What action and inaction really are, and why even the wise mistake them.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators keep the focus on why the question is hard and what its resolution does. Shankara is brief and structural: he rejects the naive view that action is just bodily doing and inaction its mere absence, and asks why, if it were that simple, Krishna would bother to teach it. Anandagiri and Dhanapati frame the verse as answering an objection (work seems plain, with no real difficulty in it) and reply that the very fact the learned are deluded proves an authoritative teaching is needed. Madhusudana gives the most vivid image: as the still trees on a riverbank seem to move to a person in a moving boat, and moving men nearby seem still, so even the discerning are brought to an inability to decide what is truly action and what is truly non-action, for it is most hard to determine. Nilakantha adds that even where action is necessary it must not be done by mere habit; a particular knowledge is enjoined first.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators give 'inaction' (akarma) a precise positive content: it is not the absence of action but the knowledge of the doer, the self, as it truly is, that is, true self-knowledge included within action. The action to be performed is action done with no eye to its fruit, in the form of worship of the Lord, and it carries this self-knowledge inside it. On this reading akarma is the qualifier and karma is the principal; the verse promises that the very knowledge of the action to be done is itself the fruit of performing it. One source carefully derives where the actual command to act is located in the surrounding verses, treating the present verse as defining what is to be known while the prior 'therefore perform action' supplies the doing.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators tie the verse tightly to the preceding command 'do action,' and read it as Krishna's way of stressing how hard that prescribed action is to know rightly, so that a clear statement is needed. They also look ahead: because the next verse takes up prohibited action (vikarma) too, the single word 'inaction' (akarma) here stands by implication for that further category as well. The crucial distinction they draw is between what is to be performed and what is to be known-and-avoided: action proper is to be performed, while inaction and the rest are things to be known as things to shun. This is why, on their reading, Krishna says specifically 'that action I shall declare,' with inaction included only by implication.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse against a threefold sorting of action, prescribed action (karma), non-prescribed (akarma), and forbidden (vikarma), and insist the seeker can take no safe step until these are sorted out by reflection rather than by mere worldly tradition. One reads ashubha, the inauspicious one is freed from, specifically as vikarma, the forbidden 'third.' The other treats the verse as answering a worry that work might be merely a means to worldly fruit, and reads the deliverance as release from precisely that fruit-seeking action; the wise here are 'knowers of word and meaning' thrown into confusion. The shared accent is on asking the right question first.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives the most fully worked-out account of why action is so hard to read. He denies that perfection comes from not acting alone. The difficulty is that the categories overlap: within an enjoined act there can be a tainted action, as in the slaying of the beast within the Agnishtoma sacrifice; within a prohibited act there can be something auspicious, as the killing of harmful creatures spares people distress; and even in not acting there is action, since deeds done by speech and mind go on inevitably and are hard to ward off without knowledge. Because of this depth, even the skilful are fooled, imagining 'this auspicious act will bring us good, and this not-undertaking will bring release.' His conclusion is distinctive: only the fire of discernment, to be spoken of later, can burn up the whole fuel of both auspicious and inauspicious action, and that fire alone is to be sought as refuge.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators stress that action must not be done by following the herd but only after due inquiry (vichara), ideally alongside those who know the truth, and only after one has learned its special manner. Two of them frame the verse as answering an objection that there can be no real doubt about action, and reply that there is indeed doubt, because even the poets and wise are unable to determine the truth of it. One gives a striking image: just as a counterfeit coin looks genuine and deceives the eye, so even the actions of immensely powerful persons, those who could rival the creator in shaping a world, have proved to be 'motived' actions falsely imagined otherwise, ensnaring their doers; if such far-sighted ones are deceived, what of fools? Hence Krishna will tell it more clearly. The double warning is meant to fix the listener's attention.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

Tilak focuses on the grammar and on guarding against a wrong reading: akarma is a negative compound whose prefix 'a-' can mean either 'absence of' action or 'impropriety of' action; since the next verse adds a third category, vikarma, the akarma here must mean particularly the literal 'abandonment of action' taught by the School of Renunciation, and he flags that, on his fuller reading, such literal abandonment is not the true meaning of akarma at all. Ramsukhdas relocates the whole question inward: ordinary people call bodily and sense activity 'action' and its cessation 'inaction,' but the Lord counts every deed of body, speech, and mind as action, and its real classification follows the bhava, the inner disposition, behind it. The same outwardly sattvic act becomes rajasic or tamasic if the doer's motive is, and where there is no desire for fruit, no 'mine,' no attachment, action does not bind and so becomes akarma; conversely a man full of attachment and craving is truly acting even while sitting still. The test is in the doer, not in the outer act.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas