Evenness of mind, held through success and failure alike, is what this verse calls yoga.
It sounds like a formula, almost dry. It is naming the exact inner posture that makes the letting-go of fruit in the previous verse actually livable.
Stand firm in yoga and do your work, Arjuna, letting go of attachment, meeting success and failure with the same mind. That very evenness is what is called yoga.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just told Arjuna that his claim reaches only as far as the doing, never the fruit. That instruction needed a name for the state of mind that could actually live inside it. This verse gives that name: stand established in yoga, act, let go of attachment, and meet success and failure the same way. That very steadiness, nothing more exotic than this, is what yoga means here.
The teaching
Stand firm, and do the work that is yours to do. Loosen the hand that reaches for what the work will bring you. Loosen, too, the quieter hand that wants credit for having done it. Meet the moment the work succeeds and the moment it fails with the same face, neither lifted by one nor lowered by the other. This is not numbness manufactured in advance of acting. It is a poise practiced inside the doing, tested by real outcomes as they actually arrive, gain and loss alike. The verse does not ask you to feel nothing. It asks you to let nothing you feel about the outcome be the ground you stand on while you act.
The doubt that rises
Success and failure are named here as the measure of yoga, but the readings do not agree on what these words point to. Are they the real winning and losing inside your own duty, as concrete as a battle's victory or defeat? Or do they reach past all of that, into whether knowledge itself rises in a purified mind or does not rise at all?
Where the paths divide
Read as the ground that makes knowledge possible.
Here success is the knowledge that rises in a mind made clean by desireless action, and failure is its absence. Evenness of mind is not the destination; it is the ground clean enough for that knowledge to stand on. Even the wish for the Lord's approval, quieter and subtler than ordinary craving, must be released along with everything else, since any residue of wanting leaves the ground uneven and the knowledge unable to take root there.
Read as steadiness within duty that is truly yours.
Stay with what is actually in front of Arjuna. Giving up attachment means giving up the clinging to kingdom and kinsmen; the success and failure to be met evenly are the real victory and defeat this war holds. Yoga, defined here in the verse's own words, is the settling of the mind into equanimity toward exactly these stakes, a steadiness that lives inside duty rather than apart from it.
Read as an effect that already carries its cause.
To be established in yoga is to be established in the means the Lord ordains. Giving up the fruit is the cause; the evenness that follows is its effect, and the two are never separate achievements. Hold the evenness and you already hold what produced it. Even this steadiness is not self-made; it is granted to the self that has rightly surrendered its false claim over the fruit.
Read as freedom from the turbidity that makes action bind.
Action becomes a binding cause only when the one who acts is pervaded by craving for its fruit. Remove that turbidity and the very same deed no longer chains anyone; it simply moves, unobstructed, and the one fruit never withheld from such a person is knowledge itself, arriving unprayed for. Watch, too, for the subtler trap of a tight refusal to act, mistaken for freedom. That refusal is its own false knowledge and must be released exactly as craving is released.
Read as surrender of both the fruit and the doer.
Yoga here is single-pointed devotion to the Lord, and two attachments, not one, must fall together: the longing for fruit, which sinks you into Maya, and the claim that you are the doer, which reaches for something that belongs to the Lord alone, His own independence. Surrender both, offering even the fruit of knowledge rather than keeping it as a private gain, and desireless action ripens naturally into deeper devotion.
Read as a widening of an earlier, narrower demand.
An earlier verse asked for evenness only to secure Arjuna's readiness for this one war. This verse asks for the same evenness toward every action whatsoever, resolving on the way a real puzzle about the word yoga itself: here it names the steadiness, not the deed, as the verse's own closing line makes plain.
All six readings agree that evenness of mind is what this verse calls yoga. They part on what success and failure ultimately measure. Is the deepest stake the rising or non-rising of knowledge, the real victory or defeat within one's own duty, or the presence or absence of a subtler craving beneath the visible outcome? The verse hands you the name of the state and leaves you to discover, in your own practice, exactly what it is evenness toward.
A question to carry
The next time your work turns out other than you hoped, can you find, underneath the disappointment, whether your mind actually moved, or whether it stayed where the verse asks it to stay?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So stand in that evenness, take up your work, and let it come back to you as it will, met each time with the same steady mind.
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 drawn the line between action and its fruit, Krishna now names the state of mind that lets a person actually hold that line while still fully at work.
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.
Stand established in yoga, act fully, and release the grip of attachment on the outcome.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Every reading agrees on the verse's basic shape: stand established in yoga, perform your actions, and let go of attachment. Attachment here is read specifically, not as dislike of the work but as the craving for its fruit and the conceit that you alone are its author. The instruction is to keep the doing and drop the grip.
The attachment to release is fruit-craving and the sense of being the sole doer, not the work itself.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, DvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse supplies its own definition, and every commentator treats this as the sentence the whole passage has been building toward: evenness of mind, samatva, is what is called yoga. Concretely this means staying level in success and failure, neither lifted by gain nor lowered by loss.
The verse defines its own key term: this very evenness of mind is what yoga means here, not action.
Across Dvaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, AdvaitaMadhva · Rāmānuja · MadhusūdanaIn Madhva, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
The commentators notice and resolve the same puzzle: yoga was used one way in the previous verse, where it sat close to action itself, and is used differently here, where established in yoga cannot mean established in action without collapsing into nonsense. The resolution they share is that this verse's own closing line fixes the meaning: yoga names the evenness, not the deed.
Craving is what makes a deed bind; the same deed done without it becomes the ground for something higher.
Across Advaita, Kashmir Śaiva, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Abhinavagupta, and 2 others’ words
Several readings press the abandonment further than ordinary worldly stakes. It is not enough to release the hope for wealth or victory while quietly still wanting the Lord's approval, or still savoring the private sense of being the one who acts; those subtler cravings are fruits too, and the verse is read as asking for their release as well.
Do not let apparent indifference become an excuse to stop acting; the evenness is lived inside continued work.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Madhva · Abhinavagupta · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 2 others’ words
Underneath the differences in emphasis lies one shared mechanism: it is craving, not action, that binds. Remove the craving and the very same deed, done in exactly the same world, ceases to chain the one who does it and becomes instead the ground from which something higher, whether knowledge, devotion, or steady duty, is free to grow.
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 keeps the verse anchored to Arjuna's actual duty. The success and failure to be met evenly are the real victory and defeat contained in this war, and yoga is defined plainly as the settling of the mind into equanimity toward them. The widening from an earlier, narrower instruction about pleasure and pain to this broader demand shows that every action, not only this battle, is to be offered with the same stabilized, worshipful composure.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva reads the two clauses of the verse as cause and effect rather than as two separate qualities: abandoning attachment to fruit is the cause, and evenness in success and failure is the effect it produces. Naming the evenness alone as yoga therefore loses nothing, since to hold the effect is already to hold its cause. The steadiness itself, on this reading, is not self-generated; it is granted to the soul that has rightly surrendered its false claim on the fruit.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads yoga as single-pointed devotion to the Supreme Lord, and names two attachments that must fall together rather than one: craving the fruit, which is a sinking into Maya, and claiming I am the doer, which is a kind of theft of the Lord's own independence. Both must be surrendered, and even the fruit of knowledge is offered to Him rather than kept as a private gain, so that desireless action ripens naturally into the yoga of knowledge.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana treats this verse as Krishna's own expansion of the prior one, spelling out attachment, fruit-longing, and the conceit of agency as three things to be surrendered together, then resolving an apparent circularity in the word yoga by pointing to the verse's own closing definition. He also marks a deliberate widening of scope: where an earlier verse secured only Arjuna's readiness for this war, this one makes desireless evenness obligatory for every action whatsoever.
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
Try carrying this verse into your next piece of work, however small: begin it, and before you know how it will turn out, notice whether your mind has already leaned toward a preferred ending. If it has, do not fight the lean. Simply return, gently, to the doing itself, and let the outcome arrive as it will, met with the same face whether it pleases you or not.
So stand in that evenness, take up the work before you, and let success and failure arrive as they will, met with the same steady face.
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
very reading agrees on the verse's basic shape: stand established in yoga, perform your actions, and let go of attachment. Attachment here is read specifically, not as dislike of the work but as the craving for its fruit and the conceit that you alone are its author. The instruction is to keep the doing and drop the grip.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The verse supplies its own definition, and every commentator treats this as the sentence the whole passage has been building toward: evenness of mind, samatva, is what is called yoga. Concretely this means staying level in success and failure, neither lifted by gain nor lowered by loss.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The commentators notice and resolve the same puzzle: yoga was used one way in the previous verse, where it sat close to action itself, and is used differently here, where established in yoga cannot mean established in action without collapsing into nonsense. The resolution they share is that this verse's own closing line fixes the meaning: yoga names the evenness, not the deed.
Madhvācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Several readings press the abandonment further than ordinary worldly stakes. It is not enough to release the hope for wealth or victory while quietly still wanting the Lord's approval, or still savoring the private sense of being the one who acts; those subtler cravings are fruits too, and the verse is read as asking for their release as well.
Śaṅkarācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Underneath the differences in emphasis lies one shared mechanism: it is craving, not action, that binds. Remove the craving and the very same deed, done in exactly the same world, ceases to chain the one who does it and becomes instead the ground from which something higher, whether knowledge, devotion, or steady duty, is free to grow.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads success and failure at their deepest register: the true success is the knowledge born of a purified mind, and the true failure is its absence. Evenness of mind is therefore not merely composure about worldly outcomes but the very ground that makes a mind fit to receive knowledge. Even the wish for the Lord's approval must be relinquished as a subtler fruit, since any residue of craving, however refined, leaves the mind unfit for what only total emptying can admit.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja keeps the verse anchored to Arjuna's actual duty. The success and failure to be met evenly are the real victory and defeat contained in this war, and yoga is defined plainly as the settling of the mind into equanimity toward them. The widening from an earlier, narrower instruction about pleasure and pain to this broader demand shows that every action, not only this battle, is to be offered with the same stabilized, worshipful composure.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva reads the two clauses of the verse as cause and effect rather than as two separate qualities: abandoning attachment to fruit is the cause, and evenness in success and failure is the effect it produces. Naming the evenness alone as yoga therefore loses nothing, since to hold the effect is already to hold its cause. The steadiness itself, on this reading, is not self-generated; it is granted to the soul that has rightly surrendered its false claim on the fruit.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta exposes what he treats as a hidden trap: action binds only when the actor is pervaded by the turbidity of craving, so the same deed performed without that turbidity ceases to be a binding cause at all. Knowledge, the one fruit that is never sought, is never withheld from such a person. He adds a sharper warning that a tight, grasping refusal to act is itself a subtler form of the very attachment the verse warns against, and must equally be released.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads yoga as single-pointed devotion to the Supreme Lord, and names two attachments that must fall together rather than one: craving the fruit, which is a sinking into Maya, and claiming I am the doer, which is a kind of theft of the Lord's own independence. Both must be surrendered, and even the fruit of knowledge is offered to Him rather than kept as a private gain, so that desireless action ripens naturally into the yoga of knowledge.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana treats this verse as Krishna's own expansion of the prior one, spelling out attachment, fruit-longing, and the conceit of agency as three things to be surrendered together, then resolving an apparent circularity in the word yoga by pointing to the verse's own closing definition. He also marks a deliberate widening of scope: where an earlier verse secured only Arjuna's readiness for this war, this one makes desireless evenness obligatory for every action whatsoever.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If evenness of mind is what really matters, does the outward work itself become secondary, almost incidental to the real point?
No reading treats the work as incidental. Ramanuja keeps the evenness bound tightly to real, assigned duty; the composure is not sought apart from the deed but precisely within it, so the work remains fully in view, not a backdrop to something else.
Rāmānujācārya
For Shankara and Madhusudana, the work is the very instrument of purification. Without the deed there is nothing for the mind's evenness to be tested against and nothing for the craving to be released from, so the outward action is indispensable to the inner result, not a mere occasion for it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Abhinavagupta goes further and warns against the opposite error directly: treating withdrawal from action as a shortcut to freedom is itself a subtler attachment, a false knowledge posing as renunciation. The evenness this verse asks for is meant to be lived inside the work, never used as an excuse to leave it.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Try carrying this verse into your next piece of work, however small: begin it, and before you know how it will turn out, notice whether your mind has already leaned toward a preferred ending. If it has, do not fight the lean. Simply return, gently, to the doing itself, and let the outcome arrive as it will, met with the same face whether it pleases you or not.
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.