Not acting is not the same as being free of action.
Arjuna is tempted to think freedom can be won by simply sitting still and refusing his duty. Krishna corrects this: the inner state of actionlessness is not idleness, and neither leaving work undone nor formally renouncing it can carry you there.
A person does not reach freedom from action by abstaining from action. Nor does anyone reach perfection by renunciation alone.
Having just been told to do his work without clinging to its fruit, Arjuna leans toward the easier reading that he might escape work altogether, and this verse closes that exit before it opens.
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.
Krishna shuts the easy door Arjuna is reaching for: you do not become free of action just by refusing to begin it, for sitting still is not the same as transcending the work.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 16 others’ words
The verse closes off the easy exit that Arjuna is reaching for: the idea that you can win freedom simply by not acting. Krishna says that by the non-undertaking of actions (na karmanam anarambhat), the mere refusal to begin or perform one's prescribed duties, a person does not attain naishkarmya, the state of actionlessness or freedom from action. Almost every commentator unpacks naishkarmya not as physical idleness but as a spiritual state: steadfastness in the yoga of knowledge, abiding in the actionless Self. The point is that sitting still does not deliver that state. Refusing to act is not the same thing as transcending action.
The very work you would flee is what carries you forward; done rightly, prescribed action wears away what clouds the mind and readies it for the knowledge you are after.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhedābheda, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Bhāskara · Vallabha · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 12 others’ words
Action is not the obstacle; it is the necessary means to the very freedom one is after. Many commentators read the verse by its reverse implication: if you do not reach actionlessness by not acting, then you do reach it by acting. The reasoning is a chain of cause and effect. Prescribed action, done rightly, destroys accumulated sin and purifies the inner organ (the mind), and that purity is what allows knowledge to arise; knowledge is what yields the steadfastness called naishkarmya. So action is the seed of the purity that ripens into knowledge, and there is no reaching the end without its means. Several cite scripture to anchor this: the brahmins seek to know the Self by Veda-recitation, sacrifice, gift, and austerity, which makes these works the very limbs of knowing.
And do not flee the other way either; to drop your duties in outward renunciation, before the inner work is done, leaves you just as short of the goal as never starting.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Bhedābheda, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Bhāskara · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 15 others’ words
The second half of the verse blocks a more refined error: even formal renunciation, by itself, is not enough. Krishna says that not by renunciation alone (na cha sannyasanad eva) does one reach perfection (siddhi). The commentators read sannyasa here as the giving up of action, often the abandoning of scripturally enjoined work, and several specify it as desire-prompted rites. The reason it fails is the same as before: renunciation that is taken up without the prior purification of mind, and therefore void of knowledge, has no power to deliver liberation. Many add that such renunciation is not even truly possible without the purity that action first earns; and even if someone forces it from mere eagerness, it bears no fruit. So the mere outer act of dropping action, like the mere outer act of not starting it, leaves a person short of the goal.
What truly frees you is knowing the Self, with action as its preparation and never its replacement; and notice that even when you sit idle the mind keeps planning and wishing, so thought itself is still a kind of doing.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhva · Śrīdhara · Sivananda · Gandhi · Ramsukhdas · TilakIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 5 others’ words
What actually produces the goal is knowledge of the Self, with action as its preparation and never its replacement. The sage who has reached naishkarmya rests in his own nature and has neither need nor desire for action as a means; he is satisfied in the Self. But that resting comes only by gaining knowledge, and knowledge comes only when the mind has been made pure. Some commentators sharpen the point about what counts as real actionlessness: merely sitting idle is not it, because the mind goes on planning, scheming, and desiring, and thought itself is real action. Freedom from action is freedom from the bondage of action, not the cessation of all activity, which the very next verse will say is impossible.
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 setting out a strict sequence: action-yoga is the means, and knowledge-yoga (naishkarmya, the steadfast abiding in the actionless Self) is the end, with the two kept distinct rather than combined. Prescribed action purifies the inner organ, purity lets knowledge arise, and knowledge alone delivers liberation, needing no co-operating factor once it has arisen, just as the correct seeing of a rope (mistaken for a snake) needs nothing further to free one from fear. One of these voices argues against combining knowledge and action as joint causes, holding that knowledge-establishment, unlike work, is by itself an independent cause of the human goal. They also handle the apparent counter-cases carefully: that sages like Yajnavalkya renounced is read as renunciation for the ripening or enjoyment of knowledge already gained, not as the cause of its rising, and figures who gained knowledge without formal renunciation show there is no rigid rule that knowledge arises only in the renouncer.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Here naishkarmya is the standing in knowledge that is preceded by the withdrawing of the senses from their outward working, and the action that earns it is specifically action done with no eye to its fruit and offered as worship of the supreme Person. Without having worshipped Govinda by such fruit-free action, a person's beginningless heap of sin stays undestroyed, the senses stay agitated, and the inward turn toward the self never opens. These commentators are careful that the prohibition targets ordinary, worldly action, not scriptural action, so the word for scriptural work is read into the verse. One uses a vivid image: to throw off such action and set out straight for knowledge-yoga is like trying to climb to the seventh storey of a tower without the lower floors. The chain is laid out step by step: without fruit-free worship the supreme Person is not pleased, sin is not stilled, the mind's impurity of passion and inertia is not lifted, attraction and aversion persist, the senses stay scattered, and inwardness cannot come.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator takes naishkarmya, freedom from action, to mean liberation itself, understanding action to cover both merit and demerit, so that what is free of both is release. By implication the verse teaches that one attains liberation through undertaking action. The distinctive claim is explicit about the relation of knowledge and action: liberation comes from knowledge that depends upon action, not from knowledge alone. And the second half is read to deny even renunciation joined with knowledge: not by renunciation alone, even when knowledge is present, does the highest good arise.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as Krishna's reason for setting Arjuna to action, and they insist that knowledge alone, not the non-doing of action, is the means to release. They ground the denial of release-by-inaction in the word 'person' (purusha): a living being is always joined to a body, gross or subtle, so if release came from not acting it would belong to insentient, unmoving things, which is absurd. They also argue from the sheer mass of past action: across beginningless transmigration a person has done countless deeds, many of which bear fruit across many births, so merely refraining now cannot exhaust them. Freedom from bondage comes only through desirelessness, through which desireless action purifies the mind and yields the dispassion in which knowledge can arise; it does not come from the mere absence of action or absence of fruit. On the renunciate order, they hold it serves two ends, self-restraint and the pleasing of the Lord, yet they add that householders and office-holders who keep self-restraint in their own station also greatly please the Lord, so the order is not the sole path.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators hold that the goal reachable through action is not knowledge in the bare Advaita sense but a state framed by devotion. One reads naishkarmya as the state above works that is the very form of bhakti, and argues that action is performed precisely so that one may know action as the thing to be set aside; the verse speaks of 'undertaking' work, not of performing it for its own sake, and mere ignorance of action's nature is equally insufficient for the fruit of renunciation. The other stresses that even a person already fit by liberation or living-liberation is still seen to act, because he yet bears a body; this rules out premature renunciation, since the embodied condition itself draws action forth, and to refuse it is to refuse what the Lord's own design has set in motion. One also frames the whole teaching by the Mimamsa principle that one and the same action can serve as a means to distinct ends, so that yoga, knowledge, and devotion each independently lead to the human goal.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This commentator reads the verse as teaching the inseparability of knowledge and action: knowledge is not without action, and action joined with skill is not without knowledge, so the two are finally one single thing. He cites the saying that there is no knowledge without activity and no activity without knowledge, and that the teacher accomplished in both is the slayer of the bond that binds the beast (the limited soul). The practical upshot is that action which dwells within knowledge cannot be avoided at all, because body, speech, and mind are by their very nature a quivering motion, so a person necessarily does something. This differs from readings that keep action and knowledge as separable stages, since here they are intrinsically united.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse through the purification of the mind (citta-suddhi) as the hinge: the actions suited to one's class and stage of life (varna and ashrama) must be performed so that the mind is purified and knowledge can arise, for without that purity knowledge does not come and naishkarmya, understood as knowledge or steadfastness in knowledge, is not attained. They read sannyasa as the abandoning of scripturally enjoined action, and stress that renunciation taken up without prior purity is void of knowledge and so cannot reach liberation (moksha). One handles the scriptural objection that renunciation is itself a limb of liberation by answering that it is only knowledge-bearing renunciation that qualifies. One frames the embodied predicament warmly: as long as desires are not allayed the bondage of action continues, and all actions cease only when one attains eternal contentment, so abandoning one's ordained duties to chase the action-free state is as foolish as abandoning a boat midstream or refusing to prepare food when hungry.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators emphasize that the freedom in question is freedom from the bondage of action, not the stopping of activity. One stresses that actionlessness and perfection are synonymous and are gained only by knowledge of the Self: a man who simply sits idle has not attained it, because his mind keeps planning and scheming, and thought is itself real action; only one free of likes, dislikes, and wishes, who knows the Self, has truly reached it. One notes that mere cessation of activity is in the very nature of things impossible, as the next verse will explain. One reads naishkarmya as performing action after destroying its binding force, won not by refusing to begin and not by mere outward renunciation. One, writing as non-sectarian devotional Vedanta, locates the necessity of action in karma-yoga itself: its perfection comes only when action is done in a desireless spirit (nishkama-bhava), and since there is an inner urge to act, that urge must be quieted by doing one's duty after renouncing desire, for renunciation that bypasses doing is not actionlessness at all but only flight.
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
Take seriously that you cannot escape action by merely walking away from it. If you renounce your ordained duties before you have done the inner work, you are like someone who throws away the boat in the middle of the river he still has to cross, or who, hungry, refuses both to cook and to eat what is already prepared. As long as desire is unallayed, the bondage of action continues; it is not the doing that binds you but the desire behind it. So do the duties your life sets before you, and let them quietly purify you, rather than abandoning them in the hope that the action-free state will fall into your lap. That state arrives by itself, as eternal contentment, when the inner work is done, not because you sat down and stopped.
So do the duties your life sets before you, and let them quietly purify you, rather than abandoning them in the hope that freedom will simply fall into your lap; that stillness arrives on its own, as contentment, when the inner work is done.
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 closes off the easy exit that Arjuna is reaching for: the idea that you can win freedom simply by not acting. Krishna says that by the non-undertaking of actions (na karmanam anarambhat), the mere refusal to begin or perform one's prescribed duties, a person does not attain naishkarmya, the state of actionlessness or freedom from action. Almost every commentator unpacks naishkarmya not as physical idleness but as a spiritual state: steadfastness in the yoga of knowledge, abiding in the actionless Self. The point is that sitting still does not deliver that state. Refusing to act is not the same thing as transcending action.
Braided from 18 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Action is not the obstacle; it is the necessary means to the very freedom one is after. Many commentators read the verse by its reverse implication: if you do not reach actionlessness by not acting, then you do reach it by acting. The reasoning is a chain of cause and effect. Prescribed action, done rightly, destroys accumulated sin and purifies the inner organ (the mind), and that purity is what allows knowledge to arise; knowledge is what yields the steadfastness called naishkarmya. So action is the seed of the purity that ripens into knowledge, and there is no reaching the end without its means. Several cite scripture to anchor this: the brahmins seek to know the Self by Veda-recitation, sacrifice, gift, and austerity, which makes these works the very limbs of knowing.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Bhāskara · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
The second half of the verse blocks a more refined error: even formal renunciation, by itself, is not enough. Krishna says that not by renunciation alone (na cha sannyasanad eva) does one reach perfection (siddhi). The commentators read sannyasa here as the giving up of action, often the abandoning of scripturally enjoined work, and several specify it as desire-prompted rites. The reason it fails is the same as before: renunciation that is taken up without the prior purification of mind, and therefore void of knowledge, has no power to deliver liberation. Many add that such renunciation is not even truly possible without the purity that action first earns; and even if someone forces it from mere eagerness, it bears no fruit. So the mere outer act of dropping action, like the mere outer act of not starting it, leaves a person short of the goal.
Braided from 17 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
What actually produces the goal is knowledge of the Self, with action as its preparation and never its replacement. The sage who has reached naishkarmya rests in his own nature and has neither need nor desire for action as a means; he is satisfied in the Self. But that resting comes only by gaining knowledge, and knowledge comes only when the mind has been made pure. Some commentators sharpen the point about what counts as real actionlessness: merely sitting idle is not it, because the mind goes on planning, scheming, and desiring, and thought itself is real action. Freedom from action is freedom from the bondage of action, not the cessation of all activity, which the very next verse will say is impossible.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as setting out a strict sequence: action-yoga is the means, and knowledge-yoga (naishkarmya, the steadfast abiding in the actionless Self) is the end, with the two kept distinct rather than combined. Prescribed action purifies the inner organ, purity lets knowledge arise, and knowledge alone delivers liberation, needing no co-operating factor once it has arisen, just as the correct seeing of a rope (mistaken for a snake) needs nothing further to free one from fear. One of these voices argues against combining knowledge and action as joint causes, holding that knowledge-establishment, unlike work, is by itself an independent cause of the human goal. They also handle the apparent counter-cases carefully: that sages like Yajnavalkya renounced is read as renunciation for the ripening or enjoyment of knowledge already gained, not as the cause of its rising, and figures who gained knowledge without formal renunciation show there is no rigid rule that knowledge arises only in the renouncer.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here naishkarmya is the standing in knowledge that is preceded by the withdrawing of the senses from their outward working, and the action that earns it is specifically action done with no eye to its fruit and offered as worship of the supreme Person. Without having worshipped Govinda by such fruit-free action, a person's beginningless heap of sin stays undestroyed, the senses stay agitated, and the inward turn toward the self never opens. These commentators are careful that the prohibition targets ordinary, worldly action, not scriptural action, so the word for scriptural work is read into the verse. One uses a vivid image: to throw off such action and set out straight for knowledge-yoga is like trying to climb to the seventh storey of a tower without the lower floors. The chain is laid out step by step: without fruit-free worship the supreme Person is not pleased, sin is not stilled, the mind's impurity of passion and inertia is not lifted, attraction and aversion persist, the senses stay scattered, and inwardness cannot come.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This commentator takes naishkarmya, freedom from action, to mean liberation itself, understanding action to cover both merit and demerit, so that what is free of both is release. By implication the verse teaches that one attains liberation through undertaking action. The distinctive claim is explicit about the relation of knowledge and action: liberation comes from knowledge that depends upon action, not from knowledge alone. And the second half is read to deny even renunciation joined with knowledge: not by renunciation alone, even when knowledge is present, does the highest good arise.
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
These commentators read the verse as Krishna's reason for setting Arjuna to action, and they insist that knowledge alone, not the non-doing of action, is the means to release. They ground the denial of release-by-inaction in the word 'person' (purusha): a living being is always joined to a body, gross or subtle, so if release came from not acting it would belong to insentient, unmoving things, which is absurd. They also argue from the sheer mass of past action: across beginningless transmigration a person has done countless deeds, many of which bear fruit across many births, so merely refraining now cannot exhaust them. Freedom from bondage comes only through desirelessness, through which desireless action purifies the mind and yields the dispassion in which knowledge can arise; it does not come from the mere absence of action or absence of fruit. On the renunciate order, they hold it serves two ends, self-restraint and the pleasing of the Lord, yet they add that householders and office-holders who keep self-restraint in their own station also greatly please the Lord, so the order is not the sole path.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators hold that the goal reachable through action is not knowledge in the bare Advaita sense but a state framed by devotion. One reads naishkarmya as the state above works that is the very form of bhakti, and argues that action is performed precisely so that one may know action as the thing to be set aside; the verse speaks of 'undertaking' work, not of performing it for its own sake, and mere ignorance of action's nature is equally insufficient for the fruit of renunciation. The other stresses that even a person already fit by liberation or living-liberation is still seen to act, because he yet bears a body; this rules out premature renunciation, since the embodied condition itself draws action forth, and to refuse it is to refuse what the Lord's own design has set in motion. One also frames the whole teaching by the Mimamsa principle that one and the same action can serve as a means to distinct ends, so that yoga, knowledge, and devotion each independently lead to the human goal.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads the verse as teaching the inseparability of knowledge and action: knowledge is not without action, and action joined with skill is not without knowledge, so the two are finally one single thing. He cites the saying that there is no knowledge without activity and no activity without knowledge, and that the teacher accomplished in both is the slayer of the bond that binds the beast (the limited soul). The practical upshot is that action which dwells within knowledge cannot be avoided at all, because body, speech, and mind are by their very nature a quivering motion, so a person necessarily does something. This differs from readings that keep action and knowledge as separable stages, since here they are intrinsically united.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators read the verse through the purification of the mind (citta-suddhi) as the hinge: the actions suited to one's class and stage of life (varna and ashrama) must be performed so that the mind is purified and knowledge can arise, for without that purity knowledge does not come and naishkarmya, understood as knowledge or steadfastness in knowledge, is not attained. They read sannyasa as the abandoning of scripturally enjoined action, and stress that renunciation taken up without prior purity is void of knowledge and so cannot reach liberation (moksha). One handles the scriptural objection that renunciation is itself a limb of liberation by answering that it is only knowledge-bearing renunciation that qualifies. One frames the embodied predicament warmly: as long as desires are not allayed the bondage of action continues, and all actions cease only when one attains eternal contentment, so abandoning one's ordained duties to chase the action-free state is as foolish as abandoning a boat midstream or refusing to prepare food when hungry.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators emphasize that the freedom in question is freedom from the bondage of action, not the stopping of activity. One stresses that actionlessness and perfection are synonymous and are gained only by knowledge of the Self: a man who simply sits idle has not attained it, because his mind keeps planning and scheming, and thought is itself real action; only one free of likes, dislikes, and wishes, who knows the Self, has truly reached it. One notes that mere cessation of activity is in the very nature of things impossible, as the next verse will explain. One reads naishkarmya as performing action after destroying its binding force, won not by refusing to begin and not by mere outward renunciation. One, writing as non-sectarian devotional Vedanta, locates the necessity of action in karma-yoga itself: its perfection comes only when action is done in a desireless spirit (nishkama-bhava), and since there is an inner urge to act, that urge must be quieted by doing one's duty after renouncing desire, for renunciation that bypasses doing is not actionlessness at all but only flight.
Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the whole goal is to become free of action, why does Krishna insist the path to it runs through doing action rather than through simply stopping?
Because the freedom Krishna means is freedom from the bondage of action, not the mere cessation of activity. The sage who has reached naishkarmya does rest in the Self with no need for action, but that resting is the fruit of knowledge, not of idleness. Simply sitting still does not produce it: the mind keeps planning, wishing, and scheming, and thought itself is real action, so the idle person has not actually become free of action at all.
Śaṅkarācārya · Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas
Action is the means, not the obstacle, because it is what purifies you. Prescribed action done rightly wears away accumulated sin and cleanses the inner organ, and only a purified mind lets knowledge of the Self arise; that knowledge is what yields the steadfast freedom you are after. There is no reaching the end without its means, which is why even formal renunciation, taken up before this purity is earned and so empty of knowledge, fails to deliver liberation.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Ramsukhdas
There is also a plain practical reason: while embodied you cannot truly stop. The body, speech, and mind are by nature in constant motion, so a person necessarily does something; and the inner urge to act is only quieted by doing one's duty in a desireless spirit, not by suppressing it, since desire kept alive simply breeds fresh desire. Renunciation that bypasses doing is therefore not actionlessness but only flight, whereas action done without craving is the very thing that loosens its own binding force.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak
Contemplation
Take seriously that you cannot escape action by merely walking away from it. If you renounce your ordained duties before you have done the inner work, you are like someone who throws away the boat in the middle of the river he still has to cross, or who, hungry, refuses both to cook and to eat what is already prepared. As long as desire is unallayed, the bondage of action continues; it is not the doing that binds you but the desire behind it. So do the duties your life sets before you, and let them quietly purify you, rather than abandoning them in the hope that the action-free state will fall into your lap. That state arrives by itself, as eternal contentment, when the inner work is done, not because you sat down and stopped.
Sit with this · Sant Jñāneśvar
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.