Renunciation and yoga are two names for one inner act: laying down the resolve set on the fruit.
We picture renouncing as walking away from the work and putting on the robe. Krishna gives the word back to the one who stays and keeps acting, because what is given up is inward: the mind's resolve aimed at a result to come.
Know that what they call renunciation is yoga, Arjuna. No one becomes a yogi without giving up selfish intent.
Having taught that giving up the fruit of action steadies the heart, Krishna now turns and names that fruit-free action by the honored word renunciation, telling Arjuna that the two are not two paths but one.
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.
Krishna tells you that what people call renunciation, the giving up of action, is the very same thing as yoga, the acting itself; one inner stance carries both names, and the same person rightly answers to both.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Jayatīrtha · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 16 others’ words
Krishna tells Arjuna that what people call renunciation (sannyasa, the giving up of action) is the very same thing as yoga (the doing of action in the karma-yoga manner). He is not subordinating one to the other or merging two different practices; he is saying that a single inner stance carries two names. The commentators stress that the heart of both names is one thing: letting go of sankalpa, the fruit-bound resolve. The renouncer gives up all action along with its fruit; the karma-yogi keeps acting but gives up the resolve aimed at the fruit. Because both share this one inner release, the same person can rightly be called by both names.
And here is the reason and the test: no one becomes a yogi without letting go of the fruit-bound resolve, for while that resolve stands the mind keeps leaning on results to come and cannot grow still.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Jayatīrtha · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Sivananda · Tilak · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 15 others’ words
The second line gives the reason and the test: no one whatever becomes a yogi without renouncing sankalpa. Sankalpa is the mind's resolve or planning fixed on a desired fruit, the imagining faculty that schemes for results to come. As long as that resolve stands, the mind is scattered and restless, because expecting fruits keeps it unsteady. So renouncing sankalpa is not optional decoration on top of yoga; it is the very condition that makes yoga possible. Drop the fruit-resolve and the mind gathers and steadies; hold onto it and one is no yogi at all, however much action one performs.
See how one word is lent to the other: not by sameness of outward act but by a shared likeness, the way courage lets you call a boy a lion, for the renouncer and the one who acts both let the fruit go.
Across Advaita, BhaktiĀnandagiri · Madhusūdana · Dhanapati · BaladevaIn Ānandagiri, Madhusūdana, and 2 others’ words
Several commentators explain HOW one word can be lent to the other. The identity of the two names is figurative or secondary, resting on a shared feature, the way one calls a brave boy a lion because of a likeness in courage. Here the shared feature is the common abandonment of the fruit and the common stilling of the restless, craving mind. Because the karma-yogi shares exactly these with the formal renouncer, he too is called renouncer and yogi, by a likeness rather than by literal sameness of outward act.
So the renunciation in view is inward, no matter of robes or the quitting of the household fire; do your work free of the fruit, and that fruit-free action becomes the stepping-stone toward the gathered, meditative mind.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Nīlakaṇṭha · Sivananda · Tilak · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 4 others’ words
True renunciation is therefore inward, not a matter of outward marks, robes, or quitting the household fire. It is a frame of mind, the surrender of the desireful resolve, and it can be present in someone who still acts. This verse praises karma-yoga by lending it the honored name of renunciation, and it then shows that this fruit-free action is the outer support and stepping-stone toward the yoga of meditation; do desireless actions and the gathered, meditative mind follows in due course.
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 sannyasa as renunciation in the highest sense, the relinquishing of all action and its fruit, and they are careful to say that calling karma-yoga by this name is figurative and is done for the sake of praise. The primary, literal renunciation belongs to one who has truly given up all the means of action; it cannot literally hold in the field of work. So the householder who acts is called renouncer and yogi only secondarily, by a likeness through the doer who in both cases gives up the fruit-resolve. They explicitly reject reading the verse as a full, literal identification of karma-yoga with sannyasa, comparing such language to calling a young man a lion. One of them adds that yoga is the restraint of the mind's movements (the fivefold modifications), and that the fruit-resolve is a form of attachment whose restraint is, in a secondary sense, both yoga and renunciation; thus there is no contradiction in lending the word.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as deliberately blocking a rival doctrine: the view that knowledge-discipline (jnana-yoga) is the real practice and action-discipline is merely its limb or helper. They say the verse states an identity, not a subordination. What is called sannyasa, the renunciation of fruit-bound resolves, is yoga; and what is called yoga, karma-yoga so qualified, is sannyasa. The two are one inner stance approached from two sides, the giving-up side and the joining side. For them, renouncing sankalpa specifically means giving up the false conceit of self toward matter, which is not the self, by dwelling on the truth of the self; one in whom this conceit remains is simply not on the action-discipline at all. So the door is shut on the joining-of-action-to-knowledge reading.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators take 'yoga' here in its primary sense, as the means to knowledge and the worship of the Lord, and they argue that renunciation is included WITHIN that yoga rather than being a separate thing. The word 'too' in the source shows that renunciation, though sometimes spoken of separately, is not really different from yoga. They press a sharper point: the bare abandonment of resolve is not by itself full renunciation. The view that yoga is merely doing one's own action for the worship of the Lord, and so could stand even without renunciation, is unsound; for if one does not give up desire and intention, one does not possess the means at all. So 'sankalpa' here stands by implication for desire and the rest, and renunciation is genuinely contained in yoga.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator reads 'renunciation' (sannyasa) in its etymological sense, as a derivative word rather than a fixed technical term for a stage of life. Renunciation means the complete relinquishing, the depositing, the offering of one's actions unto the Supreme Self. He compares the word 'vaidya': conventionally it names the physician, but etymologically it applies to anyone in whom there is learning. In the same way 'renunciation' is not confined to the formal orders of life; by its root meaning it reaches wherever actions are wholly offered up to the Supreme Self.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse in a devotional key. One holds that sannyasa and yoga share a single purpose, both turning on the same giving-up-of-fruit point. The other deepens it into the love of the Lord: the renunciation in view is one carried out in the mode of one whose every disposition has become His, having the very form of the relish of separation in love. The fruits given up are the fruits one had wished for oneself, and from such giving-up the success of union with the Lord follows. The one who has not renounced sankalpa is one who has not let go of the inner resolve set on his OWN enjoyment, and such a person, even wearing the outward marks of devotion, is never a yogi. So long as the wish to taste one's own pleasure abides, the wish to taste the Lord's pleasure cannot dawn; both cannot stand together in one heart.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators keep the identity functional rather than merely verbal: the two names attach to the same inward act, the laying down of the fruit-resolve and the consequent absence of mental scattering. One states it plainly: renunciation of the fruit of action is exactly the meaning of the word renunciation, and the stilling of the mind away from sense objects is exactly the meaning of yoga, so the two words have come to carry one and the same meaning. One frames the verse as answering an objection: in the path of knowledge, where all sense-activity ceases, the word 'renunciation' is used, and in the restraint of the mind the word 'yoga' is used, so how can one karma-yogi (whose path involves full sense-activity) be called both? The answer is that both names apply to him by figurative usage, on the strength of his resemblance to the fruit-renouncer and to the mind-restrainer. One reads the verse as hoisting a flag over the union of the two paths, where karma and yoga begin just where the threads of illusory desires are snapped by renunciation while acting.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators stress that true sannyasa is a state of mind, not an outward act. One defines sankalpa as the imagining faculty that plans for the future and guesses at results, and says no one who plans and expects fruits can be a karma-yogi, since such thought keeps the mind unsteady; karma-yoga is here praised because it is the external aid and stepping-stone to the yoga of meditation. One insists that becoming fireless or inactive is not the mark of real renunciation; true sannyasa is giving up the desireful reason, the hope of fruit, and so a man who performs his duties while giving up that hope is the true sannyasin, a doctrine the Gita reconciles with the older smriti rule. One reads the verse as repeating the fifth chapter's teaching that sannyasa (sankhya-yoga) and karma-yoga are not two but one, with the same fruit; just as the formal sannyasi is a complete renouncer of the conceit of being the doer, the karma-yogi who acts as mere duty, wholly renouncing fruit and attachment, is equally a complete renouncer, so between yogi and sannyasi there is no difference at all.
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
Watch the place where renunciation actually lives. It is not in robes or in walking away from your work; it is in the quiet act of releasing your grip on the results. Sankalpa is the busy faculty that keeps planning the future and guessing how things will turn out, and it is exactly this that leaves the mind restless and unsteady. So do your duty fully, but let go of the demand for a particular outcome; that letting-go is itself the renunciation the scriptures honor. Practiced this way, fruit-free action becomes the external support that steadies the mind and, in due course, leads on to the yoga of meditation. You do not have to choose between acting and renouncing; you renounce inside the very act.
So do the work that is yours fully, and quietly loosen your grip on how it turns out; that letting-go, made inside the very act, is the renunciation the scriptures honor.
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machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rishna tells Arjuna that what people call renunciation (sannyasa, the giving up of action) is the very same thing as yoga (the doing of action in the karma-yoga manner). He is not subordinating one to the other or merging two different practices; he is saying that a single inner stance carries two names. The commentators stress that the heart of both names is one thing: letting go of sankalpa, the fruit-bound resolve. The renouncer gives up all action along with its fruit; the karma-yogi keeps acting but gives up the resolve aimed at the fruit. Because both share this one inner release, the same person can rightly be called by both names.
Braided from 18 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The second line gives the reason and the test: no one whatever becomes a yogi without renouncing sankalpa. Sankalpa is the mind's resolve or planning fixed on a desired fruit, the imagining faculty that schemes for results to come. As long as that resolve stands, the mind is scattered and restless, because expecting fruits keeps it unsteady. So renouncing sankalpa is not optional decoration on top of yoga; it is the very condition that makes yoga possible. Drop the fruit-resolve and the mind gathers and steadies; hold onto it and one is no yogi at all, however much action one performs.
Braided from 17 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Several commentators explain HOW one word can be lent to the other. The identity of the two names is figurative or secondary, resting on a shared feature, the way one calls a brave boy a lion because of a likeness in courage. Here the shared feature is the common abandonment of the fruit and the common stilling of the restless, craving mind. Because the karma-yogi shares exactly these with the formal renouncer, he too is called renouncer and yogi, by a likeness rather than by literal sameness of outward act.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīla Baladeva
True renunciation is therefore inward, not a matter of outward marks, robes, or quitting the household fire. It is a frame of mind, the surrender of the desireful resolve, and it can be present in someone who still acts. This verse praises karma-yoga by lending it the honored name of renunciation, and it then shows that this fruit-free action is the outer support and stepping-stone toward the yoga of meditation; do desireless actions and the gathered, meditative mind follows in due course.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read sannyasa as renunciation in the highest sense, the relinquishing of all action and its fruit, and they are careful to say that calling karma-yoga by this name is figurative and is done for the sake of praise. The primary, literal renunciation belongs to one who has truly given up all the means of action; it cannot literally hold in the field of work. So the householder who acts is called renouncer and yogi only secondarily, by a likeness through the doer who in both cases gives up the fruit-resolve. They explicitly reject reading the verse as a full, literal identification of karma-yoga with sannyasa, comparing such language to calling a young man a lion. One of them adds that yoga is the restraint of the mind's movements (the fivefold modifications), and that the fruit-resolve is a form of attachment whose restraint is, in a secondary sense, both yoga and renunciation; thus there is no contradiction in lending the word.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read the verse as deliberately blocking a rival doctrine: the view that knowledge-discipline (jnana-yoga) is the real practice and action-discipline is merely its limb or helper. They say the verse states an identity, not a subordination. What is called sannyasa, the renunciation of fruit-bound resolves, is yoga; and what is called yoga, karma-yoga so qualified, is sannyasa. The two are one inner stance approached from two sides, the giving-up side and the joining side. For them, renouncing sankalpa specifically means giving up the false conceit of self toward matter, which is not the self, by dwelling on the truth of the self; one in whom this conceit remains is simply not on the action-discipline at all. So the door is shut on the joining-of-action-to-knowledge reading.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators take 'yoga' here in its primary sense, as the means to knowledge and the worship of the Lord, and they argue that renunciation is included WITHIN that yoga rather than being a separate thing. The word 'too' in the source shows that renunciation, though sometimes spoken of separately, is not really different from yoga. They press a sharper point: the bare abandonment of resolve is not by itself full renunciation. The view that yoga is merely doing one's own action for the worship of the Lord, and so could stand even without renunciation, is unsound; for if one does not give up desire and intention, one does not possess the means at all. So 'sankalpa' here stands by implication for desire and the rest, and renunciation is genuinely contained in yoga.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Bhedabheda
This commentator reads 'renunciation' (sannyasa) in its etymological sense, as a derivative word rather than a fixed technical term for a stage of life. Renunciation means the complete relinquishing, the depositing, the offering of one's actions unto the Supreme Self. He compares the word 'vaidya': conventionally it names the physician, but etymologically it applies to anyone in whom there is learning. In the same way 'renunciation' is not confined to the formal orders of life; by its root meaning it reaches wherever actions are wholly offered up to the Supreme Self.
Śrī Bhāskara
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the verse in a devotional key. One holds that sannyasa and yoga share a single purpose, both turning on the same giving-up-of-fruit point. The other deepens it into the love of the Lord: the renunciation in view is one carried out in the mode of one whose every disposition has become His, having the very form of the relish of separation in love. The fruits given up are the fruits one had wished for oneself, and from such giving-up the success of union with the Lord follows. The one who has not renounced sankalpa is one who has not let go of the inner resolve set on his OWN enjoyment, and such a person, even wearing the outward marks of devotion, is never a yogi. So long as the wish to taste one's own pleasure abides, the wish to taste the Lord's pleasure cannot dawn; both cannot stand together in one heart.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators keep the identity functional rather than merely verbal: the two names attach to the same inward act, the laying down of the fruit-resolve and the consequent absence of mental scattering. One states it plainly: renunciation of the fruit of action is exactly the meaning of the word renunciation, and the stilling of the mind away from sense objects is exactly the meaning of yoga, so the two words have come to carry one and the same meaning. One frames the verse as answering an objection: in the path of knowledge, where all sense-activity ceases, the word 'renunciation' is used, and in the restraint of the mind the word 'yoga' is used, so how can one karma-yogi (whose path involves full sense-activity) be called both? The answer is that both names apply to him by figurative usage, on the strength of his resemblance to the fruit-renouncer and to the mind-restrainer. One reads the verse as hoisting a flag over the union of the two paths, where karma and yoga begin just where the threads of illusory desires are snapped by renunciation while acting.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators stress that true sannyasa is a state of mind, not an outward act. One defines sankalpa as the imagining faculty that plans for the future and guesses at results, and says no one who plans and expects fruits can be a karma-yogi, since such thought keeps the mind unsteady; karma-yoga is here praised because it is the external aid and stepping-stone to the yoga of meditation. One insists that becoming fireless or inactive is not the mark of real renunciation; true sannyasa is giving up the desireful reason, the hope of fruit, and so a man who performs his duties while giving up that hope is the true sannyasin, a doctrine the Gita reconciles with the older smriti rule. One reads the verse as repeating the fifth chapter's teaching that sannyasa (sankhya-yoga) and karma-yoga are not two but one, with the same fruit; just as the formal sannyasi is a complete renouncer of the conceit of being the doer, the karma-yogi who acts as mere duty, wholly renouncing fruit and attachment, is equally a complete renouncer, so between yogi and sannyasi there is no difference at all.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If I keep acting in the world, in what real sense have I renounced anything, and how is that the same as walking away from everything?
The renunciation Krishna means is inward, not outward. The formal renouncer gives up all action together with its fruit; the karma-yogi keeps acting but gives up the resolve aimed at the fruit. Both perform one and the same inner act, the laying down of sankalpa, the fruit-bound resolve, and it is on that single shared act, not on the outer difference, that both earn the names renouncer and yogi.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva
So you have renounced something very real: the desireful resolve that scatters the mind. As long as that resolve stands, the mind stays restless because it is leaning on results to come; release it and the mind gathers and steadies. That is why the verse says no one becomes a yogi without renouncing sankalpa. Real renunciation is a frame of mind, not the giving up of the household fire or the wearing of outward marks.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
This is the same renunciation as walking away from everything because both rest on the same release of the fruit, only approached from two sides: the giving-up side calls it sannyasa, the joining side calls it yoga. Acting in this fruit-free way is not a lesser path but the outer support and stepping-stone that carries you toward the yoga of meditation.
Vedānta Deśika · Rāmānujācārya · Swami Sivananda
Contemplation
Watch the place where renunciation actually lives. It is not in robes or in walking away from your work; it is in the quiet act of releasing your grip on the results. Sankalpa is the busy faculty that keeps planning the future and guessing how things will turn out, and it is exactly this that leaves the mind restless and unsteady. So do your duty fully, but let go of the demand for a particular outcome; that letting-go is itself the renunciation the scriptures honor. Practiced this way, fruit-free action becomes the external support that steadies the mind and, in due course, leads on to the yoga of meditation. You do not have to choose between acting and renouncing; you renounce inside the very act.
Sit with this · Swami Sivananda
All the translations and commentary
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