment of death and the birth it shapes. Dying with sattva strong yields rebirth among knowers of the self, stainless and free of pain; dying with rajas strong yields rebirth into a family bound to result-seeking action, which is the wheel of rebirth itself, tasted, then repeated; dying with tamas strong yields an unbroken succession of ignorance. The next verse, on his reading, answers a question this one raises.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's surviving comment makes one distinctive correction: the pain named as rajas's fruit is not pure, unmixed sorrow but a small happiness folded together with pain, following a cited scriptural branch that calls rajasic people both happy and unhappy. His structural reasoning is that if rajas gave pure pain, tamas could not be ranked more painful still, as the following verse plainly ranks it. Beyond this one point, the extant note does not elaborate further on sattva or tamas.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the verse as continuing directly from the prior description of the three gunas in themselves: each guna, through its proper action, becomes the cause of a matching fruit. He glosses the sattvic fruit as spotless, light-abundant pleasure following Kapila's tradition, the rajasic fruit as pain, and the tamasic fruit as stupefaction, and defers the finer marks distinguishing sattvic from rajasic and tamasic action to their fuller treatment in the eighteenth chapter.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana adds a careful technical clarification with a modern-facing resonance: rajas and tamas are named here as standing for their effect, the action each one drives, by the same figure of speech in which 'cow' can stand for milk or 'grain' for rice. Since action is the topic, he insists, it is action, not the abstract quality itself, that is meant wherever the verse speaks of rajas or tamas bearing fruit.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Notice, without judgment, which fruit you are currently tasting, and let that tell you something true about the quality that was alive in you when you acted. A stainless, untroubled result points back to clarity; a result laced with sorrow points back to craving; a result that only deepens your confusion points back to dullness. You cannot argue with the fruit, but you can watch, next time, what is moving in you before the deed is done.
So look honestly at what you are reaping, and let it tell you the truth about what was moving in you when you acted.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
ll six sources agree on the verse's basic law: a deed's fruit always carries the signature of the quality that produced it. A well-done, sattvic act yields a sattvic fruit; a rajasic act yields pain; a tamasic act yields ignorance. The effect resembles its cause, so the moral and psychological color of the doing reappears in what it brings back.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The fruit of well-done, sattvic action is called stainless, free of any trace of the pain that marks rajas or the delusion that marks tamas. Several sources gloss this positive content directly as happiness, clarity, or light, so the reward for clear, well-executed action is a clean and untroubled state rather than a mere absence of harm.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The fruit of rajasic action is named pain, and the sources that expand on why converge on one mechanism: rajasic merit is entangled with craving for its own results, so even its rewards come threaded with sorrow rather than arriving clean. Whatever the exact intensity of that pain, its cause is agreed to be the restlessness that drove the original deed.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The fruit of tamasic action is ignorance, described as a stupor or a failure to distinguish one thing from another. This is read as the deepening of the very darkness that produced the deed in the first place, an unrighteous act whose harvest is more confusion rather than any correction of it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
More than one source treats this verse chiefly as a compact, transitional statement rather than as an occasion for extended argument. Shankara moves straight on to what else the gunas produce; Sridhara defers the finer marks of each guna's action to the eighteenth chapter; Madhva confines himself to one correction about rajas; and Abhinavagupta goes further still, setting the passage aside as repetition. The verse functions, across these readings, as a hinge rather than a destination.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the verse as a plain statement of the law of correspondence between cause and fruit, offered without added qualification: sattvic action yields a stainless fruit, rajasic action yields pain because the deed itself was full of striving, and tamasic action yields ignorance as the fruit proper to an unrighteous act. He treats the verse as a settled premise and moves on immediately to ask what else the gunas produce, rather than dwelling on further implications here.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads the whole verse as describing the moment of death and the birth it shapes. Dying with sattva strong yields rebirth among knowers of the self, stainless and free of pain; dying with rajas strong yields rebirth into a family bound to result-seeking action, which is the wheel of rebirth itself, tasted, then repeated; dying with tamas strong yields an unbroken succession of ignorance. The next verse, on his reading, answers a question this one raises.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's surviving comment makes one distinctive correction: the pain named as rajas's fruit is not pure, unmixed sorrow but a small happiness folded together with pain, following a cited scriptural branch that calls rajasic people both happy and unhappy. His structural reasoning is that if rajas gave pure pain, tamas could not be ranked more painful still, as the following verse plainly ranks it. Beyond this one point, the extant note does not elaborate further on sattva or tamas.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving comment here is honestly thin, and thin by his own stated judgment: he holds that this verse opens a stretch of loose, stray verses mixed into the text, merely repeating what has already been said, and declines to expound their fruit-by-fruit content. What he affirms instead is that the conduct which rises past all three gunas together is what actually serves for freedom. Any richer Kashmir Shaiva reading of sattva, rajas, and tamas as three tiers of contracted freedom would be a labeled extension beyond what he himself says here, not his own recorded words on this verse.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as continuing directly from the prior description of the three gunas in themselves: each guna, through its proper action, becomes the cause of a matching fruit. He glosses the sattvic fruit as spotless, light-abundant pleasure following Kapila's tradition, the rajasic fruit as pain, and the tamasic fruit as stupefaction, and defers the finer marks distinguishing sattvic from rajasic and tamasic action to their fuller treatment in the eighteenth chapter.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana adds a careful technical clarification with a modern-facing resonance: rajas and tamas are named here as standing for their effect, the action each one drives, by the same figure of speech in which 'cow' can stand for milk or 'grain' for rice. Since action is the topic, he insists, it is action, not the abstract quality itself, that is meant wherever the verse speaks of rajas or tamas bearing fruit.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If even good, sattvic action only earns a clean and pleasant result, is that itself the goal, or is it still just a nicer room inside the same house?
Every source here agrees that the fruit, whichever it is, follows strictly from the quality that produced the deed, and none of them describes sattva's stainless fruit as freedom itself. Shankara moves on immediately to ask what else the gunas produce, treating this verse as one step in a larger account, not its final word.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Ramanuja is explicit that even the sattvic fruit is a rebirth, a continuation within a family of knowers of the self, not an escape from birth altogether. A clean result is still a result, arising and passing within the same order that produces rajas's pain and tamas's ignorance.
Rāmānujācārya
Abhinavagupta's own verdict, thin as his comment is, points the furthest past this question: he names the conduct that rises past all three gunas together, sattva included, as what actually serves for freedom, treating the fruit-by-fruit account itself as something to move beyond rather than to rest in.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Notice, without judgment, which fruit you are currently tasting, and let that tell you something true about the quality that was alive in you when you acted. A stainless, untroubled result points back to clarity; a result laced with sorrow points back to craving; a result that only deepens your confusion points back to dullness. You cannot argue with the fruit, but you can watch, next time, what is moving in you before the deed is done.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, open a tradition in the doorways below, or add a voice by name above.
Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.