Nothing he does leaves a mark on him, and the same freedom is offered to whoever understands why.
It sounds like Krishna is talking about himself. He is also, in the same breath, telling you exactly what stains an action and exactly what does not.
Actions leave no stain on me, because I have no thirst for what they yield. Whoever understands me this way is likewise not bound by their own actions.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just told Arjuna that he himself set the four orders of humanity in motion, and yet remains no doer of them. Now he explains the mechanism, and lets the explanation open, quietly, into a teaching meant for the one listening.
The teaching
Actions do not stain Krishna the way dirt clings to a surface. Even his largest deed, the shaping of the whole order of beings, leaves no mark and creates no bondage, and the verse gives exactly two reasons why. First, no sense of 'I am the doer' arises in him toward what he does. Second, no craving for the fruit of the deed touches him; some readings trace this to his own completeness, one whose every desire is already met, so that nothing remains for any result to offer him. Then the verse turns. It stops being only a claim about Krishna and becomes an instruction for you. Whoever understands him this way, as one who acts yet neither claims the doing nor craves its yield, is told that they too are freed from being bound by their own actions. Ordinary bondage, on this reading, is not caused by acting as such. It is caused by the same two things working together: thinking yourself the sole author of an outcome, and reaching for what it will bring you. Remove that pair, and the very same deed that once tied you down stops clinging at all.
The doubt that rises
Krishna's freedom is explained, in part, by his already having everything, every desire met, nothing left to gain. But most of us are not there. Does this verse actually help someone who still wants things and has not gotten them, or does it describe a freedom available only once desire itself has already run out?
Where the paths divide
Read as a claim about who you already are.
Krishna's non-doership is not partial or diplomatic; it is literal and complete. No sense of 'I' as the maker of the body and its instruments arises in him at all. To know him this way is to know him as your own Self, and for the one who realizes this, the actions that would construct another body do not even arise. It is the correction of a mistaken self-understanding, not any change in outward conduct, that unbinds.
Read as real agency, limited to one precise point.
Krishna's agency in creating the four orders is fully real, not denied or explained away. What he is free of is a single specific role: causing the inequality among the beings he creates. That inequality is governed by each being's own prior karma, its own merit and demerit. He is the occasioning cause; their own ripened deeds decide what they become. Knowing this frees you from exactly the karmas that had been blocking your own entry into desireless action.
Read as a wish that never grasps.
This reading resists the temptation to erase desire from Krishna altogether. He truly wishes, but not as the world wishes; his desire has already collapsed into knowledge and carries no grasping within it. It is the grasping, not desiring as a bare category, that stains. His fullness makes his wanting something other than what your wanting usually is. Liberation, on this account, unfolds for the endless multitude of souls each in due course, not for all identically at once.
Read through a spare, honest note rather than a full commentary.
What survives here is thin, and it should be named as thin rather than dressed up. Abhinavagupta's extant comment treats this verse together with the one just before it as a single passage, and the fuller reading is recorded there. The one image it gives is spatial: Krishna is like open space, untouched by whatever occurs within it, because no craving touches him; resting in that thought, the source says, no bondage by action remains. Anything beyond this, such as extending the image toward a fuller Pratyabhijna account of consciousness as the ground of all appearance, would be a conditional extension of the tradition, not Abhinavagupta's stated words for this particular verse.
Read as both his self-defense and his teaching, at once.
Sridhara names the two causes with technical precision, freedom from egoity and freedom from longing, and grounds the second in Krishna's completeness, one whose every desire is already gained. His distinctive move is calling the verse both things at the same time: it reads as Krishna explaining himself, and it is, in the same words, his instruction to you. To know the cause of his freedom from stain is already to begin weakening the same egoism and craving in the one who knows it.
Read as a diagnosis with two named, jointly necessary parts.
Madhusudana's account has an almost clinical precision: bondage is caused by doership and craving for fruit acting together, never by either one alone. Krishna is shown lacking both, in the same breath, which is what the verse's structure itself displays. This gives the teaching real practical traction: you do not need to dissolve every desire at once. Loosening either cause lightens the stain; loosening both, sustained, is what fully frees.
All six readings agree the stain comes from doership and craving, not from the deed. They part on how literal Krishna's non-doership is, on how much of his own agency remains once the inequality among beings is handed elsewhere, and on whether his 'desire' should be denied outright or simply redescribed as ungrasping. The source for the Shaiva reading is genuinely thin here, shared with the verse before it, and this page leaves that thinness visible rather than filling it in. None of the six is crowned; the fork stands.
A question to carry
Where in your own life does the stain come from the doing itself, and where, if you look closely, does it actually come from the claiming, 'this is mine,' or the reaching, 'let this turn out for me'?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So take up the work in front of you today. Let the claiming and the reaching arise if they will, and notice them, and let them loosen, the way the tradition says they never arise in him at all.
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 said he fashioned the four orders of humanity and yet remains no doer of them; here he explains the mechanism behind that claim, and opens it into instruction for anyone listening.
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 largest deed, even the making of a world, leaves no mark on him, because no doership and no craving arise in him toward it.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Every reading agrees on the verb: actions do not limpanti, do not smear or stain, Krishna. Even his largest deed, the creation of the four orders and the varied forms of being, leaves no mark and creates no bondage for him, and the verse gives two named reasons for this, not one.
He acts from fullness, having nothing left to gain, so no fruit could ever be pulling him into the action.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · Madhusūdana · RāmānujaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 2 others’ words
The first reason is the absence of doership, no sense of 'I am the agent' toward what is done. The second is the absence of craving for the fruit of action. Whatever a school's larger metaphysics, the commentators locate the cause of staining in exactly this pair, and its absence in Krishna as exactly why he is unstained.
The verse turns toward you here: to know him as the one who acts without staining is to begin loosening the same grip in yourself.
Across Bhakti, Advaita, DvaitaŚrīdhara · Madhusūdana · MadhvaIn Śrīdhara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
Several readings explain the second absence through Krishna's completeness: he is apta-kama, one whose every desire is already attained, so nothing remains for him to gain by acting. He acts, on this account, out of fullness rather than want, which is why no fruit could ever function as his motive.
For the rest of us, it is the grip, not the deed, that binds; thinking ourselves the sole author and reaching for a reward is what returns us to more of the same.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse pivots from description to instruction in its second half. It is not only a claim about Krishna's own nature; it is addressed to whoever hears it. Knowing him this way, as unstained by doership and craving, is itself what frees the knower from being bound by his or her own actions.
Where the sources are thin, as with the fragment shared between this verse and the one before it, the honest move is to say so rather than to manufacture certainty.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
By contrast, ordinary beings are stained precisely because both causes are present in them: the conceit of agency and the hunger for a result. This is not a claim that action itself is dangerous; it is a claim about the inner posture that ordinarily surrounds action, and which the verse asks the seeker to loosen.
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 Krishna's agency fully real: he genuinely creates the four orders and the varied forms of being. What he lacks is only one specific role, causing the inequality among beings, which their own prior karma governs. He is the occasioning cause; their own ripened deeds are the operative cause of what they become, and knowing this frees the seeker from the karmas that had blocked the discipline of desireless action.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva declines to erase desire from Krishna altogether: the Lord longs, but not as the world longs, since his desire has already collapsed into knowledge and carries no grasping. It is the grasping, not desire as a bare category, that stains; Vishnu's fullness makes his wanting a different kind of thing entirely. Liberation, on this account, proceeds for the endless multitude of souls in due course, not identically for all at once.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
The one image the surviving passage gives, shared between 4.13 and 4.14, is spatial: Krishna is like open space, untouched by whatever occurs within it, because no craving touches him. Whoever recognizes this and rests in the thought that the Lord alone is a mass of bliss finds no bondage by action remaining. Anything further, such as reading this through the Pratyabhijna idiom of consciousness as ground, is a conditional extension beyond what the extant comment states.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara names the two causes technically, freedom from egoity and freedom from longing, and grounds the second in Krishna being apta-kama, already fulfilled in every desire. His distinctive move is calling the verse both the Blessed One's self-defense and, at the same time, his teaching: to know the cause of his freedom from stain is already to begin weakening the same egoism and craving in oneself.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read with an eye to method rather than metaphysics, Madhusudana's account isolates two jointly necessary causes of bondage, the conceit of doership and the craving for fruit, and shows both absent in Krishna together, never one without the other. This gives the verse a diagnostic, almost clinical, precision: bondage requires this specific pair, and removing either lightens the stain, though removing both is what fully frees.
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 your mind reaches for 'this is my doing' or 'this had better turn out well for me.' You do not need to stop the action to loosen the stain; you only need to notice the reaching, the way Krishna is said to notice nothing at all, because in him the reaching simply never arises. Let the deed continue. Let the claiming quietly fall away.
So do the work in front of you today, and watch for the moment your mind claims it or leans toward its reward; let that claiming loosen, the way it is said never to arise in him at all.
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 verb: actions do not limpanti, do not smear or stain, Krishna. Even his largest deed, the creation of the four orders and the varied forms of being, leaves no mark and creates no bondage for him, and the verse gives two named reasons for this, not one.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The first reason is the absence of doership, no sense of 'I am the agent' toward what is done. The second is the absence of craving for the fruit of action. Whatever a school's larger metaphysics, the commentators locate the cause of staining in exactly this pair, and its absence in Krishna as exactly why he is unstained.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya
Several readings explain the second absence through Krishna's completeness: he is apta-kama, one whose every desire is already attained, so nothing remains for him to gain by acting. He acts, on this account, out of fullness rather than want, which is why no fruit could ever function as his motive.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Madhvācārya
The verse pivots from description to instruction in its second half. It is not only a claim about Krishna's own nature; it is addressed to whoever hears it. Knowing him this way, as unstained by doership and craving, is itself what frees the knower from being bound by his or her own actions.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
By contrast, ordinary beings are stained precisely because both causes are present in them: the conceit of agency and the hunger for a result. This is not a claim that action itself is dangerous; it is a claim about the inner posture that ordinarily surrounds action, and which the verse asks the seeker to loosen.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara and Madhusudana both read Krishna's non-doership as literal and complete: there is, in him, no sense of 'I' as the maker of the body and its instruments at all, so he is genuinely not an agent. To know him this way is to know him as one's own Self, and for the knower too, the actions that would construct another body simply cease to arise; it is the correction of self-understanding, not any change in conduct, that liberates.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja keeps Krishna's agency fully real: he genuinely creates the four orders and the varied forms of being. What he lacks is only one specific role, causing the inequality among beings, which their own prior karma governs. He is the occasioning cause; their own ripened deeds are the operative cause of what they become, and knowing this frees the seeker from the karmas that had blocked the discipline of desireless action.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva declines to erase desire from Krishna altogether: the Lord longs, but not as the world longs, since his desire has already collapsed into knowledge and carries no grasping. It is the grasping, not desire as a bare category, that stains; Vishnu's fullness makes his wanting a different kind of thing entirely. Liberation, on this account, proceeds for the endless multitude of souls in due course, not identically for all at once.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The one image the surviving passage gives, shared between 4.13 and 4.14, is spatial: Krishna is like open space, untouched by whatever occurs within it, because no craving touches him. Whoever recognizes this and rests in the thought that the Lord alone is a mass of bliss finds no bondage by action remaining. Anything further, such as reading this through the Pratyabhijna idiom of consciousness as ground, is a conditional extension beyond what the extant comment states.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara names the two causes technically, freedom from egoity and freedom from longing, and grounds the second in Krishna being apta-kama, already fulfilled in every desire. His distinctive move is calling the verse both the Blessed One's self-defense and, at the same time, his teaching: to know the cause of his freedom from stain is already to begin weakening the same egoism and craving in oneself.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read with an eye to method rather than metaphysics, Madhusudana's account isolates two jointly necessary causes of bondage, the conceit of doership and the craving for fruit, and shows both absent in Krishna together, never one without the other. This gives the verse a diagnostic, almost clinical, precision: bondage requires this specific pair, and removing either lightens the stain, though removing both is what fully frees.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If Krishna is unstained because he already has everything, what hope is there for me, who plainly wants things and has not attained them all?
The verse names two causes of staining, not one: doership and craving. You do not need to become already-fulfilled to loosen the first. Noticing that you are not, in fact, the sole author of any outcome is available to you now, prior to any deeper attainment.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya
Even the reading that keeps a real 'wish' in Krishna insists it is a wish without grasping. This suggests the target is not desire's total extinction but the grasping quality within it; a seeker can work at loosening the grasp long before every desire is settled.
Madhvācārya
And more than one reading insists that simply knowing the cause of his freedom from stain starts to weaken the same causes in you. The knowing is not a reward for having already arrived; it is offered as the very thing that begins the loosening.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Notice, today, the moment your mind reaches for 'this is my doing' or 'this had better turn out well for me.' You do not need to stop the action to loosen the stain; you only need to notice the reaching, the way Krishna is said to notice nothing at all, because in him the reaching simply never arises. Let the deed continue. Let the claiming quietly fall away.
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.