Where the lack is gone, so is the duty that answered it.
This verse names one person exempt from everything Krishna has just insisted on. The schools disagree about how rare that person is, and about whether this describes a permanent state or a passing depth — but they agree the exemption is earned, not declared.
But the one whose delight is in the Self alone, who is satisfied in the Self, and content in the Self alone — for that person there is nothing left that must be done.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just spent several verses insisting that action must be performed, for the sake of the world's order and for the sake of the mind's own cleansing. Now he pauses that argument to name one figure to whom none of it applies.
The teaching
Think of everything you currently chase outside yourself: delight in company and pleasure, satisfaction in food and comfort, contentment in what you own and how your health stands. This verse describes someone for whom all three have simply moved, from those outer things to the Self alone. It is tempting to read that as a kind of poverty, a life emptied of ordinary pleasure. The commentators read it the opposite way: this is a fullness, a bliss native to the Self itself, so complete that the old pleasures no longer have anything to compete for. And here is the quieter, load-bearing claim underneath all of this: duty exists to close a gap. You act, in part, because something is still missing and must be reached for. This person has no gap left. Not because he has renounced the reaching, but because there is nothing left that needs reaching for. So the verse is not a command to fake fullness you do not have. It describes what happens, honestly and specifically, once a particular kind of lack is actually gone.
The doubt that rises
Is this a state anyone might recognize themselves already in, or is it as rare and bounded as some of the commentators insist — true only in a specific depth of absorption, or only for the soul already released? And if it is rare, what, if anything, does it ask of someone who still feels the ordinary pull of wanting?
Where the paths divide
Read as the natural consequence of craving's disappearance
Shankara names this person the Sankhya, steady in knowledge of the Self, whose freedom from duty is not a special grant but a plain consequence. Duty exists to purify a mind still hungry for something outside itself; once that hunger is entirely gone, so is the condition duty addressed. Nothing further needs to happen for the exemption to be true. It simply follows.
Read as the state of the soul already released
Ramanuja reads this as belonging to one who needs no means at all, neither knowledge nor action, because the Self was never something requiring pursuit; it is, by its own nature, forever in his sight. In his wider view this describes the soul who has already reached the goal, not one still advancing toward it — even sincere seekers of knowledge, on his reading, still have real duties elsewhere.
Read as a state bounded to the deepest absorption
Madhva reads the Self named here as the supreme Self, and draws the tightest boundary of any reading: this freedom holds only within nirvikalpa samadhi, the deep, objectless absorption beyond ordinary cognition. Outside of that state, even a person of settled wisdom keeps his duties, starting with the care of his own body. The verse, on this reading, describes something true and real, but only within a specific and passing depth.
Read from a brief and admittedly thin surviving fragment
What survives of Abhinavagupta's comment here is short: for one who delights in the Self, action becomes the mere working of the senses, and doing and not doing grow equal, since he holds no private aim among other beings. The fragment's own instruction is simply to do what is genuinely needed, without clinging. A fuller Kashmir Shaiva reading might extend this toward consciousness recognizing its own freedom in action itself, but that extension goes beyond what the surviving material actually says.
Read as bliss overflowing the ground of duty
Sridhara reads this as the answer to why action no longer applies once the inner instrument has already been purified by earlier practice. Duty rests on a lack still felt; where the Self's own bliss, sva-ananda, has overflowed that lack entirely, the ground for duty is simply gone. This is not withdrawal from the world out of aversion. It is the quiet disappearance of the reason that made withdrawal or engagement a live question in the first place.
Read as a technical account of what qualifies anyone for duty at all
Madhusudana's framing translates well into a plainer register: ordinary delight, fullness, and contentment are movements of the mind, watched by the Self but never actually touching it. Once the sense of two separate things, self and object, dissolves, those movements lose their pull, and with them goes the very condition that made a person fit for duty in the first place. Nothing external produces this. Only the state itself, once arisen, explains the exemption.
Every reading agrees that this fullness is earned, not declared, and that it removes a real inner lack rather than merely renaming the same craving as peace. They disagree on how rare it is, and on whether it is a permanent condition or a bounded depth reached and left. This page does not resolve that, and neither, plainly, does the verse.
A question to carry
Where, right now, is your own contentment still waiting on something outside you — and what would it actually mean to notice that honestly, without either faking that the wanting is gone or assuming it never could be?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Notice, without judgment, where your fullness still comes from outside. Let the noticing itself be enough for today.
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 laid out why action must be performed, for the world's order and the mind's own cleansing; here he names the single figure for whom that argument no longer applies.
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 verse marks a deliberate exception, not a rule for everyone: 'but' sets this person apart from the one still bound to act.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
The verse names a single, deliberate exception to everything the chapter has just insisted on. Krishna has spent the previous verses making the case that action must be performed, for the world's sake and for the mind's own purification. Here he turns to one figure, marked off by the word 'but,' for whom that whole argument no longer applies.
Delight, satisfaction, and contentment all move from outer objects to the Self alone, without exception.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, DvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
This person is described by three Self-words, and the commentators agree they are not loose synonyms: delight replaces what ordinary people seek in pleasures and company, satisfaction replaces what they seek in food and drink, contentment replaces what they seek in gaining possessions, family, and health. All three now come from the Self and nowhere else.
No action remains because obligation rests on lack, and this person has no lack left to fill.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The deepest reason no action remains, across these readings, is that all obligation rests on some residual lack. A person still needing something outside himself must still act to close that gap. This person has no gap left to close, so the very engine that drives purposeful action has nothing left to run on.
This fullness is a positive bliss, not a hollow absence of wanting; old pleasures simply stop competing with it.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
This fullness is read as a positive bliss, not a mere blank absence of wanting. The commentators describe a joy native to the Self itself, so vivid and sufficient that the old pleasures look small by comparison, not forbidden but simply no longer of interest.
The freedom is bounded and earned, whether by full realization, by a specific depth of absorption, or by an actual, describable inner change.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaRāmānuja · Madhva · AbhinavaguptaIn Rāmānuja, Madhva, and 1 others’ words
And this freedom from duty is read as a real, describable condition rather than a title anyone may claim by mere appearance. It belongs only to the one in whom this Self-delight has actually arisen, whether that arising is described as a permanent realization or, on one reading, as a specific state of deep absorption.
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 this as the released soul who needs no means at all, neither knowledge nor action, because the self is by nature forever in his sight and never needed producing. In his wider view this unbroken condition belongs to one who has already attained the goal, not to anyone still advancing toward it, since even the seeker of knowledge and the renouncer are elsewhere still told to act.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva reads the Self here as the supreme Self, not the individual soul, and sharply bounds the claim: this freedom from duty belongs only to one settled in nirvikalpa samadhi, the objectless absorption beyond ordinary cognition. Outside that absorption, even the wise still tend the body and keep their duties; the verse describes a real but temporally limited condition, not a permanent state.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana's technical framing works well for a modern-facing reading: ordinary delight, fullness, and contentment are simply movements of the mind, watched by the Self but never touching it, and once the vision of twoness that made outer objects attractive is gone, no work remains, Vedic or worldly, because the underlying condition of need that qualified a person for it is absent. Nothing external accomplishes this; only the actual arising of this state does.
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, honestly, where your delight actually rests today. Does it wait on gatherings, on food, on things going a certain way? This verse does not ask you to fake indifference to any of that. It only points out that everything you chase outside yourself is a way of filling a felt lack, and it invites you to ask, gently and without forcing an answer, what it might feel like if the lack itself were not there.
So look honestly at where your own fullness is still borrowed from outside, and let that honest looking be the beginning of what this verse describes.
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 a single, deliberate exception to everything the chapter has just insisted on. Krishna has spent the previous verses making the case that action must be performed, for the world's sake and for the mind's own purification. Here he turns to one figure, marked off by the word 'but,' for whom that whole argument no longer applies.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
This person is described by three Self-words, and the commentators agree they are not loose synonyms: delight replaces what ordinary people seek in pleasures and company, satisfaction replaces what they seek in food and drink, contentment replaces what they seek in gaining possessions, family, and health. All three now come from the Self and nowhere else.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The deepest reason no action remains, across these readings, is that all obligation rests on some residual lack. A person still needing something outside himself must still act to close that gap. This person has no gap left to close, so the very engine that drives purposeful action has nothing left to run on.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
This fullness is read as a positive bliss, not a mere blank absence of wanting. The commentators describe a joy native to the Self itself, so vivid and sufficient that the old pleasures look small by comparison, not forbidden but simply no longer of interest.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
And this freedom from duty is read as a real, describable condition rather than a title anyone may claim by mere appearance. It belongs only to the one in whom this Self-delight has actually arisen, whether that arising is described as a permanent realization or, on one reading, as a specific state of deep absorption.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the figure as the Sankhya, the knower steady in Self-knowledge, whose freedom from action follows simply from the disappearance of the hunger that duty exists to address. Once craving is gone, so is the condition duty was meant to purify, and 'nothing is to be done' names a plain consequence rather than a special exemption. The available source material breaks off shortly after this point without further elaboration.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads this as the released soul who needs no means at all, neither knowledge nor action, because the self is by nature forever in his sight and never needed producing. In his wider view this unbroken condition belongs to one who has already attained the goal, not to anyone still advancing toward it, since even the seeker of knowledge and the renouncer are elsewhere still told to act.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva reads the Self here as the supreme Self, not the individual soul, and sharply bounds the claim: this freedom from duty belongs only to one settled in nirvikalpa samadhi, the objectless absorption beyond ordinary cognition. Outside that absorption, even the wise still tend the body and keep their duties; the verse describes a real but temporally limited condition, not a permanent state.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The surviving fragment attributed to Abhinavagupta treats such a person's action as reduced to the mere working of the senses, with doing and not doing rendered equal, since he holds no private aim among other beings and simply does what is genuinely needed, without clinging. A further Kashmir Shaiva extension — that this freedom is consciousness recognizing its own unconditioned nature — goes beyond what the thin source material itself states, and is offered here only as a labeled possibility.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as the answer to why action no longer applies once the inner instrument has already been purified: the knower leans on no outer enjoyment because his bliss is sva-ananda, the Self's own native joy. His distinctive point is that duty rests on a residual lack, and where that lack has been overflowed by the Self's own bliss, the ground for duty is simply gone, not withdrawn from but no longer needed.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana's technical framing works well for a modern-facing reading: ordinary delight, fullness, and contentment are simply movements of the mind, watched by the Self but never touching it, and once the vision of twoness that made outer objects attractive is gone, no work remains, Vedic or worldly, because the underlying condition of need that qualified a person for it is absent. Nothing external accomplishes this; only the actual arising of this state does.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If this freedom belongs only to someone who no longer needs anything, does that mean the rest of us, still full of ordinary wants, have nothing useful to take from this verse?
The verse describes a destination, not a demand you must already meet. Shankara and Madhusudana are both clear that this state follows from an actual, describable inner change — the disappearance of craving, the loss of the vision of twoness — not from pretending you already have it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Even within the tradition the claim is bounded rather than universal. Madhva insists this freedom holds only within the deepest absorption, and Ramanuja reserves it for the soul already released; both agree that everyone else, including sincere seekers, still has real duties to keep.
Madhvācārya · Rāmānujācārya
What you can take now is the diagnostic, not the state itself: notice where your satisfaction is currently borrowed from outside, and let that noticing be the practice. Sridhara's point that duty rests on lack works both ways — seeing your own lack clearly is itself part of the path toward what this verse describes.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
Notice, honestly, where your delight actually rests today. Does it wait on gatherings, on food, on things going a certain way? This verse does not ask you to fake indifference to any of that. It only points out that everything you chase outside yourself is a way of filling a felt lack, and it invites you to ask, gently and without forcing an answer, what it might feel like if the lack itself were not there.
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.