How action leaves no stain on the Lord, and on the one who knows him so.
We assume action binds because of the act itself, the doing and the deed. The verse points elsewhere: what binds is not the work but the inner posture around it, the sense of being the doer and the thirst for what the work will bring.
Actions do not taint Me, for I have no longing for the fruits of action. One who knows Me in this way is not bound by their own actions.
Having just said that he himself fashioned the four orders yet remains no doer, Krishna now explains why, and lets that explanation open into a teaching for anyone who would share his freedom.
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 work leaves no mark on him, not because he stands apart from it, but because he carries no sense of being its doer and no thirst for what it brings.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Sivananda · Tilak · Ramsukhdas · Jñāneśvar · GandhiIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 16 others’ words
Krishna says that actions do not stain or smear him. The verb is limpanti, literally to smear or stain, the way dirt clings to a surface. Even the largest actions, the creation of the whole universe and the like, leave no mark on him; they do not bind him. The commentators name two reasons, both stated in the verse itself. First, he has no sense of being the doer, no egoity, no thought 'I am the agent.' Second, he has no spriha, no longing or thirst, for the fruit of action. Take away the conceit of doership and the craving for results, and action has nothing to cling to.
He acts from fullness, not from want; having every desire already attained, he has nothing left to gain, and so he sets the world in motion out of his own abundance.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Bhedābheda, ŚuddhādvaitaMadhusūdana · Śrīdhara · Bhāskara · Baladeva · Viśvanātha · PuruṣottamaIn Madhusūdana, Śrīdhara, and 4 others’ words
Several commentators explain why Krishna has no craving for the fruit: he is apta-kama, one whose every desire is already attained. There is nothing left for him to gain or accomplish through the work of creation, so longing for a result simply does not arise. Scripture is cited for this: 'of one whose desire is attained, what longing?' Being already full, the Lord acts not to get anything, but, as some put it, to set the world in motion, out of his own fullness or bliss.
And here the verse turns to you: to know him as the one who acts yet does not crave is to begin loosening the same grip in yourself, for knowing his freedom is the start of sharing it.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Sivananda · Tilak · Ramsukhdas · Jñāneśvar · GandhiIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 16 others’ words
The verse then turns into a teaching, not just a description of the Lord. Whoever knows Krishna in this way, as the one who acts yet is no doer and has no craving for fruit, is himself not bound by actions. Knowing the Lord's freedom from stain is the beginning of sharing in it. Most commentators stress that this is the heart of the verse for the seeker: the same two conditions that keep the Lord unstained, dropping the sense of doership and dropping the longing for results, free any person who realizes them. The whole bondage lies in the longing for the fruit.
For the rest of us, action clings because we think ourselves the agent and reach for a reward; it is that inner reaching, not the deed, that ties us and returns us to birth again.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Dvaita, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Sivananda · Jayatīrtha · VallabhaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 7 others’ words
For ordinary people, by contrast, action does bind, and the commentators explain exactly how. The worldly person thinks 'I am the agent,' and expects a fruit, heaven or some other reward, for what he does. Because of that conceit and that expectation, action attaches to him and he takes birth again and again. So the verse marks the precise difference between the Lord (and the knower who follows him) and the bound soul: not the act itself, but the inner posture of doership and craving that surrounds the act.
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 Krishna's non-doership as real and absolute: he simply has no sense of 'I' as the producer of the body and the rest, and so he is genuinely not a doer at all. Knowing the Lord here means knowing him as one's own Self. The knower realizes 'I am not a doer, I have no craving for the fruit of action,' and for him the actions that would produce a body do not even arise; he is freed by the very knowledge of the non-agent self. One voice in this school insists that mere intellectual knowledge of the Lord's non-doership is not enough: without direct realization of one's identity with the Lord, the root of doership cannot be pulled out, and binding is not escaped.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators hold that Krishna's agency is real, not denied; what he lacks is one specific role. The 'actions' here are the varied creation of gods, humans, and the rest, not merit and demerit. The Lord is the mere occasioning cause of creation; the variety among beings, who becomes a god and who a human, is set going by the beings' own prior karma, their merit and demerit, not by him. So he is the universal cause but not the cause of the inequality, and on this ground he is 'no doer' of the differences and is not stained by them; the scriptural support given is that 'inequality and cruelty are not, because of dependence,' and the saying that the Person is the mere occasioning cause while the powers of the things to be created are the chief cause. Knowing him thus frees the seeker from the prior karmas that obstruct the discipline of action.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator grounds non-staining in freedom from craving, then presses the point: if the Lord is unstained only because his desires are already fulfilled, why is another person, whose desires are not fulfilled, also not stained by good deeds? The answer is that freedom from craving itself, not fulfillment, is the real cause of non-staining. So another person too, who acts free from craving and offers his action to the supreme Lord, is not bound. This reading moves straight into the next verse's call to perform action as the ancient seekers did.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators allow that the Lord has a wish but no clinging to it: 'though he longs, that supreme God does not desire as the world desires,' for Vishnu has no grasping and his very desire is knowledge. They also press the cause-and-effect link as fitting only on their reading: for souls there is attachment as the cause of the taint of action, but for the Lord there is not, and the bare appeal to unreality cannot explain the difference, since unreality would belong to the soul's activity too. They further insist liberation is not for some only but is universal by stages, citing the Mahanarayana Upanishad that 'knowing him thus, the knower comes no more to death,' and they read the present-tense 'is not bound' against the earlier past tense 'they attained my state,' resolving the worry that all souls would already be liberated by holding that the souls are endless, surpassingly endless like the Lord beyond the moments of time.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse through the path of grace and loving relationship. The Lord's freedom from longing for the fruit is precisely his distinction from the individual soul; whoever knows him as such comes to share his very dharma, the share in the Lord's freedom from craving being the seed of a Lord-like life in the devotee. One voice adds that the Lord acts without being smeared because his acting is itself his rasa, his delight, not a means to anything else; the knower who imitates that posture is likewise unsmeared.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators set the verse in Krishna's situation as the supreme Lord who has nonetheless descended and acts. Though he is the Supreme Lord, full of his own bliss, he performs action solely to set the world in motion; like a rain-cloud he is a mere occasion for creation, his compassion stirred by the hunger of the embodied souls dissolved in primal matter, while the variety among beings comes from the beings' own prior works. They read the verse at once as the Lord's self-defense and as his instruction: to know his freedom from karmic stain is to begin to share in it, since knowing the cause of his non-stainedness, the absence of egoism and craving, weakens those very things in the knower. One voice adds the vivid image that motiveless action, like a burnt seed that can never sprout, becomes the very cause of the seeker's emancipation.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators draw the verse toward the practitioner directly. The teaching is for the seeker before it is anything else: act as the Lord acts, free of longing for the fruit, and the very nature of action shifts from bondage to liberation. One voice notes that worldly people, thinking themselves the agents and expecting fruits, take birth again and again, while one who works without attachment, egoism, or expectation is freed from birth and death. Another ties the verse back to the earlier teaching that one who understands the Lord's birth and action attains release, stressing that 'understands' means understands and acts accordingly. Another sees here the supreme example of one who is in action yet not its doer, so that when we are but instruments in his hands there is no room for arrogating responsibility for action.
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 the verse as addressed to you, not only to Krishna. The whole binding power of action, the commentator says, lies in one place: the longing for the fruit. So the practice is simple to state and lifelong to live. Keep acting, do the work that is yours to do, but release the grip on what it will get you. As you let go of the inner thirst for results, the very nature of your action quietly changes, from something that ties you down to something that sets you free. You act as the Lord acts, out of fullness rather than want, and action stops leaving its stain.
So keep doing the work that is yours to do, and quietly let go of your grip on what it will get you; as the thirst for results loosens, the very action that once tied you down begins to set you free.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
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machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rishna says that actions do not stain or smear him. The verb is limpanti, literally to smear or stain, the way dirt clings to a surface. Even the largest actions, the creation of the whole universe and the like, leave no mark on him; they do not bind him. The commentators name two reasons, both stated in the verse itself. First, he has no sense of being the doer, no egoity, no thought 'I am the agent.' Second, he has no spriha, no longing or thirst, for the fruit of action. Take away the conceit of doership and the craving for results, and action has nothing to cling to.
Braided from 18 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar · Mahatma Gandhi
Several commentators explain why Krishna has no craving for the fruit: he is apta-kama, one whose every desire is already attained. There is nothing left for him to gain or accomplish through the work of creation, so longing for a result simply does not arise. Scripture is cited for this: 'of one whose desire is attained, what longing?' Being already full, the Lord acts not to get anything, but, as some put it, to set the world in motion, out of his own fullness or bliss.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Puruṣottama
The verse then turns into a teaching, not just a description of the Lord. Whoever knows Krishna in this way, as the one who acts yet is no doer and has no craving for fruit, is himself not bound by actions. Knowing the Lord's freedom from stain is the beginning of sharing in it. Most commentators stress that this is the heart of the verse for the seeker: the same two conditions that keep the Lord unstained, dropping the sense of doership and dropping the longing for results, free any person who realizes them. The whole bondage lies in the longing for the fruit.
Braided from 18 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar · Mahatma Gandhi
For ordinary people, by contrast, action does bind, and the commentators explain exactly how. The worldly person thinks 'I am the agent,' and expects a fruit, heaven or some other reward, for what he does. Because of that conceit and that expectation, action attaches to him and he takes birth again and again. So the verse marks the precise difference between the Lord (and the knower who follows him) and the bound soul: not the act itself, but the inner posture of doership and craving that surrounds the act.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Vallabhācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read Krishna's non-doership as real and absolute: he simply has no sense of 'I' as the producer of the body and the rest, and so he is genuinely not a doer at all. Knowing the Lord here means knowing him as one's own Self. The knower realizes 'I am not a doer, I have no craving for the fruit of action,' and for him the actions that would produce a body do not even arise; he is freed by the very knowledge of the non-agent self. One voice in this school insists that mere intellectual knowledge of the Lord's non-doership is not enough: without direct realization of one's identity with the Lord, the root of doership cannot be pulled out, and binding is not escaped.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators hold that Krishna's agency is real, not denied; what he lacks is one specific role. The 'actions' here are the varied creation of gods, humans, and the rest, not merit and demerit. The Lord is the mere occasioning cause of creation; the variety among beings, who becomes a god and who a human, is set going by the beings' own prior karma, their merit and demerit, not by him. So he is the universal cause but not the cause of the inequality, and on this ground he is 'no doer' of the differences and is not stained by them; the scriptural support given is that 'inequality and cruelty are not, because of dependence,' and the saying that the Person is the mere occasioning cause while the powers of the things to be created are the chief cause. Knowing him thus frees the seeker from the prior karmas that obstruct the discipline of action.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This commentator grounds non-staining in freedom from craving, then presses the point: if the Lord is unstained only because his desires are already fulfilled, why is another person, whose desires are not fulfilled, also not stained by good deeds? The answer is that freedom from craving itself, not fulfillment, is the real cause of non-staining. So another person too, who acts free from craving and offers his action to the supreme Lord, is not bound. This reading moves straight into the next verse's call to perform action as the ancient seekers did.
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
These commentators allow that the Lord has a wish but no clinging to it: 'though he longs, that supreme God does not desire as the world desires,' for Vishnu has no grasping and his very desire is knowledge. They also press the cause-and-effect link as fitting only on their reading: for souls there is attachment as the cause of the taint of action, but for the Lord there is not, and the bare appeal to unreality cannot explain the difference, since unreality would belong to the soul's activity too. They further insist liberation is not for some only but is universal by stages, citing the Mahanarayana Upanishad that 'knowing him thus, the knower comes no more to death,' and they read the present-tense 'is not bound' against the earlier past tense 'they attained my state,' resolving the worry that all souls would already be liberated by holding that the souls are endless, surpassingly endless like the Lord beyond the moments of time.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the verse through the path of grace and loving relationship. The Lord's freedom from longing for the fruit is precisely his distinction from the individual soul; whoever knows him as such comes to share his very dharma, the share in the Lord's freedom from craving being the seed of a Lord-like life in the devotee. One voice adds that the Lord acts without being smeared because his acting is itself his rasa, his delight, not a means to anything else; the knower who imitates that posture is likewise unsmeared.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators set the verse in Krishna's situation as the supreme Lord who has nonetheless descended and acts. Though he is the Supreme Lord, full of his own bliss, he performs action solely to set the world in motion; like a rain-cloud he is a mere occasion for creation, his compassion stirred by the hunger of the embodied souls dissolved in primal matter, while the variety among beings comes from the beings' own prior works. They read the verse at once as the Lord's self-defense and as his instruction: to know his freedom from karmic stain is to begin to share in it, since knowing the cause of his non-stainedness, the absence of egoism and craving, weakens those very things in the knower. One voice adds the vivid image that motiveless action, like a burnt seed that can never sprout, becomes the very cause of the seeker's emancipation.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators draw the verse toward the practitioner directly. The teaching is for the seeker before it is anything else: act as the Lord acts, free of longing for the fruit, and the very nature of action shifts from bondage to liberation. One voice notes that worldly people, thinking themselves the agents and expecting fruits, take birth again and again, while one who works without attachment, egoism, or expectation is freed from birth and death. Another ties the verse back to the earlier teaching that one who understands the Lord's birth and action attains release, stressing that 'understands' means understands and acts accordingly. Another sees here the supreme example of one who is in action yet not its doer, so that when we are but instruments in his hands there is no room for arrogating responsibility for action.
Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If I just stop craving the results of what I do, am I really freed from the binding of action, or does that take a deeper realization I don't yet have?
The verse locates the entire binding of action in two things: the conceit 'I am the doer' and the longing for the fruit. Remove those and action has nothing left to cling to, which is exactly why the Lord, who has neither, is unstained even by creating the universe. So the inner shift is genuinely the lever; it is not beside the point.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
And the verse frames this as a teaching meant to work in the seeker: whoever knows Krishna as the non-doer free of craving is himself not bound. Knowing the cause of the Lord's freedom from stain begins to weaken the egoism and craving in the one who knows it, so the knowledge is not merely informational but transforming.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Lokmanya Tilak
There is, however, a real caution. One commentator warns that this cannot be a merely verbal or intellectual knowing; without direct realization of one's true non-doer self, the root of doership is not pulled out and binding is not truly escaped. So the answer is honest on both sides: the inner shift away from craving and doership is exactly the path, and it must ripen into actual realization, not stop at an idea.
Dhanapati Sūri · Śaṅkarācārya
Contemplation
Take the verse as addressed to you, not only to Krishna. The whole binding power of action, the commentator says, lies in one place: the longing for the fruit. So the practice is simple to state and lifelong to live. Keep acting, do the work that is yours to do, but release the grip on what it will get you. As you let go of the inner thirst for results, the very nature of your action quietly changes, from something that ties you down to something that sets you free. You act as the Lord acts, out of fullness rather than want, and action stops leaving its stain.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
All the translations and commentary
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