No action is done by one hand alone; five causes carry every deed.
Before naming what they are, Krishna asks Arjuna to attend closely, because the five causes he is about to state are hard to grasp and meant to loosen a very old mistake: the certainty that you alone are doing whatever you do.
Mighty-armed one, learn from me these five causes that together bring about every action, as they are declared in the Sankhya, the teaching in which action reaches its final conclusion.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
You have just been told to give up attachment and the fruit of action. A worry follows close behind: if you still act, surely you still own the result, the way the one who eats is filled by the food. Krishna pauses here, asks you to attend closely, and promises to name the five causes that answer this worry.
The teaching
Every action, without exception, is carried by five causes working together; take any one away and the deed simply does not happen. This is not offered as abstract analysis. It meets a fear directly: that whoever still acts must inherit the fruit of the act as its sole owner. By breaking the deed into its real factors, the teaching shows that you were never its sole author to begin with, so the fruit has less to cling to than the fear supposed. Krishna also grounds this in scripture rather than resting it on his word alone, calling it krtanta, the doctrine in which action reaches its settled conclusion, tied to the promise that all action without exception culminates wholly in knowledge. The commentators agree on this much and then part, sometimes sharply, on what remains once the five are named: whether the self is thereby shown to have no real connection to action at all, or whether its agency is relocated rather than erased, kept real but dependent, or handed over entirely to a deeper ruler working through it.
The doubt that rises
If five causes really carry what I do, and not I alone, am I being told that I bear no responsibility for it, or only that I have been claiming an ownership over the deed that was never rightly mine to begin with?
Where the paths divide
Read with Sankhya as the Vedanta, the teaching of the non-dual Self.
Here Sankhya means the Upanishadic teaching that reckons up the Self, Brahman, and their oneness, not the dualist system of Kapila. The puzzle this reading presses is why such a teaching would bother naming worldly causes of action at all. The answer: the five are stated only so they can later be rejected. Action is wrongly superimposed on the Self by ignorance, and enumerating its true causes is how that false superimposition eventually gets cancelled by knowledge, with no loss to the treatise's single aim.
Read as settling who the true doer behind the instruments is.
Ramanuja reads Sankhya as the discriminating Vedic understanding, which settles that the supreme Self alone is the doer: the inner ruler who governs from within, with the body, the senses, the breaths, and your own individual self serving as his instruments. On this reading the five causes do not empty doership into nothing. They locate it correctly, in the Lord rather than in the finite self that mistakenly claims sole authorship.
Read as preserving real, if dependent, agency in the self.
Madhva's own surviving word here is brief: the causes are named to unfold renunciation further, and krtanta means the settled conclusion of knowledge. Extended through his broader system, the reasoning runs that a self with no agency whatsoever could feel no conceit of sole doership worth correcting in the first place, so a real, dependent competence remains; what is renounced is the claim to be the only doer, not doership as such.
Read as exposing a mistake that binds you only by your own cognition.
Abhinavagupta reads the verse as exposing something true of ordinary life: all five causes are always at work, yet the ignorant forcibly lay the whole weight of doership upon their own self and so bind themselves by their own cognition alone, though in the way things truly stand the self is never bound. He records more than one account of what the coming terms mean without settling fully between them, and closes on the point that it is unsettled understanding, not action itself, that takes part in bondage.
Read as a direct answer to the fear that fruit must cling to the one who acts.
Sridhara opens with the objection this verse exists to answer: how does the fruit not cling to one who acts without attachment and without ego? His remedy is the five causes, offered under a double gloss, either as the treatise where the Self is well known and action reaches its end, or as the system where the principles are well counted and the verdict is decisive. He is explicit that the point of knowing them is to dislodge the egoism of agency, and defers their fuller working-out to what follows.
Read as targeting the psychological root of why letting go feels impossible.
Madhusudana frames this verse as the opening of a four-verse unit built around one practical question: what makes it impossible for the unenlightened to lay down action, when the wise are told they may? His answer is that it is precisely the conceit of identity with these five causes, and the verse states them, inside Vedanta itself, so that conceit can eventually be seen through and the Self's non-connection with action established.
All six readings agree that the five causes are named to loosen the sense that you alone are doing whatever you do. They do not agree on what is left once that sense loosens. Is the self shown to have no real tie to action at all, a witness only, as Advaita reads it? Or is a true doer still present, just relocated, in the Lord acting through you, as Vishishtadvaita and, differently, Shaivism suggest? Or does a real, dependent agency remain in you, as the Dvaita extension implies, just enough to make renunciation a live and meaningful act rather than an empty one? This verse only opens the question. The next several verses, in naming what the five causes actually are, will press on it further.
A question to carry
The next time you finish a task and feel the quiet certainty that you did it, can you name even one of the many things that were already carrying it alongside you?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May you take up your work today with full attention, and may the certainty that you alone are its author loosen, just enough to let you work without the weight of owning it entirely.
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 taught the threefold kinds of renunciation, Krishna now meets a worry the teaching left hanging: if one who renounces attachment still acts, surely the fruit of the act still belongs to him. This verse opens the answer.
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.
Krishna settles Arjuna's mind first, calling him mighty-armed, because the five causes to come are genuinely hard to know.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Krishna announces that he is about to name five causes that together bring about every action, and he asks Arjuna to learn them attentively, addressing him as mighty-armed one. The commentators read this address, and the call to learn them from Krishna's own word, as a deliberate settling of the mind: these five are hard to know, and an inattentive listener cannot grasp them.
All five causes work together for every action without exception; remove any one, and the deed does not happen at all.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
The five are stated for the accomplishment of all actions without exception. Nothing here is a stray piece of analysis; the point is that without these five working together, no action whatsoever gets done, and this frames everything the coming verses will spell out in detail.
The teaching directly answers a real fear: that whoever still acts must inherit the fruit, the way the one who eats is filled.
Across Bhakti, Advaita, DvaitaŚrīdhara · Madhusūdana · MadhvaIn Śrīdhara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
The teaching answers a live worry that follows directly from the instruction to renounce attachment and fruit: surely whoever still acts must inherit the fruit of the act, the way the one who eats is filled. Naming the five real factors that carry any action is how that worry gets met, because it shows the self is not the act's sole author in the way the worry assumes.
It is grounded in scripture itself, called krtanta, the very doctrine in which action reaches its settled conclusion.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The word krtanta, the conclusion of action, is unpacked along two reinforcing lines: it is the doctrine in which action reaches its settled conclusion, and it is the teaching in which action itself comes to its end once knowledge of the Self arises. Several tie this directly to the Gita's own line that all action without exception culminates wholly in knowledge.
Knowing the five rightly is meant to loosen the sense 'I alone am doing this,' whatever each school then says fills that place.
Across Advaita, Kashmir Śaiva, DvaitaŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Abhinavagupta · MadhvaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 2 others’ words
Whatever their final position on who the doer is, the commentators agree that knowing these five rightly is meant to loosen the conceit of being the doer, the sense that 'I alone am doing all of this.' Abhinavagupta names this conceit directly as a self-imposed binding; the others converge on the same diagnosis from their own systems.
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 Sankhya as the discriminating Vedic understanding, and takes what it settles to be that the supreme Self alone is the doer: the inner ruler who governs from within, with the body, senses, breaths, and individual self as his instruments. On this reading the five causes do not dissolve doership into nothing; they locate it correctly in the Lord rather than in the finite self who mistakenly claims it.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's own surviving word at this verse is brief, naming only that the causes are stated to unfold renunciation further and that krtanta means the settled conclusion of knowledge. Read together with his broader system, the self keeps a real, dependent agency, since a self with no agency whatsoever could feel no conceit of sole doership worth correcting in the first place; what is renounced is the claim to be the only doer, not doership as such.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta reads the verse as exposing a mistake native to ordinary life: all five causes are always at work, yet the ignorant forcibly lay the whole weight of doership on their own self and so bind themselves by their own cognition alone, while in truth the self is never bound. He records more than one account of what the five terms mean without settling fully between them, and closes on the point that an unformed understanding, not action itself, is what takes part in bondage.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara frames the verse as a direct answer to a real objection: how does the fruit not cling to one who acts without attachment and without ego? His remedy is the same five causes, offered in two live glosses of 'sankhye krtante,' either as the treatise where the Self is well known and action reaches its end, or as the system where the principles are well numbered and the conclusion is decisive. He is explicit that knowing the five is meant to dislodge the egoism of agency, and defers their detailed working-out to the verses ahead.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for a modern-facing gloss, Madhusudana frames the whole four-verse unit as answering one practical question: what makes it impossible for the unenlightened to lay down action, when the wise are told they can? His answer is that it is the very conceit these five causes are named to dismantle, restated inside Vedanta itself so the Self's non-connection with action can finally be established without any loss to the treatise's single aim.
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
Before you take up your next task, pause and notice how many things are already carrying it that are not you: the body that will move, the faculties that will attend, the circumstances that will cooperate or resist, the momentum of everything that came before this moment. Let your sense of being the sole author of the deed loosen, just slightly, in that noticing. This is not a reason to act carelessly. It is a redirection of where the felt weight of 'I am doing this' actually belongs.
As you take up your next task, let this settle quietly underneath it: many hands are already carrying what you call yours to do.
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
rishna announces that he is about to name five causes that together bring about every action, and he asks Arjuna to learn them attentively, addressing him as mighty-armed one. The commentators read this address, and the call to learn them from Krishna's own word, as a deliberate settling of the mind: these five are hard to know, and an inattentive listener cannot grasp them.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The five are stated for the accomplishment of all actions without exception. Nothing here is a stray piece of analysis; the point is that without these five working together, no action whatsoever gets done, and this frames everything the coming verses will spell out in detail.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The teaching answers a live worry that follows directly from the instruction to renounce attachment and fruit: surely whoever still acts must inherit the fruit of the act, the way the one who eats is filled. Naming the five real factors that carry any action is how that worry gets met, because it shows the self is not the act's sole author in the way the worry assumes.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Madhvācārya
The word krtanta, the conclusion of action, is unpacked along two reinforcing lines: it is the doctrine in which action reaches its settled conclusion, and it is the teaching in which action itself comes to its end once knowledge of the Self arises. Several tie this directly to the Gita's own line that all action without exception culminates wholly in knowledge.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Whatever their final position on who the doer is, the commentators agree that knowing these five rightly is meant to loosen the conceit of being the doer, the sense that 'I alone am doing all of this.' Abhinavagupta names this conceit directly as a self-imposed binding; the others converge on the same diagnosis from their own systems.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhvācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
For Shankara and Madhusudana, Sankhya here means Vedanta, the Upanishadic teaching that reckons up the Self, Brahman, and their oneness, never the dualist system of Kapila. Madhusudana presses the puzzle directly: why would a treatise devoted to the non-dual Self set out five worldly causes of action at all? His answer is that they are stated only in order to be rejected. Action and its factors are wrongly superimposed on the Self by ignorance, and naming them is how that false superimposition later gets cancelled by knowledge, with no loss to the treatise's single aim.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads Sankhya as the discriminating Vedic understanding, and takes what it settles to be that the supreme Self alone is the doer: the inner ruler who governs from within, with the body, senses, breaths, and individual self as his instruments. On this reading the five causes do not dissolve doership into nothing; they locate it correctly in the Lord rather than in the finite self who mistakenly claims it.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's own surviving word at this verse is brief, naming only that the causes are stated to unfold renunciation further and that krtanta means the settled conclusion of knowledge. Read together with his broader system, the self keeps a real, dependent agency, since a self with no agency whatsoever could feel no conceit of sole doership worth correcting in the first place; what is renounced is the claim to be the only doer, not doership as such.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta reads the verse as exposing a mistake native to ordinary life: all five causes are always at work, yet the ignorant forcibly lay the whole weight of doership on their own self and so bind themselves by their own cognition alone, while in truth the self is never bound. He records more than one account of what the five terms mean without settling fully between them, and closes on the point that an unformed understanding, not action itself, is what takes part in bondage.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara frames the verse as a direct answer to a real objection: how does the fruit not cling to one who acts without attachment and without ego? His remedy is the same five causes, offered in two live glosses of 'sankhye krtante,' either as the treatise where the Self is well known and action reaches its end, or as the system where the principles are well numbered and the conclusion is decisive. He is explicit that knowing the five is meant to dislodge the egoism of agency, and defers their detailed working-out to the verses ahead.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for a modern-facing gloss, Madhusudana frames the whole four-verse unit as answering one practical question: what makes it impossible for the unenlightened to lay down action, when the wise are told they can? His answer is that it is the very conceit these five causes are named to dismantle, restated inside Vedanta itself so the Self's non-connection with action can finally be established without any loss to the treatise's single aim.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If my actions are really carried by five causes and not by me alone, does that mean I am not responsible for what I do?
The teaching answers a specific worry, not a general one: that whoever still acts must inherit the fruit of the act, the way the one who eats is filled. It is not handing you an excuse to act carelessly; it is naming exactly the false ownership it means to loosen.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
What is being corrected is the conceit of being the sole doer of everything, a burden the ignorant lay upon themselves and, on Abhinavagupta's reading, bind themselves with by their own cognition alone, though in truth the self was never bound by it to begin with.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhvācārya
Several schools keep real agency in the picture rather than erasing it outright, whether as the Lord's own agency working through you, as Ramanuja holds, or as your own dependent but genuine competence, as Madhva's broader system implies. Either way, care for the action itself is not what the teaching asks you to release.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya
Contemplation
Before you take up your next task, pause and notice how many things are already carrying it that are not you: the body that will move, the faculties that will attend, the circumstances that will cooperate or resist, the momentum of everything that came before this moment. Let your sense of being the sole author of the deed loosen, just slightly, in that noticing. This is not a reason to act carelessly. It is a redirection of where the felt weight of 'I am doing this' actually belongs.
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.