Right or wrong, bodily, spoken, or thought, every action answers to the same five causes.
Having named the five factors, Krishna now insists the account is total. Nothing you do, say, or think stands outside it, and neither does it matter, for the causal account itself, whether the deed was right or wrong.
Whatever action a person undertakes, with body, speech, or mind, whether it is right or wrong, these same five factors just named are its causes.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just named the five factors that stand behind any action at all. Now he closes that account: whatever you do, through whichever of the three doors, and whether it turns out right or wrong, those same five causes are behind it, with nothing left over.
The teaching
You act through three doors only: your body, your speech, your mind. Nothing you do, say, or think escapes them. And whatever passes through those doors, lawful or unlawful, right or its opposite, rests on the very same five causes named a moment ago. The claim is deliberately total. You might notice what looks like a gap here: the last verse gave a longer list of factors, and this one narrows to only three doors. But there is no real narrowing. Every action scripture enjoins or forbids works chiefly through body, speech, and mind; an act is called bodily, verbal, or mental only by which of the three leads it, not because the others fall away. Even your smallest, least considered motions, a blink, a breath, the ordinary traffic of the senses, are not exempt. They are themselves the ripened fruit of merit and harm you earned before, so they too are gathered under right and its opposite rather than left as some third, ungoverned thing. The causal ledger, in other words, is being certified complete: nothing you do stands outside it, and its completeness does not depend on the moral color of the deed. Where the surviving fragments of other commentators touch this verse, they touch it by way of a wider passage rather than by addressing its wording directly, and what they say, honestly reported, points past this verse toward the question the very next line will ask: if these five causes account for everything, right and wrong alike, where does the self's own part in it actually stand?
The doubt that rises
If the same five factors cause both your right actions and your wrong ones without distinction, has anything actually been said about why you should still care which is which? And if three commentators on record speak to this verse only by way of a neighboring one, how much weight can their positions bear here at all?
Where the paths divide
Read as completing the causal ledger before the next verse draws its conclusion.
Shankara and Madhusudana read this verse as finishing what the last one opened. Body, speech, and mind are shown to hold the whole field, right and wrong alike; even the smallest life-sustaining motions are already the fruit of past merit and demerit, and the three-fold naming is only by which door predominates, never by the others' exclusion. The point of insisting on this completeness is to prepare the very next step: if these five factors, and not the Self, are what truly bring about both kinds of action, then the Self that merely witnesses cannot be their agent either.
Carried forward, and clearly flagged as such, from Ramanuja's joint comment on this verse and the one before it.
Ramanuja's extant words here are given for this verse together with the one before it, not for this verse's own three-fold wording specifically. What is on record is that the self's agency, however it is exercised, right or wrong, is real yet thoroughly dependent, sustained moment to moment by the Lord seated within as the inner ruler, much as many hands together, none of them independent, are each still genuinely needed to move a heavy stone. Beyond that, nothing further addressed to this verse in particular survives.
Carried forward, and clearly flagged as such, from Madhva's joint comment on this verse and the one before it.
Madhva's extant comment, too, is recorded for this verse jointly with the one preceding it. His stated position there is that the deep doer among the five factors is Vishnu himself, the living being's independent doership having already been disproved, while a real, dependent doership belongs to the self. Extending that stated doctrine to this verse's own contrast of right and wrong, without claiming this as his recorded word specifically, one would say that whichever door the act passes through, it is Vishnu who supplies the underlying capacity to act, and the self's own contribution decides only how that dependent capacity is used.
Carried forward, and clearly flagged as such, from Abhinavagupta's comment spanning verses 18.13 through 18.17.
Abhinavagupta's surviving Gitartha-samgraha addresses this verse only within a wider span, 18.13 to 18.17, not in its own right. What survives there is that the five causes are always at work, yet the unillumined heap the whole weight of doership onto the bare self and so bind themselves by their own idea, though the self was never truly bound; a sense of self purified by right reasoning shares no longer in that bondage. A further step, that right and wrong action alike are nothing but consciousness's own dynamism, differing only in how contracted or how recognized it is, would extend this reasoning consistently, but goes beyond what the extant text states for this verse.
Read as a plain, total restatement, staying close to the verse's own words.
Sridhara's extant comment on this verse offers little beyond a clear, complete restatement: whatever a person does, through body, speech, or mind, whether it is right or wrong, answers without exception to the same five causes already named. He does not press, in this comment, into the deeper question of where final agency rests; he gives the doorway every deed passes through, and leaves the destination those questions lead to for elsewhere.
Read for the verse's argumentative function within the larger passage.
Seen structurally, this verse's chief work is closure. The previous verse opened a ledger of five causes; this one certifies that the ledger has no gaps, no exception for kind of action and none for its moral color. That completeness is not incidental. It is what allows the very next verse to draw its conclusion about the Self's true relation to doing, right or wrong, once and for all.
All six readings agree the five causes reach everywhere, right and wrong alike, and that nothing you do stands outside body, speech, or mind. They part on what that completeness is for. Does it exist to clear the Self of agency entirely, as the Advaita reading anticipates? Does it point to a dependent agency sustained by the Lord, as the Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita positions, carried forward from a neighboring verse, suggest? Does it name a self-binding idea rather than a true bondage, as the fragment from Abhinavagupta implies? The verse itself states only the completeness. What follows from it, this page leaves as open as the surviving sources leave it.
A question to carry
When you notice a wrong action of yours and a right one side by side, do you feel them caused by two different kinds of force, or does something in you already sense they rise from the very same ground?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So take today's doing as it is: threefold in its doors, fivefold in its causes, right and wrong both held on the very same ground, and let that plain completeness be enough for now.
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.
Krishna has just listed the five factors that bring about any action; here he closes that account completely before the next verse draws its conclusion about where true agency rests.
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 three doors of body, speech, and mind carry the whole of a person's active life; nothing done, said, or thought stands outside them.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The verse names the three doors through which every action passes: body, speech, and mind. Nothing a person does, says, or thinks falls outside this three-fold channel, and Krishna states the claim as total, covering the whole of a person's active life.
Right action and wrong action are both fully accounted for by the same five causes; the ledger does not choose sides.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
Whatever passes through those three doors, whether it is right, lawful, and in keeping with scripture, or wrong, unlawful, and against it, the same five factors named in the verse just before are its causes, without exception for either kind.
Even your smallest, least deliberate motions, a blink, a breath, are already the fruit of merit and demerit earned before, so nothing is left ungrounded.
Across AdvaitaŚaṅkara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara and Madhusūdana’s words
Several commentators meet an apparent gap between this verse's three doors and the previous verse's longer list of five factors. There is no real conflict: every enjoined or forbidden action has body, speech, and mind as its chief instruments, and an act is named bodily, verbal, or mental only by which of the three predominates, not by the others' absence.
Where the fragmentary sources touch on final agency, they agree the self's own doership, whatever its reality, is never simply its own; something further, named variously, sustains it.
Across AdvaitaŚaṅkara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara and Madhusūdana’s words
The rule is pressed even to the smallest involuntary motions that merely sustain life, blinking, breathing, the play of the senses. These are not a neutral fourth category outside right and wrong; they are themselves the ripened fruit of merit and demerit already earned, so the five causes reach all the way down, leaving no flicker of activity ungrounded.
The verse's quiet work is completion: having opened the ledger of causes, it closes it fully, so the very next line can ask where true agency belongs.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaRāmānuja · Madhva · AbhinavaguptaIn Rāmānuja, Madhva, and 1 others’ words
Where the extant comments of Ramanuja, Madhva, and Abhinavagupta touch this verse at all, they do so by carrying forward a claim made for the surrounding passage rather than one addressed to this verse's own wording: that the self's very capacity to act, whether toward right or wrong, is never wholly its own but rests on a further ground, be that the inner-ruling Lord, Vishnu's sanction, or consciousness's own dynamism.
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's extant comment addresses this verse jointly with the one before it rather than in its own right. Carried forward from that shared passage, his position is that the self's agency, whether exercised toward right action or wrong, is real but thoroughly dependent: it is sustained at every moment by the Lord seated within as inner ruler, the way many hands together, none independent, are still each required to move a heavy stone. No further elaboration addressed to this verse's specific wording is on record.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's extant comment likewise addresses this verse jointly with the one before it. His recorded position there is that the doer among the five factors is, at the deepest level, Vishnu, since the living being's independent doership has been disproved, while a real, dependent doership remains its own. On a reading consistent with, but going beyond, what he states for this verse specifically, whichever door the act passes through, right or wrong, it is Vishnu who supplies the underlying capacity to act at all.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's surviving commentary treats this verse within a wider block, verses 18.13 through 18.17, without addressing its own three-fold contrast directly. What is on record there is that the five causes are always at work, yet the unillumined pile the whole weight of doership onto the bare self and so bind themselves by their own idea, though the self was never in truth bound; firmness of self-sense purified by right reasoning shares no longer in that bondage. A Kashmir Shaiva extension, clearly flagged as such, would read right and wrong action alike as consciousness's own dynamism, differing only in how contracted or how recognized that dynamism is, but this goes beyond what the extant text states for this verse.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the verse as a plain, total completion of the prior one: every action, of whichever of the three kinds, right or wrong, answers without exception to the same five causes already named. He stays close to this restatement and does not press further, in his treatment of this verse, into questions of where ultimate agency rests; what he offers is the doorway through which every deed passes, not yet the destination those questions would lead to.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for its structural, almost logical function, Madhusudana's gloss stresses that this verse's real work is closure: having opened the ledger of causes at the previous verse, this one certifies the ledger admits no exception, of kind or of moral color, so that the following verse's conclusion about the Self's non-agency can be drawn on solid ground.
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, today, how many of your actions you would sort as merely bodily, merely spoken, merely a passing thought, as though each door worked alone. Watch instead how the three cooperate in nearly everything you do, and how even your least considered motions, a sigh, a glance, a reflex, are not outside the causes that shape your larger, deliberate acts. You do not need to resolve where final agency rests to notice this. Notice only that nothing you do stands free of the ground it rises from.
So look plainly at what you do today, in body, in word, in thought, right or wrong alike, and see it as it is: caused, carried, never quite your isolated possession alone.
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 names the three doors through which every action passes: body, speech, and mind. Nothing a person does, says, or thinks falls outside this three-fold channel, and Krishna states the claim as total, covering the whole of a person's active life.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Whatever passes through those three doors, whether it is right, lawful, and in keeping with scripture, or wrong, unlawful, and against it, the same five factors named in the verse just before are its causes, without exception for either kind.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Several commentators meet an apparent gap between this verse's three doors and the previous verse's longer list of five factors. There is no real conflict: every enjoined or forbidden action has body, speech, and mind as its chief instruments, and an act is named bodily, verbal, or mental only by which of the three predominates, not by the others' absence.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The rule is pressed even to the smallest involuntary motions that merely sustain life, blinking, breathing, the play of the senses. These are not a neutral fourth category outside right and wrong; they are themselves the ripened fruit of merit and demerit already earned, so the five causes reach all the way down, leaving no flicker of activity ungrounded.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the extant comments of Ramanuja, Madhva, and Abhinavagupta touch this verse at all, they do so by carrying forward a claim made for the surrounding passage rather than one addressed to this verse's own wording: that the self's very capacity to act, whether toward right or wrong, is never wholly its own but rests on a further ground, be that the inner-ruling Lord, Vishnu's sanction, or consciousness's own dynamism.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara and Madhusudana read the verse chiefly as completing the account opened at the previous verse and clearing the ground for the one after: body, speech, and mind exhaust the field of action, the small life-sustaining motions are subordinate effects of past merit and demerit, and the three-fold naming is only by predominance. The aim, on this reading, is to certify that the ledger of causes is complete, so that the immediately following verse can conclude that the isolated Self, which merely witnesses, is never in truth the doer of either the right deed or the wrong one.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's extant comment addresses this verse jointly with the one before it rather than in its own right. Carried forward from that shared passage, his position is that the self's agency, whether exercised toward right action or wrong, is real but thoroughly dependent: it is sustained at every moment by the Lord seated within as inner ruler, the way many hands together, none independent, are still each required to move a heavy stone. No further elaboration addressed to this verse's specific wording is on record.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's extant comment likewise addresses this verse jointly with the one before it. His recorded position there is that the doer among the five factors is, at the deepest level, Vishnu, since the living being's independent doership has been disproved, while a real, dependent doership remains its own. On a reading consistent with, but going beyond, what he states for this verse specifically, whichever door the act passes through, right or wrong, it is Vishnu who supplies the underlying capacity to act at all.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving commentary treats this verse within a wider block, verses 18.13 through 18.17, without addressing its own three-fold contrast directly. What is on record there is that the five causes are always at work, yet the unillumined pile the whole weight of doership onto the bare self and so bind themselves by their own idea, though the self was never in truth bound; firmness of self-sense purified by right reasoning shares no longer in that bondage. A Kashmir Shaiva extension, clearly flagged as such, would read right and wrong action alike as consciousness's own dynamism, differing only in how contracted or how recognized that dynamism is, but this goes beyond what the extant text states for this verse.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as a plain, total completion of the prior one: every action, of whichever of the three kinds, right or wrong, answers without exception to the same five causes already named. He stays close to this restatement and does not press further, in his treatment of this verse, into questions of where ultimate agency rests; what he offers is the doorway through which every deed passes, not yet the destination those questions would lead to.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for its structural, almost logical function, Madhusudana's gloss stresses that this verse's real work is closure: having opened the ledger of causes at the previous verse, this one certifies the ledger admits no exception, of kind or of moral color, so that the following verse's conclusion about the Self's non-agency can be drawn on solid ground.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If the same five factors are said to cause both my right and my wrong actions equally, does that mean the distinction between right and wrong dissolves into a single impersonal machinery?
No. The verse states that the same five factors are the causes of action of either kind; it does not say the two kinds collapse into one. Body, speech, and mind carry both a lawful deed and an unlawful one exactly as they carry breathing and blinking, but carrying a thing is not the same as erasing what kind of thing it is.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the sources touch on where the deeper causal weight lies, whether the Lord's sanction, Vishnu's supplying of capacity, or consciousness's own dynamism, they still uphold the difference between right and wrong as a real difference in how that capacity is used, not as a distinction that a shared causal ground would dissolve.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya
What the shared causal ground actually removes is a narrower claim: that you alone, as an isolated self cut off from these causes, are the sole and independent author of either your virtue or your fault. Removing sole authorship is not removing moral difference. The five causes explain how any action, of any color, is carried out; they do not tell you to stop caring which color it is.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śaṅkarācārya
Contemplation
Notice, today, how many of your actions you would sort as merely bodily, merely spoken, merely a passing thought, as though each door worked alone. Watch instead how the three cooperate in nearly everything you do, and how even your least considered motions, a sigh, a glance, a reflex, are not outside the causes that shape your larger, deliberate acts. You do not need to resolve where final agency rests to notice this. Notice only that nothing you do stands free of the ground it rises from.
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.