What is truly yours, even done poorly, outweighs what is not yours, done flawlessly.
A hard duty that is genuinely yours can look unfinished and unglamorous next to a path that only looks worthy. This verse asks you to weigh them by fit, not by finish.
Your own work, even done badly and incompletely, is better than someone else's work done well. It is better to die doing what is truly yours than to live by taking up what belongs to another.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just told Arjuna to set aside the raw pull of craving and aversion and to act only as duty requires. Here he closes off the tempting next move: swapping a hard duty that is truly one's own for an easier one that only wears the name of dharma.
The teaching
Your own duty, even carried out badly and missing some of its proper parts, is better than another's duty carried out well, with every part in place. This is not a claim about comfort or admiration. It is a claim about fit: whether the work in front of you was ever assigned to you at all. Read this way, even death while engaged in one's own duty outweighs a whole life spent in another's, because dying in what is genuinely yours carries you toward something good, while living by what is not yours carries its own quiet cost. Another's duty is called a bringer of fear, and the fear named is specific: the fear of having overstepped what was never yours to take up. This is not a verse against ambition or growth. It is a verse against the particular trick of telling yourself that an easier, more admirable-looking path is virtuous simply because it, too, can be called duty. Ease was never the test. Fit was always the test.
The doubt that rises
If my own duty is simply whatever I currently do, does this verse trap me in it forever, or does it leave room to genuinely grow into new and different work once I am actually ready for it?
Where the paths divide
Read as scriptural fit against mere resemblance to duty.
Your own duty is what scripture actually enjoins for you; another's, however much it may resemble dharma from outside, carries no injunction addressed to you and so falls outside the bounds of virtue. This is not a comparison of comfort. It is a comparison of standing: what you are entitled to do, against what merely looks like something you could do.
Read as karma-yoga's safety against jnana-yoga's risk.
Here your own duty is the discipline of action, open to anyone as they are and forgiving of an interrupted life; what is not yours, for one still bound to matter, is the discipline of knowledge, harder to sustain and, if broken off, lost in its very form. What looks safer, even admirable, can be the one path that does not survive an unfinished attempt.
Read honestly, from a thin surviving source.
What survives here is a single line: the verse answers Arjuna's dread of the violence of war with the simple reminder that one's own dharma is the better course. Nothing fuller is preserved. Any deeper claim about dependence on the Lord's sanction would have to be offered as an extension of the wider teaching, not as this verse's own recorded word.
Read from the neighboring verse, since none survives for this one.
No independent comment survives for this verse; the available remark belongs to the one just before it, where one's own dharma is said to never leave the heart, rooted in one's own inherent savor, so that walking in it, with clinging genuinely fallen away, brings no bondage at all. Anything further applied to this verse specifically would be a marked inference, not the source's own claim.
Read as answering the pull toward a gentler-named duty.
Someone might object that their own duty is painful and imperfectible while another's looks gentle and is called dharma just the same. The answer is that fit decides the matter, not gentleness. Contrary duty, another's duty, mere semblance, imitation, and outright deceit are named together as branches of the same unrighteousness. Rare figures who seem to have prospered on another's path were carried by their own extraordinary austerity, and even they bore recorded hardship for it.
Read as an extension past caste, clearly marked as such.
Carried past its original caste framing, and offered honestly as an extension rather than the letter of the classical text, the verse's logic can be read as saying that whatever work a person has genuinely taken up becomes, functionally, their own duty, and it is the spirit brought to it, free of grasping and free of aversion, that decides whether it binds or liberates, not how prestigious or admirable the work looks.
The schools agree that fit outweighs polish, but they do not agree on what fit even means here, whether it is caste and station, a discipline of action against a discipline of knowledge, or the shape a life's own inherent savor has already taken. And for two of the six voices this file draws on, the sources themselves are too thin to settle even that much with confidence. This page keeps that thinness visible rather than resolving it by invention.
A question to carry
Where in your own life have you quietly traded a harder duty that was genuinely yours for an easier one that only wears the name of virtue?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Hold to the work that is truly yours, even where it looks unfinished, and let the more admirable-looking alternative go.
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 been told to set aside craving-driven activity and act only as duty requires, Arjuna might reach for an easier, more admirable-looking path; this verse forecloses that swap before the dialogue turns to its next question.
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 comparison is deliberately uneven: what is yours, even flawed, outweighs what is not yours, even flawless, because worth was never about polish.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse makes a deliberately lopsided claim: your own duty, even done badly and missing some of its proper parts, is better than another's duty done well, with every part correctly in place. Worth is not a function of polish. It is a function of fit, whether the work belongs to the one doing it.
Even death while engaged in one's own duty is called better than a full life spent in another's; the fit runs that deep.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The stakes are raised to life and death. Even death while engaged in one's own duty outweighs a full life spent in another's. Dying in one's own duty is read as bringing honor here and something good hereafter; living by another's duty is read as bringing disgrace and its consequence instead.
Another's duty brings fear because it is forbidden to the one who takes it up, and that fear is concrete, not vague unease.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Another's duty is called a bringer of fear, and the commentators who address this are specific about why: it is forbidden to the one who takes it up, so the fear is the concrete fear of transgression and what follows from it, not a vague unease about unfamiliar work.
The verse answers a real temptation: to trade a hard but genuine duty for an easier one that merely looks worthy of the name.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The verse is read as answering a live temptation: having been told to drop the raw pull of craving and act only as scripture enjoins, a person might reach for an easier enjoined path instead of the harder one that is genuinely theirs. The verse forecloses that swap. Ease is not the deciding factor; fit to the agent is.
Where the tradition's own record is thin, as with two of the six sources here, honesty about that thinness is itself part of fidelity to the text.
Across Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaMadhva · AbhinavaguptaIn Madhva and Abhinavagupta’s words
Where the sources are thin, the honest reading is thin too. Madhva's surviving comment here is a single sentence tying the verse to Arjuna's dread of battle, and Abhinavagupta's remark is folded entirely into the previous verse. Neither thinness is glossed over in favor of invented confidence.
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 svadharma and paradharma as karma-yoga and jnana-yoga rather than caste duties. Karma-yoga can be taken up by anyone as they are and is safeguarded against carelessness; jnana-yoga, for one still bound to matter, is hard to sustain and easy to fall from. A death partway through karma-yoga still carries its fruit forward; a jnana-yoga broken off loses its very form.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The surviving fragment from Madhva is thin: a single line reading the verse as Krishna's direct answer to Arjuna's dread of the fierce work of war. Extended honestly, and clearly labeled as extension rather than the source itself, a Dvaita reading would likely add that even the fitness to perform one's own duty is sustained by the Lord's sanction, not self-derived.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's extant remark belongs to the prior verse, 3.34, where he holds that one whose clinging has wholly fallen away incurs no bondage in walking one's own dharma, since it never leaves the heart and is rooted in one's own inherent savor. No separate word survives for 3.35; any extension to this verse specifically is a labeled inference, not his stated text.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the verse as answering an objection: your own duty may be painful and hard to perfect, while another's looks gentle and equally dharma-named. He answers that worth lies in fit, not attractiveness, and adds that scripture names contrary duty, another's duty, semblance, imitation, and deceit together as the five branches of unrighteousness. Rare exceptions who prospered on another's path were carried by their own extraordinary austerity, and even they bore recorded hardship.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read against Madhusudana's own emphasis on scriptural injunction, a modern-facing extension, clearly marked as extension, carries the verse past caste categories: whatever occupation a person has genuinely taken up becomes, functionally, their own duty, and it is the spirit of dedication, free of attraction and aversion, that decides whether the very same work binds or liberates.
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, the moment you compare your actual work to some other, better-looking work you do not hold. Instead of measuring how polished either one is, ask only whether this task in front of you is genuinely yours to do. Let that question, not the comparison, decide where your effort goes.
So take up the work that is truly yours, even where it looks unfinished, and let the more admirable-looking alternative go.
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 makes a deliberately lopsided claim: your own duty, even done badly and missing some of its proper parts, is better than another's duty done well, with every part correctly in place. Worth is not a function of polish. It is a function of fit, whether the work belongs to the one doing it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The stakes are raised to life and death. Even death while engaged in one's own duty outweighs a full life spent in another's. Dying in one's own duty is read as bringing honor here and something good hereafter; living by another's duty is read as bringing disgrace and its consequence instead.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Another's duty is called a bringer of fear, and the commentators who address this are specific about why: it is forbidden to the one who takes it up, so the fear is the concrete fear of transgression and what follows from it, not a vague unease about unfamiliar work.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The verse is read as answering a live temptation: having been told to drop the raw pull of craving and act only as scripture enjoins, a person might reach for an easier enjoined path instead of the harder one that is genuinely theirs. The verse forecloses that swap. Ease is not the deciding factor; fit to the agent is.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the sources are thin, the honest reading is thin too. Madhva's surviving comment here is a single sentence tying the verse to Arjuna's dread of battle, and Abhinavagupta's remark is folded entirely into the previous verse. Neither thinness is glossed over in favor of invented confidence.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara ties the verse tightly to the surrounding teaching on attachment and aversion: just as craving-driven activity is to be shunned, so is another's duty. Madhusudana sharpens the reasoning: dharma is known only through scriptural injunction, never through analogy, so another's duty, however dharma-shaped it looks, is simply unenjoined for you and outside the bounds of virtue as such.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads svadharma and paradharma as karma-yoga and jnana-yoga rather than caste duties. Karma-yoga can be taken up by anyone as they are and is safeguarded against carelessness; jnana-yoga, for one still bound to matter, is hard to sustain and easy to fall from. A death partway through karma-yoga still carries its fruit forward; a jnana-yoga broken off loses its very form.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The surviving fragment from Madhva is thin: a single line reading the verse as Krishna's direct answer to Arjuna's dread of the fierce work of war. Extended honestly, and clearly labeled as extension rather than the source itself, a Dvaita reading would likely add that even the fitness to perform one's own duty is sustained by the Lord's sanction, not self-derived.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's extant remark belongs to the prior verse, 3.34, where he holds that one whose clinging has wholly fallen away incurs no bondage in walking one's own dharma, since it never leaves the heart and is rooted in one's own inherent savor. No separate word survives for 3.35; any extension to this verse specifically is a labeled inference, not his stated text.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as answering an objection: your own duty may be painful and hard to perfect, while another's looks gentle and equally dharma-named. He answers that worth lies in fit, not attractiveness, and adds that scripture names contrary duty, another's duty, semblance, imitation, and deceit together as the five branches of unrighteousness. Rare exceptions who prospered on another's path were carried by their own extraordinary austerity, and even they bore recorded hardship.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read against Madhusudana's own emphasis on scriptural injunction, a modern-facing extension, clearly marked as extension, carries the verse past caste categories: whatever occupation a person has genuinely taken up becomes, functionally, their own duty, and it is the spirit of dedication, free of attraction and aversion, that decides whether the very same work binds or liberates.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If my own duty looks difficult and unglamorous while someone else's looks easier and more admirable, doesn't this verse just tell me to accept a worse deal?
The verse does not compare comfort to comfort. It compares fit to polish, and says fit wins even against a flawless performance of what is not yours. The question it asks is never which looks better, only which is genuinely yours to carry.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Read as karma-yoga against jnana-yoga, the harder-looking path is actually the safer one: it forgives an unfinished effort and carries its fruit forward, while the more admirable-looking path, if broken off, loses its very form. The apparent 'worse deal' is often the sounder one.
Rāmānujācārya
And the honest caveat: on the verses where the source is thin, as it is for Madhva and Abhinavagupta here, the right response is not to manufacture false certainty either way, but to hold the comparison lightly where the tradition itself has left little to stand on.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Notice, today, the moment you compare your actual work to some other, better-looking work you do not hold. Instead of measuring how polished either one is, ask only whether this task in front of you is genuinely yours to do. Let that question, not the comparison, decide where your effort goes.
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.