Your own duty, done poorly, still outranks another's done well, because it alone is genuinely yours.
Arjuna eyes the mendicant's gentler path and wants to set his war down. Krishna holds the line: the flawed work that is truly yours stands above the fine work that is not, and its harm, precisely because it is enjoined, is not reckoned as ordinary sin.
Better your own duty, even done imperfectly, than another's duty carried out well. Doing the work your own nature has settled as yours, you incur no sin.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
You stand where Arjuna stands: your own work looks hard, even harmful, and someone else's looks cleaner and higher. Here Krishna tells him, and you, which one is truly his to do.
The teaching
The work that belongs to you by your own nature is better than another's work, even when you do yours poorly and they do theirs well. That is the surprising direction of the comparison: not your fine work set against their careless one, but your flawed work still standing above their excellent one. Shankara's reasoning is exact and a little startling: as poison does no harm to the creature born in poison, so a person doing the action native to his own nature takes on no sin from it, however harsh that action looks from outside. Your own duty does not stain you because your nature, shaped across a long history, has already settled what is genuinely yours to do. Sridhara presses this point further, insisting that svabhava names something more precise than an inherited trade or a caste label: it is the duty that flowers from your own inner ground, born of the impressions you carry from before. Arjuna's fear is not imaginary. War means killing kinsmen, and that looks sinful on its face. Madhusudana meets this directly: the killing bound up in a war one is rightly enjoined to wage carries no more calamity than the injury to the animal that is a limb of a prescribed sacrifice, because the harm belongs to an enjoined duty rather than to arbitrary violence. Ramanuja adds a different, more practical reason for holding to one's own work: action through the senses is naturally steady, while the harder discipline of restraining every sense at once remains open to a costly lapse even when it is practiced well. The danger, on every reading here, is never the difficulty of the work you are given. It is trading that work away because another's looks gentler, higher, or safer, when it was never truly yours to take up.
The doubt that rises
If my own duty drags me into harm, even killing, how can it leave me clean of sin, while someone else's gentle, harmless duty would actually be the worse choice for me?
Where the paths divide
Read through Shankara's compact reading of this line.
Shankara reads one's own duty as the action determined by one's own nature. Its safety rests on a single, exact image: as poison does no harm to the creature born in poison, action native to a person's own nature does not stain him, though the identical act might stain someone for whom it is not native. He closes by noting that another's duty brings fear, and that no one ignorant of the Self can go even a moment without acting, moving directly into the teaching that follows this verse.
Read as action measured specifically against the harder discipline of knowledge.
For Ramanuja, one's own duty here is specifically the discipline of action, and another's duty is specifically the discipline of knowledge. The case for action is psychological and practical: sense-based action is naturally fixed and steady for one still joined to nature, while restraining every sense, as the discipline of knowledge demands, remains open to lapse even in a person who practices it well. Standing firmly in action is therefore the safer path, and this restates what the Gita's third chapter already taught.
An honest gap, with a clearly labeled extension rather than an invented reading.
No comment survives from Madhva on this verse, and this reading does not pretend otherwise. Extending his broader teaching on dependence from nearby verses, one might suggest that one's own duty names the precise sphere in which a soul's delegated, dependent competence to act has been placed by the Lord's sanction, so that performing it acknowledges one's true standing rather than achieving anything independently. But this is a labeled extension only, not Madhva's recorded word.
Only a shared, non-specific block survives; deeper reading is flagged as extrapolation.
What survives of Abhinavagupta's treatment here is not a comment on this verse alone but a single passage covering verses 18.41 through 18.60. That passage argues that everyone is fixed by his own nature from birth and remains bound to act by it whether or not he wills it, guided through clear knowledge so the bondage it creates can cease. Extending this beyond what the source itself states, one might read the compulsion of svabhava as consciousness's own dynamism asserting itself regardless of the small self's consent, but this is a clearly labeled extrapolation, not his own recorded word on 18.47.
Read through Sridhara's insistence that svabhava names inner ground, not mere birth.
Sridhara reads this verse as aimed directly at Arjuna's temptation to trade his warrior's duty for a monk's gentler one. His distinctive move is to insist that svabhava, one's own nature, does not simply mean caste or inherited occupation. It names the duty that flowers from a person's own inner ground, shaped by the impressions he carries from before. A person takes on no sin doing this work because it is not an arbitrary role assumed from outside; it is the very shape his own accumulated nature has taken.
Read through Madhusudana's grace-centered framing of the comparison.
Madhusudana grounds the ranking of the two duties less in comparative performance than in a single claim: one's own duty alone is the cause of the Lord's grace reaching a person. Read this way, the verse is less a rule about effort and more a statement about where grace actually flows. He answers Arjuna's specific fear about killing kinsmen with the same sacrifice analogy Shankara uses, treating the enjoined harm as falling outside the ordinary reckoning of sin because it belongs to a duty genuinely one's own.
All six readings agree that one's own duty, however flawed, outranks another's however well performed, and that its harm does not count as ordinary sin. They part on why. For Shankara it is a matter of native fit, the poison-worm untouched by its own element. For Ramanuja it is a matter of psychological steadiness, action against the harder discipline of knowledge. For Sridhara it is a matter of inner ground, the duty shaped by one's own accumulated impressions rather than mere birth. For Madhusudana it is a matter of grace, one's own duty being the sole channel through which the Lord's favor reaches a person. Madhva's own voice is simply absent here, and Abhinavagupta's surviving comment addresses twenty verses at once rather than this one alone. This page marks that gap honestly rather than filling it with invented certainty.
A question to carry
When another path looks gentler or higher than the work already in your hands, can you tell whether you want it because it is genuinely yours to take up, or only because it looks easier from where you stand?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May you learn to trust the work already fixed as yours, however imperfectly you carry it, over the cleaner-looking work that was never truly given to you to do.
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.
Closing the chapter's long account of duty divided by nature, this verse answers Arjuna's wish to flee his warrior's work for a holier-seeming one, and turns him back to the labor his own nature has fixed as his.
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 work that belongs to you by your own nature outranks another's, even when yours is done poorly and theirs done well; do not defect to what only looks nobler.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse states a firm rule, and the word even carries its whole weight: one's own duty, sva-dharma, is better even when done poorly than another's duty, para-dharma, even when done well. This is not a comparison of a fine performance of your work against a poor one of someone else's; it is the reverse, your flawed work still ranked above their excellent one, and both Shankara and Madhusudana read it as aimed directly at Arjuna's wish to trade his warrior's duty for the gentler path of the wandering mendicant.
Action fixed by your own nature brings no sin, even when it carries harm, as poison cannot wound the creature born in it.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The reason one's own duty is safe is given in the verse's second line: action fixed by one's own nature, svabhava-niyatam karma, does not bring sin. Shankara's governing image makes this vivid: as poison does no harm to the creature born in poison, so a person does not incur sin by doing the action native to his own nature, however harsh it may look from outside.
The harm bound up in a duty you are rightly enjoined to perform, such as a warrior's war, is no more a cause of guilt than the injury folded into a prescribed sacrifice.
Across AdvaitaŚaṅkara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara and Madhusūdana’s words
This directly answers Arjuna's specific fear, that war, even as his own duty, seems sinful because it ends in the slaying of kinsmen. Madhusudana meets this fear head-on with the sacrifice analogy: the killing bound up in a war one is rightly enjoined to wage carries no more calamity than the injury to the animal that is a limb of a prescribed rite, because the act belongs to an enjoined duty rather than to arbitrary violence.
What makes a duty truly your own is not birth or convenience alone but the inner ground your own accumulated history has already shaped.
Across Bhakti, Kashmir ŚaivaŚrīdhara · AbhinavaguptaIn Śrīdhara and Abhinavagupta’s words
Sridhara insists that svabhava names something more exact than inherited caste or occupation: the duty in question flowers from a person's own inner ground, shaped by the impressions he carries from before, which is precisely what makes it genuinely his rather than a role assumed from outside. Abhinavagupta's shared block on this span of the chapter makes a related point, that everyone is fixed by his own nature from birth, and even when that nature is veiled for a time, it returns once the veil lifts.
The real danger is never the hardness of your own work; it is abandoning it for another's because that other duty merely looks easier or finer.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
A recurring practical warning follows from all of this: one must not abandon one's own appointed work out of attraction to another's that looks easier, gentler, or higher. Ramanuja frames this as a matter of steadiness, action being naturally reliable where withheld senses can still lapse, while Madhusudana frames it as a matter of grace, one's own duty alone being the channel through which the Lord's favor reaches a person.
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 one's own duty specifically as the discipline of action and another's as the discipline of knowledge. His case is psychological: action through the senses is naturally steady for one still joined to nature, while the discipline of knowledge, requiring restraint of every sense at once, remains open to a lapse even when practiced well. Standing firmly in action is therefore the safer path, and this restates the Gita's third chapter, now sharpened into this specific comparison.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva leaves no comment of his own on this verse; the source states this plainly. On a Dvaita reading, one would extend his governing axis from nearby verses: since the capacity to act at all is delegated and sustained by the Lord's sanction, one's own appointed work is the precise sphere where that dependent competence has been placed, so performing it acknowledges one's dependent standing rather than achieving anything independently. This is a clearly labeled extrapolation, not Madhva's recorded word.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the verse as aimed squarely at Arjuna's temptation to trade his warrior's duty for a monk's gentler one, and presses on svabhava to mean not caste or inherited trade but the duty that flowers from a person's own inner ground, shaped by the impressions he carries from before. A man takes on no sin by doing this work because it is not an arbitrary role but the very shape his own accumulated nature has taken.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read against Madhusudana's own framing, a modern-facing gloss can note that he grounds the ranking of the two duties not chiefly in comparative performance but in one's own duty being the sole channel of the Lord's grace, and that he answers Arjuna's specific fear about killing kinsmen with the same sacrifice analogy Shankara uses, treating the enjoined harm as falling outside the ordinary reckoning of sin because it belongs to a duty genuinely one's own.
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 the shape of the temptation this verse names: not the wish to do evil, but the wish to trade a hard duty that is truly yours for a gentler one that only looks holier from outside. Sit for a moment with the work already in your hands, the one your own history and disposition have shaped, rather than the work you imagine would let you feel cleaner. Ask only this: is this genuinely mine to do, and am I doing it as an offering rather than clutching at how it will be judged?
The road home is not some cleaner, holier work you must go find; it is the work already fixed as yours by your own nature, carried out honestly and without envy for a gentler road that was never truly yours to walk.
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 states a firm rule, and the word even carries its whole weight: one's own duty, sva-dharma, is better even when done poorly than another's duty, para-dharma, even when done well. This is not a comparison of a fine performance of your work against a poor one of someone else's; it is the reverse, your flawed work still ranked above their excellent one, and both Shankara and Madhusudana read it as aimed directly at Arjuna's wish to trade his warrior's duty for the gentler path of the wandering mendicant.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The reason one's own duty is safe is given in the verse's second line: action fixed by one's own nature, svabhava-niyatam karma, does not bring sin. Shankara's governing image makes this vivid: as poison does no harm to the creature born in poison, so a person does not incur sin by doing the action native to his own nature, however harsh it may look from outside.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
This directly answers Arjuna's specific fear, that war, even as his own duty, seems sinful because it ends in the slaying of kinsmen. Madhusudana meets this fear head-on with the sacrifice analogy: the killing bound up in a war one is rightly enjoined to wage carries no more calamity than the injury to the animal that is a limb of a prescribed rite, because the act belongs to an enjoined duty rather than to arbitrary violence.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Sridhara insists that svabhava names something more exact than inherited caste or occupation: the duty in question flowers from a person's own inner ground, shaped by the impressions he carries from before, which is precisely what makes it genuinely his rather than a role assumed from outside. Abhinavagupta's shared block on this span of the chapter makes a related point, that everyone is fixed by his own nature from birth, and even when that nature is veiled for a time, it returns once the veil lifts.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
A recurring practical warning follows from all of this: one must not abandon one's own appointed work out of attraction to another's that looks easier, gentler, or higher. Ramanuja frames this as a matter of steadiness, action being naturally reliable where withheld senses can still lapse, while Madhusudana frames it as a matter of grace, one's own duty alone being the channel through which the Lord's favor reaches a person.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads sva-dharma as the action determined by one's own nature, and grounds its safety in the poison-worm image: what would stain another does not stain the person to whom the action is native. He closes this compact but well-aimed reading by noting that another's duty brings fear and that no one ignorant of the Self can remain a moment without acting, moving directly into the teaching that follows.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads one's own duty specifically as the discipline of action and another's as the discipline of knowledge. His case is psychological: action through the senses is naturally steady for one still joined to nature, while the discipline of knowledge, requiring restraint of every sense at once, remains open to a lapse even when practiced well. Standing firmly in action is therefore the safer path, and this restates the Gita's third chapter, now sharpened into this specific comparison.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva leaves no comment of his own on this verse; the source states this plainly. On a Dvaita reading, one would extend his governing axis from nearby verses: since the capacity to act at all is delegated and sustained by the Lord's sanction, one's own appointed work is the precise sphere where that dependent competence has been placed, so performing it acknowledges one's dependent standing rather than achieving anything independently. This is a clearly labeled extrapolation, not Madhva's recorded word.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving comment treats verses 18.41 through 18.60 as one continuous passage rather than addressing 18.47 in its own right, so what survives is a shared block, not a verse-specific reading. That block argues that everyone is fixed by his own nature from birth and remains bound to act by it whether or not he wills it, guided instead through clear knowledge so that its bondage ceases. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading extending this, one might read the compulsion of svabhava as consciousness's own dynamism asserting itself regardless of the small self's consent, but this is a clearly labeled extrapolation, not his own recorded word on this line.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as aimed squarely at Arjuna's temptation to trade his warrior's duty for a monk's gentler one, and presses on svabhava to mean not caste or inherited trade but the duty that flowers from a person's own inner ground, shaped by the impressions he carries from before. A man takes on no sin by doing this work because it is not an arbitrary role but the very shape his own accumulated nature has taken.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read against Madhusudana's own framing, a modern-facing gloss can note that he grounds the ranking of the two duties not chiefly in comparative performance but in one's own duty being the sole channel of the Lord's grace, and that he answers Arjuna's specific fear about killing kinsmen with the same sacrifice analogy Shankara uses, treating the enjoined harm as falling outside the ordinary reckoning of sin because it belongs to a duty genuinely one's own.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If my own duty involves harm, even killing, how can it leave me free of sin while someone else's gentler, harmless duty would actually be worse for me to take up?
Sin, on this reading, does not track the outward shape of an act but whether the act belongs to the duty genuinely enjoined for you. Madhusudana meets this directly: the killing bound up in a war you are rightly enjoined to wage carries no more calamity than the injury to the animal that is a limb of a prescribed sacrifice, because the harm is a limb of an enjoined duty, not an arbitrary violence.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Shankara's image sharpens the same point: poison does no harm to the creature born in poison. Action native to your own nature does not stain you, because it is the very element your nature has shaped you to inhabit, while the identical act might harm someone for whom it is not native.
Śaṅkarācārya
The other duty is not worse because it is bad; it is worse for you because taking it up means abandoning the work your own nature has genuinely appointed. Sridhara and Ramanuja both press this from different angles: Sridhara through the inner ground your own impressions have shaped, Ramanuja through the steadiness that action, unlike strained restraint, naturally holds.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
Notice the shape of the temptation this verse names: not the wish to do evil, but the wish to trade a hard duty that is truly yours for a gentler one that only looks holier from outside. Sit for a moment with the work already in your hands, the one your own history and disposition have shaped, rather than the work you imagine would let you feel cleaner. Ask only this: is this genuinely mine to do, and am I doing it as an offering rather than clutching at how it will be judged?
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.