The same deed, done two ways, ends in peace or in bondage.
Nothing about the outward act changes between the two people in this verse. What changes, entirely, is the thought riding along inside it.
The settled one lets go of the fruit of action and comes to a lasting peace; the unsettled one, driven by desire and gripping the fruit, stays bound.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just described the ascetic labor of the yogi who works through body, mind, and sense for the self's own purification. Now he draws the plainest possible contrast: two people, the same kind of action, and two entirely different places where each one lands.
The teaching
The verse holds up two doers side by side and asks you to notice that nothing about their activity, taken from outside, distinguishes them. What distinguishes them is the thought each one carries into the doing. The joined one has settled into the thought that the action is for the Lord and not for any private gain, and having let go of the fruit in that spirit, comes to a peace that does not pass with the next mood, a peace more than one reader identifies with liberation itself. The unjoined one carries the opposite thought, that the action is for a fruit of his own, and stays gripped by exactly that desire. The bondage that follows is not a static holding pattern. It deepens, because the craving that grips one fruit is already reaching for the next, and each reach binds a little further. What the verse asks of you, then, is not a different set of tasks but a different relationship to the tasks you already have.
The doubt that rises
If the very same action can bind one person and free another, what precisely is the shift being asked of me, and would I even know if I had made it, given that the deed itself never changes shape?
Where the paths divide
Read as a graded path toward knowledge, not a single leap.
Shankara reads the peace as something reached in stages rather than granted all at once by the act of releasing the fruit. The mind is cleansed first; then the capacity to discriminate the eternal from the passing arises; then all action is finally relinquished; and steadiness in that knowledge is the peace itself. The offered deed opens the path. It is not, by itself, the destination.
Read as the self's own experience, not its dissolution.
Ramanuja reads the joined one as bent on the self alone, no longer wavering toward any fruit but the self, acting only to purify the self and loosen what binds it. The peace reached is a firm, abiding bliss, the self's own taste of itself, not an extinguishing or a merging away of what the self is.
Read honestly, from a thin surviving fragment.
What survives in Madhva's own words for this exact verse is sparse: a note that Krishna presses the earlier rule once more, and the gloss that the joined one is joined with yoga. The fuller Dvaita picture, that yoga and renunciation held together are the sole joint means to liberation, comes down to us chiefly through his sub-commentator Jayatirtha rather than a developed passage from Madhva here.
Read from a single surviving word, honestly flagged as thin.
Abhinavagupta's extant comment on this verse glosses only the word naishthiki, the character of the peace, as of the nature of a final culmination, that from which there is no returning again. No wider argument about the yoked and unyoked doer survives in his own voice here. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading, one might extend this toward the self's own recognized freedom, but that extension is not in the source and must be held as a labeled possibility, not his recorded word.
Read as a question answered by where the mind is rooted.
Sridhara opens by naming the puzzle outright: how does the same action free one person and bind another? His answer is that the joined one is rooted single-mindedly in the Supreme Lord and gives up the fruit while continuing to act, while the unjoined one, turned outward and driven by restless desire, is bound in what he calls heightened measure. The act, he insists, looks the same in both cases.
Read as a testable claim about motive.
Taken plainly, the verse offers something you can actually check in yourself: hold the thought that the deed is for the Lord and not for private gain, and watch whether the same task that once felt like a transaction starts to feel like simply what is yours to do. The claim is falsifiable in your own experience, which is part of what gives it its staying power.
All six readings agree that the deed itself is not what decides the outcome; the inner direction is. They part on how much can honestly be said beyond that. Shankara and Madhusudana trace a graded sequence ending in knowledge. Ramanuja locates the peace in the self's own bliss. Sridhara answers from where the mind is rooted. Madhva's and Abhinavagupta's own surviving words for this verse are thin, a transitional line and a single glossed word, and this page has tried to say so plainly rather than filling the gap with invented confidence. What the peace ultimately is, and how exactly the sequence toward it unfolds, is left open across the six.
A question to carry
Take one task waiting for you today. Can you name, honestly, which thought is already riding along with it, this is for what it will bring me, or this is simply what is mine to do?
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, notice the thought that rides along with it, and let the doing continue once that thought has been quietly set down.
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.
Having described the yogi's ascetic labor toward purification, Krishna now names the destination each path actually reaches, closing this stretch of teaching with a clean before-and-after.
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.
Two people can do the identical work, and only one of them is free, because freedom was never a property of the deed.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Every source reads the verse as a study in contrast: one doer, called yukta or joined, lets the fruit of action go and reaches peace; the other, ayukta or unjoined, clings to the fruit under the push of desire and is bound. The same kind of activity is in view in both cases; only the destination differs.
The joined one holds the thought, this is for the Lord, not for my own gain, and keeps working without that hunger.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
What decides between the two outcomes is placed inside the doer, not in the deed. The joined one carries the thought that the action is done for the Lord and not for personal gain; the unjoined one carries the opposite thought, that the action is done for a fruit of one's own. The lever is this inner direction, and nothing external to it.
The unjoined one holds the mirror thought, I do this for my own fruit, and stays gripped exactly where the craving is.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Abhinavagupta · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The peace named here, naishthiki, is read as final rather than passing. It is not a mood that lifts with the next change of circumstance but a settled, lasting state that several sources identify directly with liberation, a condition beyond which there is no returning to what came before.
The peace named here is not a passing mood; it is read as final, a settled state some sources call liberation outright.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The unjoined one's bondage is not simply equal to ordinary unfreedom; it is described as deepening, a fall further into the round of birth and rebirth, because the very desire that grips the fruit keeps generating more action bound to more craving.
Left ungoverned, the grip on the fruit does not merely persist, it deepens, carrying the unjoined one further into bondage.
Across AdvaitaŚaṅkara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara and Madhusūdana’s words
The verse is read as carrying its own implied instruction rather than resting as pure description: having shown what each path yields, the natural conclusion supplied by more than one source is, become the joined one, and act in that spirit.
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 joined person as bent on the self alone, unwavering toward any fruit but the self, acting only to purify the self and loosen its bondage. The peace reached is a firm, abiding bliss that is the self's own experience, not an extinction or a merging away of the self.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The little that survives in Madhva's own voice for this verse presses the word yukta tightly as joined with yoga, read alongside the wider Dvaita line preserved through Jayatirtha: yoga and renunciation held together, not either alone, as the sole joint means to liberation. Beyond that transitional remark, no fuller argument in Madhva's own words remains for this verse.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara opens with the puzzle directly, how the same action frees one person and binds another, and answers that the joined one is rooted single-mindedly in the Supreme Lord, giving up the fruit while still acting, while the unjoined one, turned outward and driven by restless desire, is bound in what he calls heightened measure.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for its clean psychological structure, the verse gives a testable account of motive: hold the thought that the deed is for the Lord and not for private gain, and the identical action that would otherwise deepen bondage instead becomes the first link in a traceable sequence toward settled peace.
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 one task from today and notice, honestly, which thought is riding along with it: this is for what it will bring me, or this is simply what is mine to do. You do not need to force the second thought into being. Just notice the first one when it arises, and let the doing continue without it.
So take the task in front of you and notice, gently, which thought is riding with it, and let the doing continue once you have set that thought down.
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 source reads the verse as a study in contrast: one doer, called yukta or joined, lets the fruit of action go and reaches peace; the other, ayukta or unjoined, clings to the fruit under the push of desire and is bound. The same kind of activity is in view in both cases; only the destination differs.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
What decides between the two outcomes is placed inside the doer, not in the deed. The joined one carries the thought that the action is done for the Lord and not for personal gain; the unjoined one carries the opposite thought, that the action is done for a fruit of one's own. The lever is this inner direction, and nothing external to it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The peace named here, naishthiki, is read as final rather than passing. It is not a mood that lifts with the next change of circumstance but a settled, lasting state that several sources identify directly with liberation, a condition beyond which there is no returning to what came before.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The unjoined one's bondage is not simply equal to ordinary unfreedom; it is described as deepening, a fall further into the round of birth and rebirth, because the very desire that grips the fruit keeps generating more action bound to more craving.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The verse is read as carrying its own implied instruction rather than resting as pure description: having shown what each path yields, the natural conclusion supplied by more than one source is, become the joined one, and act in that spirit.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the peace as liberation reached through an ordered sequence rather than in the offered action itself: the mind is first cleansed, then knowledge dawns, then all action is finally given up, and steadiness in that knowledge is what the peace actually names. The offered deed is the opening step of a path, not the destination.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads the joined person as bent on the self alone, unwavering toward any fruit but the self, acting only to purify the self and loosen its bondage. The peace reached is a firm, abiding bliss that is the self's own experience, not an extinction or a merging away of the self.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The little that survives in Madhva's own voice for this verse presses the word yukta tightly as joined with yoga, read alongside the wider Dvaita line preserved through Jayatirtha: yoga and renunciation held together, not either alone, as the sole joint means to liberation. Beyond that transitional remark, no fuller argument in Madhva's own words remains for this verse.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The surviving fragment glosses only the single word naishthiki as of the nature of a final culmination, that from which there is no returning again. No wider Kashmir Shaiva argument about the yoked and unyoked doer survives here in his own words; any extension toward recognition of the self's own freedom would be a labeled extrapolation, not his recorded reading.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara opens with the puzzle directly, how the same action frees one person and binds another, and answers that the joined one is rooted single-mindedly in the Supreme Lord, giving up the fruit while still acting, while the unjoined one, turned outward and driven by restless desire, is bound in what he calls heightened measure.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for its clean psychological structure, the verse gives a testable account of motive: hold the thought that the deed is for the Lord and not for private gain, and the identical action that would otherwise deepen bondage instead becomes the first link in a traceable sequence toward settled peace.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If the very same action can either bind me or free me, what is the actual shift I need to make, and how would I know I have made it?
The shift is not in what you do but in what you are doing it for. Shankara and Madhusudana both place the difference entirely in the thought carried into the deed: for the Lord, or for my own fruit. You would know the shift has begun the moment you notice yourself still acting after the hoped-for payoff has been set down.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Ramanuja frames it as a redirection of where the mind is bent, away from every fruit but the self and toward the self alone. The sign of progress is not the absence of results but a loosening of your wavering toward them, an evenness that holds whether or not the result arrives as hoped.
Rāmānujācārya
Sridhara is blunt that the outward act looks the same in either case, so you should not expect the shift to be visible from outside. What changes, and what you can watch for in yourself, is whether you are rooted in the Lord as you act or still quietly angling for a return on the effort.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
Take one task from today and notice, honestly, which thought is riding along with it: this is for what it will bring me, or this is simply what is mine to do. You do not need to force the second thought into being. Just notice the first one when it arises, and let the doing continue without it.
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.