Speaking, releasing, grasping, opening the eyes: still, only the senses are moving.
The list from the verse before continues and closes here. Nothing the body does is left standing outside the one steady seeing this verse names.
Talking, letting go, taking hold, opening and closing the eyes, he holds firm to one thought: it is only the senses moving among the objects of the senses.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
The sentence Krishna began one verse earlier keeps going here, and closes. The knower he is describing has already been seen going about the ordinary motions of a body, seeing, hearing, eating, walking. Now the list finishes: speaking, letting go, taking hold, and the small, constant opening and closing of the eyes. Nothing is left out.
The teaching
You speak, you release, you take hold, your eyes open and close. This is the last stretch of a single catalogue, and it is deliberately complete, so that no motion of the body stands outside the one thought this verse asks you to hold: it is only the senses moving among the objects of the senses. Sridhara, the fullest surviving voice on this particular verse among the acaryas gathered here, sorts even this small remainder carefully. Speech belongs to its own organ, releasing and grasping to their own instruments, the opening and closing of the eyes to a subtler current of breath. None of it is claimed by the self in its own nature. Because the knower sees this clearly, the thought 'I am the doer' does not arise in him, even while he goes on speaking and moving exactly as before. What is asked is not that the senses fall still. It is that the sense of self stop climbing inside each small act and calling it its own. And this, Sridhara insists by repeating his own gloss almost word for word from the verse just before, is not a realization reached once and then set down. It must be renewed in act after act, day after day, until the seeing is as natural as the acting itself. For four of the six teachers whose voices this page draws on, honesty requires a plainer word: their own surviving commentary hands this verse to an earlier one, Shankara's and Ramanuja's and Madhva's exposition each given fully at 5.8 and only continued here, and Abhinavagupta's fragmentary commentary spanning five verses at once with its actual argument placed at 5.7. Where a fuller reading is offered for those voices on this page, it is carried forward carefully from what they do say elsewhere, or marked openly as an extension beyond what survives in their own words.
The doubt that rises
If the knower can rightly say 'I do nothing' while speaking and moving and living exactly like anyone else, what is it, precisely, that separates his stillness from a fluent excuse offered by someone who has not actually seen anything at all?
Where the paths divide
Where the extant fragment is thin and the fuller reading is shared credit.
What survives as Madhusudana's own comment on this verse is brief, close to a plain restatement of the line. The fuller claim, that your non-agency rests on the self being the changeless witness, wholly distinct from every instrument, so that seeing this truth of itself produces the longing to renounce works, belongs to material the wider record credits jointly to him and to Anandagiri, Shankara's sub-commentator, and not to Madhusudana alone speaking on this verse.
Where the commentary defers wholly to the verse before it.
Ramanuja's surviving text treats 5.8 and 5.9 as one passage, with the full exposition given at 5.8 and this verse marked only as its continuation. What carries forward honestly is the shape already set there: you remain fully at work, and what you come to see is that the gunas of nature, not your true self, are what move the senses among their objects, so the deed can still be offered rather than withdrawn from.
Where the source stays close and the sub-commentary's addition is kept separate.
Madhva likewise hands this verse to his exposition of 5.8, and consistent with his broader emphasis on dependence, the acting here can be read as your delegated competence, granted and sustained by the Lord's sanction. But the further claim that this verse newly adds the giving-up of intention itself, drawn out later by his sub-commentator Jayatirtha, is not something the extant Madhva text states here on its own, and this page keeps that distinction visible rather than blurring it.
Where the source is most fragmentary, and only a labeled extension is offered.
Abhinavagupta's surviving commentary spans verses 5.7 through 5.11 as a single passage, with the actual exposition placed at 5.7; nothing of his own words is preserved specifically for this verse. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading, clearly an extrapolation from the school's broader teaching and not his recorded words, one might say that the entitlement described here names consciousness recognizing its own spontaneous freedom, so that the senses moving among their objects are simply that freedom in motion, and to see this is to stop mistaking oneself for a bounded, anxious doer.
Where the fullest extant reading on this exact verse is found.
Sridhara gives this verse its own careful treatment rather than deferring it. He sorts the whole catalogue by instrument, insists that the false sense of doing is simply absent in the knower of brahman, and stresses, by repeating his own words from the verse before almost exactly, that this seeing must be held continuously, act after act and day after day, until it becomes as natural as breathing itself.
Held to what little of the source survives, stated modestly.
Read against the thin extant fragment attributed to Madhusudana here, a modern-facing note can only say that the list of acts is deliberately exhaustive, covering even the smallest motions like the opening and closing of the eyes, and that the non-agency named throughout is a matter of correct seeing rather than a technique of willed restraint.
This page has been more careful than usual about what it will and will not claim on behalf of the acaryas. For four of the six voices gathered here, the honest record shows their commentary handing this exact verse to an earlier one; only Sridhara, and to a lesser extent Madhusudana, leave extant words on this catalogue as its own passage. What is left open, then, is not only the usual question of what the knower's non-doing ultimately rests on, witness, worship, dependence, freedom, or steady practice, but also a quieter question about the record itself: how much of what tradition says about this specific verse is this verse's own teaching, and how much is simply the teaching of the verse just before it, carried forward by continuity rather than by fresh argument.
A question to carry
The next time you catch yourself mid-sentence, mid-reach, or simply opening your eyes on waking, can you actually see, just there, that it is the senses moving among their objects, or do you only know the words for it?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So let the list run its course through your own ordinary day: the speaking, the releasing, the grasping, the opening and closing of the eyes, each one exactly as it is, and let the quiet part of you notice, without straining, that this is the senses at their own work, needing no further claim from you.
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.
This verse finishes the single sentence begun one verse earlier, completing the catalogue so that the whole of ordinary bodily life, down to the blink of an eye, falls inside the one realization Krishna is describing.
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 catalogue is completed here on purpose, so that not one thing the body does, down to the opening and closing of the eyes, is left outside the seeing.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
This verse completes the single sentence begun in the one before it. The knower of truth, settled and joined in yoga, holds the firm conviction 'I do not do anything at all,' and the verse drives the point home by naming act after act: speaking, releasing, grasping, opening and closing the eyes, added to the seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, sleeping, and breathing already named. The list is exhaustive on purpose, so that no activity the body performs is left standing outside the one realization.
Each act belongs to its own instrument, not to you: speech to the organ of speech, the hand to grasping, the eyelid to its own breath, while you in your nature do none of it.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
Each act on the list belongs to one of the body's own instruments, not to the self. Speech belongs to the organ of speech, releasing and grasping to the lower organs and the hands, the opening and closing of the eyes to one of the subtler breaths. The single thread running through the whole catalogue is that the instrument acts on its object, prompted by nature, while the self in its own nature does nothing at all.
What changes is not the acting but the claim laid over it; once the 'I' stops climbing inside the deed, the deed leaves no binding mark.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
Because the knower sees that this engagement belongs entirely to the senses moving among their objects, the thought 'I am the doer' does not arise in him, and so even while fully active he is not stained by the deed. What has changed is not the acting but the ownership claimed over it; the same motions continue, only the 'I' no longer climbs inside them.
This seeing is a stance to keep renewing, act after act, day after day, not a phrase spoken once and left behind.
Across BhaktiŚrīdharaIn Śrīdhara’s words
This 'I do nothing at all' is a stance to be held steadily, not a phrase spoken once and set aside. Sridhara in particular repeats the gloss from the previous verse almost word for word to make the point: the posture must be kept in act after act, day after day, until the seeing becomes second nature and the small workings of the body no longer pull the sense of self back into them.
Where the sources themselves fall quiet on this exact verse, as they do for four of the six voices here, the honest path is to say so plainly rather than to speak confidently in a silence.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Where the acaryas' own extant words on this specific verse are thin, as they are for four of the six voices gathered here, the honest common ground is narrower than usual: this page can state plainly what the source record does and does not preserve for each master, rather than smoothing over the gaps with invented argument.
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's own extant commentary treats 5.8 and 5.9 as one passage, with the exposition given at 5.8 and 5.9 marked only as its continuation. What can honestly be carried forward is the shape already established there: the karma-yogin stays fully at work, and what is seen is that the gunas of nature, not the self, prompt the senses among their objects, so that the deed can be offered to the Lord without any withdrawal from action.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's own extant comment likewise treats 5.8 and 5.9 together, deferring the full argument to the earlier verse. Consistent with that frame and with his broader emphasis on dependence, the acting described here can be read as the self's delegated competence, exercised only by the Lord's sanction; but this page does not extend that into a specific claim about this verse's own catalogue of acts, since the source itself does not.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's surviving commentary treats verses 5.7 through 5.11 as a single span, with the exposition placed at 5.7 and nothing preserved as his own words on 5.9, or even on 5.8, in particular. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading, clearly marked here as extrapolation rather than his recorded words, one might extend the school's emphasis so that the entitlement to act names consciousness recognizing its own spontaneous freedom, and the senses moving among their objects are that same freedom in play.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara gives the fullest and most specific extant reading of this verse among the six. He sorts the entire catalogue of acts by instrument, insists that the false sense of doing is simply absent in the knower of brahman rather than suppressed by effort, and stresses above all that the posture must be held continuously, act after act and day after day, until it becomes second nature.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read against what little of Madhusudana's own comment on this verse survives, a modern-facing gloss can only note that the list of acts is deliberately exhaustive, so that no activity escapes the realization, and that the non-agency named is a matter of seeing correctly rather than a technique of willed restraint.
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
Try this the next time you notice yourself mid-action: speaking, reaching for something, opening your eyes on waking. Pause for one breath and let the thought stand, quietly, without straining after it: it is the senses moving among their objects. Do not stop the act. Only stop climbing inside it and calling it yours. Return to this again the next time you notice, and again after that, until the noticing itself becomes as natural as the acting.
So the next time you notice yourself speaking, reaching, or simply opening your eyes, let the thought rest there for one breath: it is the senses moving among their objects, and nothing further needs to be claimed.
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
his verse completes the single sentence begun in the one before it. The knower of truth, settled and joined in yoga, holds the firm conviction 'I do not do anything at all,' and the verse drives the point home by naming act after act: speaking, releasing, grasping, opening and closing the eyes, added to the seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, sleeping, and breathing already named. The list is exhaustive on purpose, so that no activity the body performs is left standing outside the one realization.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Each act on the list belongs to one of the body's own instruments, not to the self. Speech belongs to the organ of speech, releasing and grasping to the lower organs and the hands, the opening and closing of the eyes to one of the subtler breaths. The single thread running through the whole catalogue is that the instrument acts on its object, prompted by nature, while the self in its own nature does nothing at all.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Because the knower sees that this engagement belongs entirely to the senses moving among their objects, the thought 'I am the doer' does not arise in him, and so even while fully active he is not stained by the deed. What has changed is not the acting but the ownership claimed over it; the same motions continue, only the 'I' no longer climbs inside them.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
This 'I do nothing at all' is a stance to be held steadily, not a phrase spoken once and set aside. Sridhara in particular repeats the gloss from the previous verse almost word for word to make the point: the posture must be kept in act after act, day after day, until the seeing becomes second nature and the small workings of the body no longer pull the sense of self back into them.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Where the acaryas' own extant words on this specific verse are thin, as they are for four of the six voices gathered here, the honest common ground is narrower than usual: this page can state plainly what the source record does and does not preserve for each master, rather than smoothing over the gaps with invented argument.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The extant fragment attributed to Madhusudana on this verse is little more than a restatement of the line itself. The fuller Advaita argument, that the self's non-agency is gnostic, resting on its being the changeless witness utterly distinct from every instrument, so that seeing this truth itself produces the longing to renounce works, belongs to material the wider source record credits jointly to him and to Anandagiri, Shankara's sub-commentator, rather than to Madhusudana alone on this verse.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's own extant commentary treats 5.8 and 5.9 as one passage, with the exposition given at 5.8 and 5.9 marked only as its continuation. What can honestly be carried forward is the shape already established there: the karma-yogin stays fully at work, and what is seen is that the gunas of nature, not the self, prompt the senses among their objects, so that the deed can be offered to the Lord without any withdrawal from action.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's own extant comment likewise treats 5.8 and 5.9 together, deferring the full argument to the earlier verse. Consistent with that frame and with his broader emphasis on dependence, the acting described here can be read as the self's delegated competence, exercised only by the Lord's sanction; but this page does not extend that into a specific claim about this verse's own catalogue of acts, since the source itself does not.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving commentary treats verses 5.7 through 5.11 as a single span, with the exposition placed at 5.7 and nothing preserved as his own words on 5.9, or even on 5.8, in particular. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading, clearly marked here as extrapolation rather than his recorded words, one might extend the school's emphasis so that the entitlement to act names consciousness recognizing its own spontaneous freedom, and the senses moving among their objects are that same freedom in play.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara gives the fullest and most specific extant reading of this verse among the six. He sorts the entire catalogue of acts by instrument, insists that the false sense of doing is simply absent in the knower of brahman rather than suppressed by effort, and stresses above all that the posture must be held continuously, act after act and day after day, until it becomes second nature.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read against what little of Madhusudana's own comment on this verse survives, a modern-facing gloss can only note that the list of acts is deliberately exhaustive, so that no activity escapes the realization, and that the non-agency named is a matter of seeing correctly rather than a technique of willed restraint.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If a realized person can rightly say 'I do nothing' while speaking, eating, and moving like everyone else, what stops me from using the same words to excuse whatever I do?
The honest answer starts with what the sources will not let you skip: for four of the six acaryas gathered here, their own extant comment on this exact verse simply defers to an earlier one, and the fullest surviving voice, Sridhara's, insists the posture is a steady, effortful holding, not a phrase available for the asking.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
What changes in the knower is not the acting but the ownership claimed over it. The deed continues exactly as before, speech, sight, breath, and all the rest; what falls away is only the 'I' climbing inside the deed and calling it its own. That falling-away is not a decision you announce, it is what remains after the seeing has actually happened.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The test, then, is not the words you say but whether you can honestly see, in this act right now, that it is the senses moving among their objects and nothing more, with no doership left over in you to claim. For everyone still reaching for that seeing, the words remain only words, and the deed still leaves its mark.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Try this the next time you notice yourself mid-action: speaking, reaching for something, opening your eyes on waking. Pause for one breath and let the thought stand, quietly, without straining after it: it is the senses moving among their objects. Do not stop the act. Only stop climbing inside it and calling it yours. Return to this again the next time you notice, and again after that, until the noticing itself becomes as natural as the acting.
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.