Your claim is on the action you do, and not on the fruit it brings.
Many carry this line as permission to stop caring how things turn out. It says something else. It marks where your claim ends, and asks you to do the work fully even so.
You have a right to your action alone, never to its fruits. Do not make the fruits of action your motive. And do not be attached to inaction.
Krishna has been speaking of the deathless Self; here he turns to the work of living, and gives the first instruction of karma yoga, his answer to Arjuna's despair.
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.
You might ask why not skip the labor and go straight to knowledge; but this action is the work that is yours, given where you now stand.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, ŚuddhādvaitaŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Viśvanātha · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 7 others’ words
This verse answers a sharp objection that the commentators imagine Arjuna raising: if desireless action only purifies the mind so that Self-knowledge can dawn, then why not skip the labor of action and go straight to knowledge or to worship of the Lord? Krishna's reply is that Arjuna is not yet ready for that. His 'right' or entitlement (adhikara) is to action, because his inner instrument is still impure and unfit for steadiness in knowledge (jnana-nishtha). So action is not being praised over knowledge; it is being assigned to the person who still needs it. The reader new to the Gita should hear the verse this way: not 'results never matter,' but 'this is the work that is actually yours to do, given where you stand.'
You have a claim on the action and never on its fruit; not before, not during, not after, do not let craving for it slip in.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Puruṣottama · Tilak · Jñāneśvar · SivanandaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 9 others’ words
The first two lines draw a firm line between two things: the action and its fruit. You have a claim on the action; you have no claim, ever, on the fruit. The word 'kadachana,' meaning 'at any time at all,' is read strongly: not before the action, not during it, not after, and not even at the early practice stage when one might think a little fruit-desire is harmless. Craving for the fruit, the wish 'this is to be enjoyed by me,' is simply ruled out at every stage. The verse does not forbid the fruit from coming; it forbids the fruit from becoming the thing you reach for.
The fruit may still come, yet do not make it the engine of the deed; act, but never from hunger for what the act will bring.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Dhanapati · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Nīlakaṇṭha · Tilak · Rāmānuja · Vallabha · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 8 others’ words
The third line, 'ma karma-phala-hetur bhuh,' is read by the commentators against an anticipated worry: even without wanting the fruit, won't the action produce its result anyway, the way food eaten unknowingly still nourishes, or poison swallowed by mistake still kills? The reply is that fruit, and especially the binding fruit of rebirth, attaches to action done out of desire; the desirer is the one for whom the prescribed fruit is destined, so an undesired fruit simply does not fasten in the same way. Practically, the line warns the seeker not to let the fruit be the engine of the deed. The commentators split over the exact grammar of this line, but they agree on this practical upshot: do not act from fruit-hunger.
And do not flee the other way into doing nothing; you are held to wholehearted work, neither baited by reward nor set down out of weariness.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Dhanapati · Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Tilak · Sivananda · JñāneśvarIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 11 others’ words
The fourth line guards the opposite ditch. Having heard 'no fruit for you,' a person might conclude, 'then why do this painful work at all? I will simply not act.' Krishna forbids that too: 'let there be no attachment (sanga) to inaction (akarma).' The verse thus rejects both swings at once. It refuses the grasping flight toward results, and it equally refuses the lazy or despairing flight away from duty. The seeker is held to wholehearted action that is neither baited by reward nor abandoned out of weariness. Several commentators add that one should not merely avoid clinging to inaction but actually feel aversion to it.
The same deed binds when done in thirst for its fruit and frees when done without it; this is why fruit-craving is the very root that holds you.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Dhanapati · Sivananda · Baladeva · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 4 others’ words
Underneath the four directives the commentators name a mechanism, and it is the reason the verse matters so much. Action done with thirst for its fruit binds: it forces you to be reborn again and again to consume those fruits. Action done without that thirst purifies the heart, and through that purity true knowledge of the Self arises, and through that knowledge one is freed from the round of birth and death. So the same outward deed becomes either a chain or a doorway depending only on the inner stance toward the fruit. This is why fruit-craving is treated not as a small fault but as the very root of bondage.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Advaita Vedānta, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as a statement about who is qualified for what. The 'right to action alone, not to knowledge-steadfastness' means that one whose inner organ (antahkarana) is still impure has no primary qualification for the direct path of Self-knowledge; action is assigned to him precisely as the purifier that readies the mind. Action is therefore preparatory and indirect, while knowledge is the direct means to liberation. On the third line several of them (shankara, madhusudana, dhanapati) take 'do not be the cause of the fruit' to mean: by craving you would generate the fruit, namely the rebirth that is action's fruit, so do not, by desire, make yourself its producer; dhanapati explicitly rejects the alternative grammar that reads it as 'one whose motive is the fruit,' preferring the simpler sense. Madhusudana adds the distinctive note that action done as an offering to the Lord does not make for binding fruit at all. Within this school nilakantha alone glosses the third line in the other way, as 'do not be one whose impeller is the karma-fruit.'
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja reads the seeker here as a liberation-seeker who 'stands ever in sattva,' and he gives desireless action a higher status than mere preparation. Bare action without fruit, done as the worship of the Lord, is itself 'the cause of liberation,' while action attached to a fruit is by nature bondage. His most distinctive move is on agency: not only is the fruit not yours, but the doership is not yours either. While performing the action you should bear in mind that you are not the doer, and not even the cause of the fruit such as the stilling of hunger; both the agency and the fruit are to be referred either to the gunas (the qualities of nature) or to the Lord, the controller of all. So 'let your motive be neither the action nor the fruit' becomes a practice of disowning oneself as agent and handing both action and result over to God.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva and Jayatirtha spend their commentary defending the censure of desire-driven ritualists against the objection that scripture itself enjoins desire, as in 'one who desires heaven should sacrifice.' Their answer is that such texts do not command you to become a desirer; they merely restate an existing desire while enjoining the sacrifice, the fruit-talk being only bait, like sweetening medicine for a child, to draw the unready mind into action. The word 'your' is read as illustrative of everyone, not Arjuna alone, and Arjuna is held to be a knower, a portion of Nara, whose apparent delusion is only an overpowering from outside. Their most distinctive teaching turns the fourth line into a positive: 'let there be no attachment to inaction' because, even when worldly fruit is absent, there remains the fruit of the Lord's grace, and desire for that grace, for devotion and knowledge, is not censured but is actually to be cultivated. Worldly desire (kama) is rejected; the longing for God and for service is welcomed. Jayatirtha also argues directly against the Bhedabheda position that only the daily and occasional rites are meant here.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
Vallabha states the formula tersely: authority only in action, never in fruit; do not cause fruit; do not cling to inaction. Purushottama develops the distinctive frame: the instruction to act holds for one 'joined to the discrimination of self and other,' and so long as that sense of self-and-other persists, works cannot be abandoned at all (he cites the Bhagavata, 'let one perform works until disenchantment has set in'). He reads 'do not be the cause of the fruit' concretely as 'do not become one with a body fit to enjoy karmic fruits,' with the unspoken qualifier 'by My command.' And he reads attachment to inaction as attachment to the self that acts from selfish craving. The verse, on this reading, is a boon the Lord grants.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators set the verse inside devotion to the Lord. Sridhara frames the objection devotionally: if all fruits follow simply from the Lord's worship, why act, and the verse heads this off. Vishvanatha reads the lines as a personal benediction: Krishna, speaking heart-to-heart with his dear friend, says in effect 'do not you be the producer of fruit,' as a blessing given to Arjuna because Arjuna is already largely pure of mind; Vishvanatha also cautions that in this chapter the verses are an intimate conversation, not a tightly chained argument, and likens it to Krishna saying 'as I obey your command in charioteering, so obey My command.' Baladeva adds the image that desireless action, like the staff hidden within the rice grain, inwardly produces steadiness in knowledge, with inner calm following close behind. Jnaneshwari sums it as doing good actions with no motive of enjoyment whatever, only the doing of one's duty.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
The modern commentators draw out the practical logic. Tilak calls the four quarters the very 'catuh-sutri,' the four aphorisms, of Karma-Yoga, each complementary: you have authority over action but not over fruit, therefore do not act with the fruit as motive, yet do not on that account give up action; he reads the third quarter grammatically as 'one whose motive is the fruit,' and stresses that the fruit is simply never within your control, since results depend on the cooperation of many factors. Sivananda spells out the cause and effect plainly: thirsting for fruit forces rebirth to enjoy it, while desirelessness purifies the heart and leads through Self-knowledge to freedom, and he notes that 'karma' carries several senses, from action to caste-duty to ritual to the storehouse of tendencies that shapes future birth. Ramsukhdas adds a distinctive teaching: only the human being is a 'karma-yoni,' able to do fresh action; animals, gods, and hell-beings are 'bhoga-yonis' who only consume the fruit of past karma. So man is free (svatantra) in doing action but dependent (paratantra) in receiving fruit, and the human body is given solely for one's own uplift (uddhara) through action done as service.
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
Ramanuja turns this verse into something you can actually hold while you work. The instruction is not to perform your duty and then merely shrug off the result; it is, even in the middle of the action, to quietly remember two things. First, that you are not finally the doer. Second, that you are not even the cause of the result, not of the smallest one, such as the easing of your own hunger. Both the doing and the fruiting belong elsewhere, to the play of nature's qualities or to the Lord who governs all. So the practice is to keep acting fully, war and everything else, while inwardly referring both your agency and the outcome to God. Far from draining your motivation, this is what frees the action to become worship rather than a transaction.
So do the work that is truly yours, fully and without bargaining over how it turns out, and let the fruit rest with the Lord.
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
his verse answers a sharp objection that the commentators imagine Arjuna raising: if desireless action only purifies the mind so that Self-knowledge can dawn, then why not skip the labor of action and go straight to knowledge or to worship of the Lord? Krishna's reply is that Arjuna is not yet ready for that. His 'right' or entitlement (adhikara) is to action, because his inner instrument is still impure and unfit for steadiness in knowledge (jnana-nishtha). So action is not being praised over knowledge; it is being assigned to the person who still needs it. The reader new to the Gita should hear the verse this way: not 'results never matter,' but 'this is the work that is actually yours to do, given where you stand.'
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Puruṣottama
The first two lines draw a firm line between two things: the action and its fruit. You have a claim on the action; you have no claim, ever, on the fruit. The word 'kadachana,' meaning 'at any time at all,' is read strongly: not before the action, not during it, not after, and not even at the early practice stage when one might think a little fruit-desire is harmless. Craving for the fruit, the wish 'this is to be enjoyed by me,' is simply ruled out at every stage. The verse does not forbid the fruit from coming; it forbids the fruit from becoming the thing you reach for.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Puruṣottama · Lokmanya Tilak · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda
The third line, 'ma karma-phala-hetur bhuh,' is read by the commentators against an anticipated worry: even without wanting the fruit, won't the action produce its result anyway, the way food eaten unknowingly still nourishes, or poison swallowed by mistake still kills? The reply is that fruit, and especially the binding fruit of rebirth, attaches to action done out of desire; the desirer is the one for whom the prescribed fruit is destined, so an undesired fruit simply does not fasten in the same way. Practically, the line warns the seeker not to let the fruit be the engine of the deed. The commentators split over the exact grammar of this line, but they agree on this practical upshot: do not act from fruit-hunger.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Lokmanya Tilak · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
The fourth line guards the opposite ditch. Having heard 'no fruit for you,' a person might conclude, 'then why do this painful work at all? I will simply not act.' Krishna forbids that too: 'let there be no attachment (sanga) to inaction (akarma).' The verse thus rejects both swings at once. It refuses the grasping flight toward results, and it equally refuses the lazy or despairing flight away from duty. The seeker is held to wholehearted action that is neither baited by reward nor abandoned out of weariness. Several commentators add that one should not merely avoid clinging to inaction but actually feel aversion to it.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar
Underneath the four directives the commentators name a mechanism, and it is the reason the verse matters so much. Action done with thirst for its fruit binds: it forces you to be reborn again and again to consume those fruits. Action done without that thirst purifies the heart, and through that purity true knowledge of the Self arises, and through that knowledge one is freed from the round of birth and death. So the same outward deed becomes either a chain or a doorway depending only on the inner stance toward the fruit. This is why fruit-craving is treated not as a small fault but as the very root of bondage.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as a statement about who is qualified for what. The 'right to action alone, not to knowledge-steadfastness' means that one whose inner organ (antahkarana) is still impure has no primary qualification for the direct path of Self-knowledge; action is assigned to him precisely as the purifier that readies the mind. Action is therefore preparatory and indirect, while knowledge is the direct means to liberation. On the third line several of them (shankara, madhusudana, dhanapati) take 'do not be the cause of the fruit' to mean: by craving you would generate the fruit, namely the rebirth that is action's fruit, so do not, by desire, make yourself its producer; dhanapati explicitly rejects the alternative grammar that reads it as 'one whose motive is the fruit,' preferring the simpler sense. Madhusudana adds the distinctive note that action done as an offering to the Lord does not make for binding fruit at all. Within this school nilakantha alone glosses the third line in the other way, as 'do not be one whose impeller is the karma-fruit.'
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads the seeker here as a liberation-seeker who 'stands ever in sattva,' and he gives desireless action a higher status than mere preparation. Bare action without fruit, done as the worship of the Lord, is itself 'the cause of liberation,' while action attached to a fruit is by nature bondage. His most distinctive move is on agency: not only is the fruit not yours, but the doership is not yours either. While performing the action you should bear in mind that you are not the doer, and not even the cause of the fruit such as the stilling of hunger; both the agency and the fruit are to be referred either to the gunas (the qualities of nature) or to the Lord, the controller of all. So 'let your motive be neither the action nor the fruit' becomes a practice of disowning oneself as agent and handing both action and result over to God.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva and Jayatirtha spend their commentary defending the censure of desire-driven ritualists against the objection that scripture itself enjoins desire, as in 'one who desires heaven should sacrifice.' Their answer is that such texts do not command you to become a desirer; they merely restate an existing desire while enjoining the sacrifice, the fruit-talk being only bait, like sweetening medicine for a child, to draw the unready mind into action. The word 'your' is read as illustrative of everyone, not Arjuna alone, and Arjuna is held to be a knower, a portion of Nara, whose apparent delusion is only an overpowering from outside. Their most distinctive teaching turns the fourth line into a positive: 'let there be no attachment to inaction' because, even when worldly fruit is absent, there remains the fruit of the Lord's grace, and desire for that grace, for devotion and knowledge, is not censured but is actually to be cultivated. Worldly desire (kama) is rejected; the longing for God and for service is welcomed. Jayatirtha also argues directly against the Bhedabheda position that only the daily and occasional rites are meant here.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
Vallabha states the formula tersely: authority only in action, never in fruit; do not cause fruit; do not cling to inaction. Purushottama develops the distinctive frame: the instruction to act holds for one 'joined to the discrimination of self and other,' and so long as that sense of self-and-other persists, works cannot be abandoned at all (he cites the Bhagavata, 'let one perform works until disenchantment has set in'). He reads 'do not be the cause of the fruit' concretely as 'do not become one with a body fit to enjoy karmic fruits,' with the unspoken qualifier 'by My command.' And he reads attachment to inaction as attachment to the self that acts from selfish craving. The verse, on this reading, is a boon the Lord grants.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators set the verse inside devotion to the Lord. Sridhara frames the objection devotionally: if all fruits follow simply from the Lord's worship, why act, and the verse heads this off. Vishvanatha reads the lines as a personal benediction: Krishna, speaking heart-to-heart with his dear friend, says in effect 'do not you be the producer of fruit,' as a blessing given to Arjuna because Arjuna is already largely pure of mind; Vishvanatha also cautions that in this chapter the verses are an intimate conversation, not a tightly chained argument, and likens it to Krishna saying 'as I obey your command in charioteering, so obey My command.' Baladeva adds the image that desireless action, like the staff hidden within the rice grain, inwardly produces steadiness in knowledge, with inner calm following close behind. Jnaneshwari sums it as doing good actions with no motive of enjoyment whatever, only the doing of one's duty.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
The modern commentators draw out the practical logic. Tilak calls the four quarters the very 'catuh-sutri,' the four aphorisms, of Karma-Yoga, each complementary: you have authority over action but not over fruit, therefore do not act with the fruit as motive, yet do not on that account give up action; he reads the third quarter grammatically as 'one whose motive is the fruit,' and stresses that the fruit is simply never within your control, since results depend on the cooperation of many factors. Sivananda spells out the cause and effect plainly: thirsting for fruit forces rebirth to enjoy it, while desirelessness purifies the heart and leads through Self-knowledge to freedom, and he notes that 'karma' carries several senses, from action to caste-duty to ritual to the storehouse of tendencies that shapes future birth. Ramsukhdas adds a distinctive teaching: only the human being is a 'karma-yoni,' able to do fresh action; animals, gods, and hell-beings are 'bhoga-yonis' who only consume the fruit of past karma. So man is free (svatantra) in doing action but dependent (paratantra) in receiving fruit, and the human body is given solely for one's own uplift (uddhara) through action done as service.
Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If I genuinely give up all claim on results, what keeps me acting at all, and how is that not just indifference to doing the work well?
Notice first that the verse itself anticipates exactly your worry and forbids the conclusion you fear. Right after removing your claim on the fruit, it says: do not, on that account, grow attached to inaction. The thought 'if I get no reward, why bother with this painful work' is named and rejected. So surrendering the fruit is never permission to slacken; the same verse closes that door.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Lokmanya Tilak
What is actually removed is not your engagement but your ownership of the outcome. You keep a full claim on the action; you release only the grasping wish 'this fruit must come to me.' The motive simply shifts from chasing a reward to doing what is genuinely yours to do. Done this way the deed purifies the heart instead of binding it, and that purity opens onto Self-knowledge and freedom, which is a far greater stake in the work than any single result.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī
It is not indifference, because the outcome was never really in your hands to begin with. The fruit depends on many factors beyond you, so clinging to it adds anxiety without adding control; releasing it lets you pour yourself into the part that is yours, the doing, with full care. Several commentators add a positive pull that replaces fruit-hunger: the action can be offered as worship of the Lord, and the longing that remains proper is the longing for God's grace, for devotion and knowledge, not for personal reward.
Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya
Contemplation
Ramanuja turns this verse into something you can actually hold while you work. The instruction is not to perform your duty and then merely shrug off the result; it is, even in the middle of the action, to quietly remember two things. First, that you are not finally the doer. Second, that you are not even the cause of the result, not of the smallest one, such as the easing of your own hunger. Both the doing and the fruiting belong elsewhere, to the play of nature's qualities or to the Lord who governs all. So the practice is to keep acting fully, war and everything else, while inwardly referring both your agency and the outcome to God. Far from draining your motivation, this is what frees the action to become worship rather than a transaction.
Sit with this · Rāmānujācārya
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, tap a name in The seating.