You are a portion of Me alone, drawing to yourself instruments that were never truly your own.
Before the chapter goes further, Krishna names the wanderer itself: not a stranger to him, but his own eternal portion, presently gathering to itself senses and mind that belong to Nature, not to it.
The living self wandering in this world is an eternal portion of Me alone. Bound to a body, it draws to itself the senses, with the mind as the sixth, all of which belong to Nature and not to itself.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
The verse just before this one closes with a striking promise: those who reach the Lord's supreme abode do not return. That promise raises an immediate question. If some do not return, then who is still here, still wandering, still needing to be found? This verse answers directly.
The teaching
The living, embodied self, the one you take yourself to be from day to day, is called here a portion of the Lord alone. Not of any lesser power, not of Nature, but of the Lord, and everlasting, not a thing assembled at birth that will simply come apart at death. This being did not arrive at its bound condition by falling from somewhere or by being cut off from its source; something instead came to cover its true nature, so that it appears, wrongly, as a separate doer and enjoyer moving through the world. The second half of the verse turns to what this covered, embodied self actually does. It draws the senses, hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell, together with the mind counted as a sixth, and gathers them to itself as it moves from one body to the next. But these instruments themselves belong to Nature, each resting in its own place; they were never the self's own substance to begin with. The drawing is real, but what is drawn was always borrowed. Almost every reader of this verse stops, at some point, on the word portion itself, because a Self without parts cannot lose one without being diminished. What differs across the readings gathered here is not whether the self is finally bound to the Lord, but how literally that word portion should be taken, and how much that question can even be settled by argument rather than by the seeker's own arrival.
The doubt that rises
If this self was never really cut off from the Lord, only covered, then what is actually happening when I feel myself to be separate, anxious, and alone? Is that feeling itself the covering at work, or is it something the covering merely makes room for?
Where the paths divide
Read as the soul's final identity with Brahman, the portion only an appearance ignorance sets up.
Being a portion is not, in the end, literally true. The supreme Self has no parts, and ignorance alone sets up a limiting condition that makes the one Self look like a marked-off region, the way the sun looks portioned when it falls on water, or space looks portioned when walled inside a pot. When the limiting condition is removed by the knowledge 'I am Brahman', the appearance of being a portion simply dissolves, and what remains was never really parted from its source in the first place. On this reading, the very question of what happens to a portion when the covering lifts turns out to have been misframed from the start.
For the self that has the Lord as its own inner Self, a real portion in an extended, non-diminishing sense.
The portion here is not a figure of speech. It is real and everlasting, and this reality does not compromise the Lord's own wholeness, because the self is his portion precisely in being his indwelt body, with him as its inner Self throughout. Veiled by beginningless karma, its knowledge and lordship are shrunk down to almost nothing, and it draws the senses, with the mind as the sixth, according to that karma; a self already freed of this veiling abides instead in its own true form.
On the single recorded move: portion as dependence, never as literal division.
What survives from this line of reading is brief but pointed: portion, amsha, names a dependent emanation, not a numerical division of the Lord's substance. The self exists and acts only in ongoing dependence on him, the way a ray depends on its source without ever being a broken-off fragment of it. The source available here does not go further, and this reading does not extend it into a fuller argument beyond what is actually attested.
On the one surviving line, offered honestly as thin, with a clearly labeled extension beyond it.
What is recorded here reads the jiva as contracted consciousness, the very same supreme reality limited by its own power of concealment, maya-shakti. That is the whole of what survives on this verse from this source, a single compact note rather than a developed argument. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading more broadly, one would expect this contraction to be treated as something consciousness works upon itself and can equally undo, so that 'portion' names a temporary self-limiting rather than any real diminishment. That extension is offered here as a conditional gloss, not as this source's own recorded words.
Read as the Lord's own answer to why anyone remains caught in the round at all.
This verse is staged as a direct reply to an honest objection: if reaching the Lord's abode means never returning, but scripture also says everyone merges into Brahman each night in deep sleep and at each cosmic dissolution, then who is left to call bound at all? The answer is that both the bound and the freed truly merge in the Lord, since every self is his portion, but they differ in purity rather than place: the unawakened merge still carrying nature's residue and are drawn back out into another round, while the wise reach the pure, unmixed form and from there do not return.
Read as resolving the prior verse's puzzle about a going that never returns.
Taken as the technical hinge of an argument spanning several verses, this reading treats 'going' and 'not returning' as figures of speech rather than literal travel: the living being was never, in its real nature, different from the Brahman it is said to reach, so what changes is only whether ignorance still stands between them. The self's daily rising out of deep sleep is explained the same way, as ignorance's residual impressions remaining active, unlike the clean severing that knowledge alone accomplishes.
Every reading gathered here agrees the self is the Lord's own, bound only by a covering rather than by any real loss. They part on how literally to take the word portion, and on two sources in particular, Madhva and Abhinavagupta, the surviving comment is thin enough that this page has stated only what is actually attested, not filled in the fuller argument each tradition would likely make. That thinness is left open rather than smoothed over.
A question to carry
When you notice yourself feeling separate, small, and bound today, can you locate that feeling as the covering at work, rather than as evidence of what you actually are?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So carry this quietly through the day ahead: whatever wanders in you is not a stranger to the Lord, and the covering over it, however finally it is understood, was never a piece of you lost for good.
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.
Just after promising that those who reach his supreme abode do not return, Krishna turns to identify who, then, is still caught in the round of birth and death.
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.
The wandering self is the Lord's own eternal portion, belonging to no lesser power and dissolving into nothing.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse answers the question the previous one leaves open: if those who reach the Lord's supreme abode never return, then who is the wanderer still caught in birth and death? The reply names that wanderer precisely, a portion, an amsha, of the Lord alone, and every reading here takes 'alone' (eva) seriously: this being belongs to the supreme Self and to no lesser power, and is sanatana, everlasting, not a thing manufactured at creation that will later dissolve.
It became bound not by falling or by being cut off, but by a veil, ignorance in one telling, beginningless karma in another.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The soul does not become bound by falling or by being severed from its source; something instead covers or contracts its true nature so that it comes to be known, wrongly, as doer and enjoyer. Shankara and Madhusudana name this covering ignorance and its self-made limiting adjunct; Ramanuja and Sridhara name it beginningless karma that wraps and shrinks the self's knowledge and lordship; the structure each reading shares is a veiling, never a real subtraction.
It draws the senses and mind to itself, but these belong to Nature, in their own places, not to the self at all.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
The second half of the verse is read the same way across every source that treats it: this embodied being draws the five senses, with the mind counted as a sixth, and these instruments themselves stand in Nature, in their own places, not in the self. The soul is active in this drawing, but the things drawn were never its own substance to begin with.
Nearly every school refuses the crude sense of 'portion' that would break the Lord's own wholeness, though they part on whether it is imagined or real.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, DvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Nearly every reading is uneasy with the plain word portion, because a truly partless Lord cannot be broken by the loss of a part. Shankara and Madhusudana resolve this by calling the portion only imagined, a marked-off appearance made by ignorance and nothing more; Ramanuja and Madhva keep the portion real while denying that reality damages the Lord's wholeness, reading it instead as a dependent, indwelt relation rather than a physical division.
Whatever this self is in its final nature, the drawing described here is the very entanglement the next verse will follow from body to body.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Underneath the differences on what a portion ultimately is, every source treats this verse as the ground floor of the chapter's larger argument: whatever this wandering self turns out to be in its final nature, it is presently entangled with a body and its instruments through a real act of drawing them to itself, and the very next verse will describe that entanglement continuing as the self departs from one body carrying these instruments to another.
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
The portion is real and everlasting, and this reality does not compromise the Lord's wholeness, because the self is His portion precisely in being His body, with Him as its inner Self. Veiled by beginningless karma, the bound self's knowledge and lordship are shrunk down to almost nothing, and it draws the senses, with the mind as the sixth, in step with its accumulated action, while a self freed of that veiling by the earlier-taught path abides in its own true form instead.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The one substantive move recorded from Madhva reads amsha, portion, as a dependent emanation rather than numerical division: the jiva is not a fragment literally cut from the Lord's substance, which would compromise His indivisibility, but a being that exists and acts only in ongoing dependence on Him. The source available here does not develop this further into a full argument in Madhva's own words, so this entry stays with what is actually recorded rather than extending it into the wider Dvaita doctrine of eternally distinct, graded souls.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the whole verse as staged reply to an objection: if reaching the Lord's abode means never returning, yet scripture says everyone merges into Brahman at deep sleep and dissolution, who is still caught in the round? The one caught is the Lord's own portion, which by ignorance is known as an eternal embodied self; even in deep sleep and dissolution there is a real merging into the Lord, since every self is His portion, but the unawakened merge only as beings still carrying nature's residue and so draw the senses out again, while the wise reach the pure form and do not return.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read against Madhusudana's careful resolution of the seeming contradiction in the prior verse, a modern-facing gloss treats this verse as the technical hinge: the living being is not, in its real nature, different from the Brahman it 'reaches', so that 'going' and 'not returning' are figures of speech for knowledge closing what ignorance alone had opened, while the daily rising from deep sleep is explained by ignorance's residual impressions still carrying an active cause to rise from.
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, for a moment, what you are actually holding onto today: not your body, not your thoughts, not the mood that arrived this morning uninvited, but a portion of the Lord that has quietly drawn all of these to itself, the way a hand closes around what it picks up. You did not become this by falling from anywhere. Let the noticing itself be the loosening, without needing to decide yet whether the portion is finally real or only ignorance's appearance.
So hold this quietly: what wanders in you today is not a stranger to the Lord, but his own portion, and the veil over it, however it is finally understood, was never a piece of you lost for good.
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
he verse answers the question the previous one leaves open: if those who reach the Lord's supreme abode never return, then who is the wanderer still caught in birth and death? The reply names that wanderer precisely, a portion, an amsha, of the Lord alone, and every reading here takes 'alone' (eva) seriously: this being belongs to the supreme Self and to no lesser power, and is sanatana, everlasting, not a thing manufactured at creation that will later dissolve.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The soul does not become bound by falling or by being severed from its source; something instead covers or contracts its true nature so that it comes to be known, wrongly, as doer and enjoyer. Shankara and Madhusudana name this covering ignorance and its self-made limiting adjunct; Ramanuja and Sridhara name it beginningless karma that wraps and shrinks the self's knowledge and lordship; the structure each reading shares is a veiling, never a real subtraction.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The second half of the verse is read the same way across every source that treats it: this embodied being draws the five senses, with the mind counted as a sixth, and these instruments themselves stand in Nature, in their own places, not in the self. The soul is active in this drawing, but the things drawn were never its own substance to begin with.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Nearly every reading is uneasy with the plain word portion, because a truly partless Lord cannot be broken by the loss of a part. Shankara and Madhusudana resolve this by calling the portion only imagined, a marked-off appearance made by ignorance and nothing more; Ramanuja and Madhva keep the portion real while denying that reality damages the Lord's wholeness, reading it instead as a dependent, indwelt relation rather than a physical division.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Underneath the differences on what a portion ultimately is, every source treats this verse as the ground floor of the chapter's larger argument: whatever this wandering self turns out to be in its final nature, it is presently entangled with a body and its instruments through a real act of drawing them to itself, and the very next verse will describe that entanglement continuing as the self departs from one body carrying these instruments to another.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The portion is not literally true; it is imagined, since the supreme Self has no parts and cannot be divided without being destroyed. Ignorance alone sets up a limiting adjunct that makes the one Self appear as a marked-off region, exactly as the sun reflected in water appears portioned from the sun, or as space enclosed in a pot appears portioned from open space. When the adjunct falls away through the knowledge 'I am Brahman', the appearance of portion-hood dissolves with it and does not return; Madhusudana extends this to explain why the self still rises from deep sleep, since ignorance's residual impressions, unlike knowledge's undoing of it, still carry a live cause to rise from.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
The portion is real and everlasting, and this reality does not compromise the Lord's wholeness, because the self is His portion precisely in being His body, with Him as its inner Self. Veiled by beginningless karma, the bound self's knowledge and lordship are shrunk down to almost nothing, and it draws the senses, with the mind as the sixth, in step with its accumulated action, while a self freed of that veiling by the earlier-taught path abides in its own true form instead.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The one substantive move recorded from Madhva reads amsha, portion, as a dependent emanation rather than numerical division: the jiva is not a fragment literally cut from the Lord's substance, which would compromise His indivisibility, but a being that exists and acts only in ongoing dependence on Him. The source available here does not develop this further into a full argument in Madhva's own words, so this entry stays with what is actually recorded rather than extending it into the wider Dvaita doctrine of eternally distinct, graded souls.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The one line that survives from Abhinavagupta here reads the jiva as contracted consciousness, the very same supreme reality limited by maya-shakti and thereby appearing as this bound, embodied portion. The source is a single terse note, not a developed paragraph, and this entry does not extend it into a full Kashmir Shaiva argument; on such a reading more broadly, one would expect the portion-language to be treated as a self-worked contraction that consciousness can equally undo, but that extension is flagged here as conditional, not as Abhinavagupta's own recorded words.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the whole verse as staged reply to an objection: if reaching the Lord's abode means never returning, yet scripture says everyone merges into Brahman at deep sleep and dissolution, who is still caught in the round? The one caught is the Lord's own portion, which by ignorance is known as an eternal embodied self; even in deep sleep and dissolution there is a real merging into the Lord, since every self is His portion, but the unawakened merge only as beings still carrying nature's residue and so draw the senses out again, while the wise reach the pure form and do not return.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read against Madhusudana's careful resolution of the seeming contradiction in the prior verse, a modern-facing gloss treats this verse as the technical hinge: the living being is not, in its real nature, different from the Brahman it 'reaches', so that 'going' and 'not returning' are figures of speech for knowledge closing what ignorance alone had opened, while the daily rising from deep sleep is explained by ignorance's residual impressions still carrying an active cause to rise from.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If I am truly the Lord's own eternal portion and was never really cut off from him, then what actually went wrong, and why do I experience myself as this struggling, bound person at all?
Nothing was subtracted from what you actually are; something was laid over it instead. Shankara and Madhusudana call this a limiting adjunct made by ignorance; Ramanuja and Sridhara call it a wrapping of beginningless karma that shrinks knowledge and lordship down to almost nothing. Either way, the struggle you feel is the weight of the covering, not a change in what lies underneath it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The sense of being a separate, embattled self comes specifically from the drawing described in the verse's second half: taking senses and mind, which stand in Nature and not in you, to be your own. Bondage, on every reading here, is this case of mistaken belonging, not a real fact about what you are made of.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Because the trouble is a covering and not a severance, the readings differ only on how final the recovery is, not on whether it is possible. Shankara and Madhusudana picture the covering falling away entirely, like a reflection returning to its sun; Ramanuja, Madhva, and Sridhara picture a real, ongoing relation to the Lord being restored to its true footing. Both agree that whatever you find on the other side of the veil was never actually absent.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya
Contemplation
Notice, for a moment, what you are actually holding onto today: not your body, not your thoughts, not the mood that arrived this morning uninvited, but a portion of the Lord that has quietly drawn all of these to itself, the way a hand closes around what it picks up. You did not become this by falling from anywhere. Let the noticing itself be the loosening, without needing to decide yet whether the portion is finally real or only ignorance's appearance.
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.