Attachment gone, knowledge settled, the whole of your action dissolves and binds nothing.
It sounds like a promise that the deed vanishes without effect. What is actually claimed is narrower and, once seen, more livable: the return current that would tie the fruit back to a claiming self simply has nothing left to fasten to.
For the one whose attachment has fallen away, who is free, whose mind rests in knowledge, and who acts only as an offering, all action dissolves completely, leaving nothing behind that could bind.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
You have just heard that the knower does nothing at all, even while fully at work. Now Krishna gathers that scattered claim into a single portrait, and turns to answer a worry any careful listener would have: what about the one who still performs full, elaborate sacrifice, not the bare minimum a renunciant needs, but real ritual labor in the world?
The teaching
Trace the verse as a chain of causes. The mind settles in knowledge, resting in the understanding of what the self truly is. Because it rests there, attachment falls away on its own, not by force but as the natural consequence of no longer needing what attachment reaches for. Because attachment is gone, the person stands free, free not merely of craving results but of the deeper, quieter claim to be the one who does and the one who enjoys. Such a person still acts. The action continues, and continues specifically as sacrifice, an offering with nothing of personal gain folded into it. Whether this offering is made to the Lord directly or made to keep the world's own order intact for others, the shape is the same: the deed carries no private stake for the one performing it. And so the whole of the action dissolves. Not the outward occurrence alone, but the fruit that would otherwise ripen from it, and even the subtler tendencies the deed would otherwise leave behind. What dissolves is not the fact that the deed happened. What dissolves is the thread that would tie its fruit back to a self still claiming it as its own. This is exactly the reassurance the verse is built to give: if the simplest renunciant, who owns nothing and takes only what comes unsought, is already unbound, then the householder who still performs demanding, visible sacrifice is unbound too, because what matters was never the size of the deed but whether anything in you still reaches to claim it.
The doubt that rises
If your action truly dissolves so completely, does that mean it stops mattering to the world, or only that it stops mattering to your sense of self? And where the sources that speak to this verse are themselves thin, as they are for more than one voice here, how much of what follows from it can honestly be claimed, and how much is only a reasonable guess dressed up as teaching?
Where the paths divide
Read from the brief extant fragment of Shankara's own comment.
What survives here is compact: attachment gone, the bondage of merit and demerit turned away, the mind set in knowledge alone, so that action for sacrifice, together with its fruit, dissolves and comes to nothing. The source breaks off just as it turns to ask why this dissolving is total rather than partial, so the fuller resolution of that question is not something this page can honestly hand you as Shankara's own words on this verse.
Action becoming knowledge-like by resting on the Lord as its very self.
Ramanuja reads the mind fixed on knowledge of the self as the cause of freedom from every other attachment and all owning, so the karma that once caused bondage is worn away with nothing left. He then widens this: action already shown to be knowledge-like by resting on the self apart from matter becomes knowledge-like in a further sense by resting on all action as having the Lord himself for its very self.
A brief, specific remark on what the knowledge here actually is.
Madhva's surviving comment is a single compact line: one who has dropped attachment, lost fondness for the fruit, and been released does not take himself to be the body, and his settled mind knows the supreme Lord. Because so little survives, a fuller Dvaita picture, that action refers to Hari's own sanction and so leaves no residue on a self that never owned it, is offered here only as a reasonable extension in Madhva's spirit, not as his recorded words on this verse.
An honest look at how little of Abhinavagupta's comment remains.
What is preserved is thin: a note on the phrase for attachment gone, and an observation that 'sacrifice' is used in the singular for a whole class of rites. No extended teaching on the dissolving of action survives in this fragment. If one wanted to extend it by analogy with his commentary nearby, dissolving might be read as action ceasing to contract the self's free awareness once craving stops narrowing it into a bounded doer, but this is a clearly labeled guess, not a recovered teaching.
Two senses of 'for sacrifice,' held together rather than chosen between.
Sridhara moves phrase by phrase: attachment departed, desireless, freed from clinging; the mind established in knowledge; action for sacrifice, for the sake of the supreme Lord, dissolving entirely, tendencies included, into the very state of inaction. He then adds, for the one advanced in yoga, a second sense: acting for the protection of sacrifice, for the world's own holding-together. He does not ask you to choose; either way, the deed stops binding.
Naming plainly the worry this verse was written to settle.
Madhusudana names the fear directly: if the renunciant is unbound, is the householder-knower, Janaka and men like him, still bound by the demanding sacrifice his life requires? His answer reads the four qualities as a causal chain and locates the dissolving precisely in the cutting of the false sense of ownership; the deed's outward occurrence continues by the push of already-set-in-motion action, but its power to bind is already severed at the root.
Two things stay unresolved here, and both matter. First, whether this dissolving is only about how the deed touches you or whether something is also being claimed about the deed itself in the world; the sources gathered here do not force an answer. Second, and just as real: for two of the six voices behind this page, Madhva and especially Abhinavagupta, what survives is thin, and any fuller reading offered in their name has been marked plainly as extrapolation rather than passed off as their settled teaching. Faithfulness to what is actually preserved matters more here than a seamless page.
A question to carry
When you finish a piece of work today, notice exactly what in you is still reaching for its outcome, and ask whether that reaching is really necessary for you to have done the work well.
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So do the work in front of you as an offering, without needing it to come back to you as anything at all, and let even the reaching that wants to claim it fall quiet, until nothing of the deed remains to bind the one who did it.
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 the knower does nothing at all even while at work; here he draws that scattered portrait into one figure and answers a live worry, that even the householder who still performs full sacrifice might remain bound.
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.
See the person here as a chain: knowledge settles the mind, so attachment falls away on its own, so the person stands free, each link the natural fruit of the one before it.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
All six readings agree the verse describes one person through a chain of qualities: attachment gone, freedom won, the mind settled in knowledge. Where the sources are explicit, they read this as a sequence in which each later mark is caused by the one before it, so that freedom from attachment is the natural fruit of settled knowledge, not a separate labor added on top of it.
Such a person still acts, and acts only for sacrifice, an offering with no private gain folded into the motive, whether given to the Lord or to the world's own holding-together.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
Such a person still acts, and specifically acts for the sake of sacrifice. Every source that addresses this phrase reads it as excluding personal gain from the motive: the deed becomes an offering, whether to the Lord directly or, on a second reading Sridhara and Madhusudana both preserve, for the world's continued good order, its loka-sangraha.
The whole of the action dissolves, fruit and subtlest tendency included, not because the deed never happened but because nothing in it is left to fasten to the one who did it.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The word for 'whole' or 'complete' carries real weight for the sources that comment on it: the dissolving reaches the action's fruit and even its underlying mental tendencies, not only its most visible trace. What is undone is not the occurrence of the deed but every part of it that could otherwise ripen and return.
This is the answer to a real fear: if even the empty-handed renunciant is unbound, so too is the householder-knower who still performs full, elaborate sacrifice, Janaka among them.
Across Advaita, DvaitaŚaṅkara · Madhva · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 1 others’ words
Where the sources are fullest, they name the mechanism plainly: the binding power of any action lives entirely in attachment and the false sense of being its doer and enjoyer. Once knowledge has severed that root, the deed, however large, can no longer fasten itself back onto the one who performs it.
Where a source is thin, as with Abhinavagupta's few surviving lines here, the honest reading says so plainly rather than dressing a fragment up as a finished teaching.
Across AdvaitaMadhusūdanaIn Madhusūdana’s words
Madhusudana names outright what the others imply: this verse answers a live worry left over from the preceding lines. If even the simple, possessionless renunciant is unbound, what of the active householder-knower, Janaka and men like him, who still performs full ritual sacrifice? The answer given here is that for the knower too, even elaborate action dissolves, because its binding cause is already gone.
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 the mind fixed on self-knowledge as the cause of freedom from every other attachment and all owning, so that the earlier karma causing bondage is worn away with nothing left. He ties this to a larger argument: action already shown to be knowledge-like by resting on the self apart from matter now becomes knowledge-like in a further way, by resting on all action as having the Lord himself for its very self.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's surviving remark is compact: one who has dropped attachment, lost fondness for the fruit, and been released does not take himself to be the body, and his mind, settled in knowledge, knows the supreme Lord specifically. Because the source is this brief, the extension often drawn from Madhva's wider system, that action refers back to Hari's sanction and so leaves no residue on a self that never owned it, is offered here as a plausible reading in his spirit rather than his own recorded words on this verse.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara glosses the verse phrase by phrase and adds a second sense for 'sacrifice' pitched at the one advanced in yoga: acting for the protection of sacrifice, that is, for the world's own holding-together. He declines to choose between worship offered to the Lord and service rendered to the world, since either way the entire action, down to its subtlest tendencies, ceases to be binding action at all.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana names the exact worry the verse resolves: does the householder-knower who still performs full sacrifice, unlike the possessionless renunciant, remain bound? His answer reads the four qualities as a causal chain and locates the dissolving precisely in the cutting of the false sense of ownership, the deed's outward occurrence continuing unchanged by the push of deeds already set in motion, while its power to bind is severed at the root.
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, one action you perform out of pure habit of ownership, the sense that this is mine to do and mine to claim credit for. Perform it once more, identically, but silently hand the doing back to whatever is larger than you, the world's good order, the Lord, the truth of the moment, and watch whether the deed feels any lighter for having nothing left to fasten to you.
So act today as you must, but ask, each time you finish, whether anything in you is still reaching to claim what the deed produced; where nothing reaches, the deed has already dissolved.
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
ll six readings agree the verse describes one person through a chain of qualities: attachment gone, freedom won, the mind settled in knowledge. Where the sources are explicit, they read this as a sequence in which each later mark is caused by the one before it, so that freedom from attachment is the natural fruit of settled knowledge, not a separate labor added on top of it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Such a person still acts, and specifically acts for the sake of sacrifice. Every source that addresses this phrase reads it as excluding personal gain from the motive: the deed becomes an offering, whether to the Lord directly or, on a second reading Sridhara and Madhusudana both preserve, for the world's continued good order, its loka-sangraha.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The word for 'whole' or 'complete' carries real weight for the sources that comment on it: the dissolving reaches the action's fruit and even its underlying mental tendencies, not only its most visible trace. What is undone is not the occurrence of the deed but every part of it that could otherwise ripen and return.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the sources are fullest, they name the mechanism plainly: the binding power of any action lives entirely in attachment and the false sense of being its doer and enjoyer. Once knowledge has severed that root, the deed, however large, can no longer fasten itself back onto the one who performs it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Madhusudana names outright what the others imply: this verse answers a live worry left over from the preceding lines. If even the simple, possessionless renunciant is unbound, what of the active householder-knower, Janaka and men like him, who still performs full ritual sacrifice? The answer given here is that for the knower too, even elaborate action dissolves, because its binding cause is already gone.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
What survives of Shankara's own comment here is brief: attachment gone, bondage marked by merit and demerit turned away, the mind set in knowledge alone, so that action for sacrifice, taken together with its fruit, dissolves and comes to nothing. His extract breaks off just as he opens the further question of why this dissolving should be total rather than partial, so his full resolution of that question is not preserved in the source used here.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads the mind fixed on self-knowledge as the cause of freedom from every other attachment and all owning, so that the earlier karma causing bondage is worn away with nothing left. He ties this to a larger argument: action already shown to be knowledge-like by resting on the self apart from matter now becomes knowledge-like in a further way, by resting on all action as having the Lord himself for its very self.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's surviving remark is compact: one who has dropped attachment, lost fondness for the fruit, and been released does not take himself to be the body, and his mind, settled in knowledge, knows the supreme Lord specifically. Because the source is this brief, the extension often drawn from Madhva's wider system, that action refers back to Hari's sanction and so leaves no residue on a self that never owned it, is offered here as a plausible reading in his spirit rather than his own recorded words on this verse.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
What remains of Abhinavagupta's comment is thin, largely a grammatical note on the phrase gata-sanga and on the singular use of 'sacrifice' for a whole class of rites; no extended doctrinal treatment of the dissolving of action survives here. On a Kashmir Saiva reading, one could extend this by analogy with his nearby commentary: the dissolving would be action ceasing to contract the self's own free awareness once craving no longer narrows it into a bounded doer. This is flagged plainly as an extrapolation, since the extant fragment itself does not reach this far.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara glosses the verse phrase by phrase and adds a second sense for 'sacrifice' pitched at the one advanced in yoga: acting for the protection of sacrifice, that is, for the world's own holding-together. He declines to choose between worship offered to the Lord and service rendered to the world, since either way the entire action, down to its subtlest tendencies, ceases to be binding action at all.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana names the exact worry the verse resolves: does the householder-knower who still performs full sacrifice, unlike the possessionless renunciant, remain bound? His answer reads the four qualities as a causal chain and locates the dissolving precisely in the cutting of the false sense of ownership, the deed's outward occurrence continuing unchanged by the push of deeds already set in motion, while its power to bind is severed at the root.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If my action truly dissolves and leaves no trace, does that mean my deeds have no consequences at all, and if not, what exactly is being claimed?
What the sources describe dissolving is the deed's power to bind its performer, not its ordinary effects in the world. The meal still nourishes, the harvest still ripens; what fails to occur is the return current that would otherwise tie the fruit back to a claiming self.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The dissolving happens because the cause of binding, attachment and the false sense of being the doer and the enjoyer, has already been cut by knowledge. Where that cause is absent, the deed simply has nothing left to attach itself to, whatever its outward result may be.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya
This is why the verse is read as resolving a real worry rather than promising indifference: even a person performing full, elaborate sacrifice, no small or careless act, is said to be unbound, because what matters is never the size of the deed but the presence or absence of a claiming self behind it.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Notice, today, one action you perform out of pure habit of ownership, the sense that this is mine to do and mine to claim credit for. Perform it once more, identically, but silently hand the doing back to whatever is larger than you, the world's good order, the Lord, the truth of the moment, and watch whether the deed feels any lighter for having nothing left to fasten to you.
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.