Before the teaching continues, Krishna fixes his terms: what is imperishable, what is your own, and what counts as action.
It reads like a dictionary entry set down in the middle of a battlefield dialogue. It is exactly that, and exactly for that reason it is not a digression: the rest of the chapter depends on getting these three words right.
The Blessed Lord said: The imperishable is the supreme Brahman. What is called adhyatma is one's own being as it stands in the body. And the letting-go that brings beings into existence is what is called action.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Arjuna had closed the last exchange with a run of direct questions. Krishna now begins to hand them back, one by one, in exactly the order they were raised. This verse settles three at once: what Brahman is, what adhyatma is, and what karma is. It reads like a definition because it is one, and the rest of the chapter is built on these three words holding steady.
The teaching
The imperishable, akshara, could be heard as no more than a syllable, since that is one of its ordinary senses and the Gita itself will later call Om the one-syllabled Brahman. But here it comes marked 'supreme,' and nothing stands above what is called supreme. So the word is made to point past any sound, past scripture, past even unmanifest Nature, to the highest reality itself, the one under whose rule, the sages say, the sun and moon keep their stations. Adhyatma, next, is fixed as one's own being, svabhava, exactly as it stands in relation to the body: the dimension of reality met from inside, as the inmost self who lives here. And karma is defined not as any deed whatsoever but by its function: it is visarga, a letting-go, a sending-forth, and it is called action here specifically because it is what brings beings into existence. On the most widely shared reading that letting-go is the sacrificial offering, which starts the chain the sages recite: oblation to sun, sun to rain, rain to food, food to beings.
The doubt that rises
If one's own being can be read as Brahman's own nature, as matter to be shed, as the living self distinct from the Lord, or as consciousness recognizing itself, and if action here can mean sacrifice, procreation, the Lord's own creative outpouring, or the universe expressing itself, what, finally, is being fixed by these definitions, and what depends on getting them right?
Where the paths divide
Read as unconditioned Brahman and its own nature as the inmost Self.
Akshara is pure, attributeless consciousness, the one reality that rules and upholds the whole display, even unmanifest space; a mark that fits only such unconditioned awareness overrules the surface habit that would read the word as Om. Adhyatma is that same Brahman's own being, present in the body as the inmost Self, its own nature rather than something merely connected to it. Karma is the sacrificial letting-go, the paradigm act that sustains the chain from oblation to living beings.
Read as the liberated self set against matter to be relinquished.
The imperishable is the self, the field-knower, restored to its true form once freed of matter, supported by the scriptural line that the unmanifest dissolves into the imperishable. But svabhava, one's own being, is here read concretely as matter itself, prakriti and the subtle elements bound up with the self though never identical to it. The seeker must know both, and oppositely: the imperishable self as what to attain, this material svabhava as what to give up, and the act of begetting, read as karma here, as what to shun.
Read as a lesson in careful boundaries, self from instrument, self from Lord.
The word 'supreme' is read as doing exact work: barring akshara from meaning the Veda or prakriti, fixing it on Brahman alone. Svabhava is the living being's own constant nature, kept distinct by etymology from the ever-changing inner organ and, just as firmly, from the Lord, since collapsing the soul's identity into the Lord's would erase the real difference between them. Karma belongs to the Lord's own creative activity alone, not to the sacrificer's ritual merit.
Read from a brief surviving fragment, as consciousness's own self-expansion.
Brahman is named for being vast and for making things grow, and that vastness is identified directly as consciousness, one's own self, whose nature never fails. Because this awareness has no bounding edge, it holds the whole universe's power within itself, and visarga is its free, sovereign out-pouring, at once a shining of outward being and of beings turned outward, bringing forth both the conscious knowers and the insentient world. This is what is called karma. The surviving comment stops there; anything more would be extrapolation beyond what the text itself gives.
Read as the self held as Brahman's own portioned presence in the body.
The verse's own order is treated as deliberate: three questions, three lines, in the sequence Arjuna asked them. Svabhava is Brahman's own being appearing, by way of a portion, as the individual soul, and adhyatma is that same Brahman standing with reference to the body as its enjoyer. Karma is the sacrificial offering, explicitly noted as a stand-in for action generally, the giving-over that brings creatures into being and raises them toward higher conditions.
Read as the technical groundwork the whole chapter is built on.
A scripturally stated mark, ruling over and upholding the whole world even to unmanifest space, is read as overruling the loose convention that would fix 'akshara' onto the syllable Om; once that convention yields, the plain root sense, imperishable, all-pervading, stands as primary. Adhyatma is the Absolute's own nature, not the bundle of sense-instruments, and karma is narrowed to the specific Vedic acts, sacrifice, gift, offering, that sustain the chain of life. Fixing these three terms is treated as the precondition for the rest of the chapter's teaching to mean what it is meant to mean.
All six readings agree the verse is answering exactly what Arjuna asked, in the order he asked it, and that akshara names the highest reality, not a sound or a scripture. They part sharply on what one's own being, svabhava, finally is: Brahman's own nature for some, the individual soul as Brahman's portion for others, and pointedly matter to be shed for Vishishtadvaita. They part just as sharply on action: sacrifice on the widest reading, procreation for Vishishtadvaita, the Lord's own creative act for Dvaita, and consciousness's free self-expansion for the Shaiva fragment that survives. This page holds those apart rather than folding them into one picture.
A question to carry
If the words Brahman, your own being, and action have to be defined before the rest of this teaching can be trusted, which of your own assumptions about 'your own nature' and 'your own actions' might this verse be quietly asking you to set down first?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Let the first word be the one that settles: what is named here is the highest reality, and nothing stands above it. Carry that steadily, and let every later teaching in this chapter find its place behind 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.
Arjuna closed the previous exchange with a string of direct questions; here Krishna begins returning them, in the order they were asked, starting with the largest of them: Brahman, the self, and action.
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 imperishable named here is the supreme Brahman, not the syllable Om and not primal Nature; nothing outranks what is called supreme.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse is Krishna beginning to return Arjuna's own questions to him in the order he asked them, a small courtesy that lets each answer land against the question it was meant for. Three heads are settled here at once: what Brahman is, what adhyatma is, and what karma is.
Adhyatma is your own being, svabhava, exactly as it stands in relation to this body, whatever that being finally turns out to consist of.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Madhva · Madhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 2 others’ words
Akshara, the imperishable, is read as the supreme Brahman and not the syllable Om, even though the word can conventionally mean 'syllable' and the Gita itself will later call Om the one-syllabled Brahman. The qualifier 'supreme' is what settles it: nothing outranks what is called supreme, so the word must point to the highest, unconditioned reality.
Karma is defined by what it does: it is the sending-forth, visarga, that brings beings into existence, not simply any act at all.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Adhyatma is identified with svabhava, one's own being, understood as reality standing with reference to the embodied self. All the commentators agree the verse is fixing the meaning of the term adhyatma this way, even while they read what that 'own being' actually consists of very differently.
Krishna answers in the order Arjuna asked, a small courtesy that lets each answer settle cleanly against its own question.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
Karma is defined here technically as visarga, a letting-go or sending-forth, and it is defined by what it does rather than by any single fixed picture: it is what brings beings into existence, bhuta-bhava-udbhava-kara. On the most widely shared reading this is the Vedic sacrificial offering, which sets in motion the chain from oblation to sun, from sun to rain, from rain to food, from food to beings.
A dry definition is not neutral ground; how you read one's own being and one's own action here already shapes how you will hear everything the chapter says next.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 4 others’ words
Whatever their differences on the details, none of the six reads this verse as an ethical instruction to be obeyed. It is definitional. Krishna is fixing technical vocabulary, Brahman, adhyatma, karma, before building the rest of the chapter's teaching on that foundation.
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 akshara as the self, the field-knower, in its liberated, matter-free own-form, supported by the scriptural line that the unmanifest dissolves into the imperishable. Strikingly, svabhava/adhyatma here is matter itself, prakriti and the subtle elements, the not-self bound up with the self and set out in the five-fires teaching; the seeker must know the imperishable self as what to attain and this material svabhava as what to relinquish. Karma is read concretely as the procreative act, a thing to be recognized and then shunned.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva reads 'supreme' as explicitly barring the Veda or prakriti as possible meanings of akshara, fixing it on Brahman. Svabhava is the living being's own constant nature, distinguished by careful etymology from both the changing inner organ and the Lord, since the Lord is never rightly the living being's 'own' without erasing their real difference. Karma belongs to the Lord alone: his creative sending-forth of beings and states, not the sacrificer's cake-offering, a reading Madhva defends by direct rejection of the ritual-merit alternative.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the verse's word order as itself doctrinally deliberate, three questions answered in three lines, in the order Arjuna asked them. He reads svabhava as Brahman's own being appearing by way of a portion in the form of the jiva, and adhyatma as that same Brahman standing with reference to the body as its enjoyer, so the individual self is Brahman's portioned presence rather than something apart from it. Karma he reads as the sacrificial offering, explicitly noted as a representative stand-in for action generally.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for a wider audience, Madhusudana's careful argument becomes the clearest technical account on offer: akshara is fixed as unconditioned Brahman against the standing convention that would read it as Om, by the method of letting a scripturally stated mark override mere linguistic habit when nothing else fits it. Adhyatma is the Absolute's own nature, not a mere name for the sense-faculties, and karma is restricted to the specific Vedic acts of sacrifice, gift, and offering that sustain the chain of life.
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
Sit for a moment with just the first word before moving on to the rest of the chapter. Whatever else this verse settles, it insists that when the goal is named, it is named as supreme, beyond which nothing stands higher. Let that fix itself quietly before you carry the later teaching forward, so that no later answer about Brahman gets mistaken for something smaller than this.
So let the first word settle before you read on: what is named here is the highest reality and nothing higher, and every later answer in this chapter keeps its place behind that.
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
he verse is Krishna beginning to return Arjuna's own questions to him in the order he asked them, a small courtesy that lets each answer land against the question it was meant for. Three heads are settled here at once: what Brahman is, what adhyatma is, and what karma is.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Akshara, the imperishable, is read as the supreme Brahman and not the syllable Om, even though the word can conventionally mean 'syllable' and the Gita itself will later call Om the one-syllabled Brahman. The qualifier 'supreme' is what settles it: nothing outranks what is called supreme, so the word must point to the highest, unconditioned reality.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Adhyatma is identified with svabhava, one's own being, understood as reality standing with reference to the embodied self. All the commentators agree the verse is fixing the meaning of the term adhyatma this way, even while they read what that 'own being' actually consists of very differently.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Karma is defined here technically as visarga, a letting-go or sending-forth, and it is defined by what it does rather than by any single fixed picture: it is what brings beings into existence, bhuta-bhava-udbhava-kara. On the most widely shared reading this is the Vedic sacrificial offering, which sets in motion the chain from oblation to sun, from sun to rain, from rain to food, from food to beings.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Whatever their differences on the details, none of the six reads this verse as an ethical instruction to be obeyed. It is definitional. Krishna is fixing technical vocabulary, Brahman, adhyatma, karma, before building the rest of the chapter's teaching on that foundation.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Akshara is unconditioned, attributeless Brahman, pure consciousness that rules and upholds the whole display up to unmanifest space; Madhusudana traces this at length through the full scriptural passage to Gargi, arguing that a mark true only of unconditioned awareness overrules the surface convention that would fix 'akshara' onto Om. Adhyatma is that same Brahman's own nature, present in the body as the inmost Self, its own being rather than something merely related to it. Karma is the sacrificial letting-go, Vedic action proper, that sets the chain from oblation to beings in motion.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads akshara as the self, the field-knower, in its liberated, matter-free own-form, supported by the scriptural line that the unmanifest dissolves into the imperishable. Strikingly, svabhava/adhyatma here is matter itself, prakriti and the subtle elements, the not-self bound up with the self and set out in the five-fires teaching; the seeker must know the imperishable self as what to attain and this material svabhava as what to relinquish. Karma is read concretely as the procreative act, a thing to be recognized and then shunned.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva reads 'supreme' as explicitly barring the Veda or prakriti as possible meanings of akshara, fixing it on Brahman. Svabhava is the living being's own constant nature, distinguished by careful etymology from both the changing inner organ and the Lord, since the Lord is never rightly the living being's 'own' without erasing their real difference. Karma belongs to the Lord alone: his creative sending-forth of beings and states, not the sacrificer's cake-offering, a reading Madhva defends by direct rejection of the ritual-merit alternative.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving comment reads Brahman as vast, growth-giving consciousness itself, unbounded and holding the power of the whole universe within it; adhyatma names exactly this consciousness as one's own self. Visarga, on this reading, is neither ritual nor procreation but the sovereign self-expansion of free awareness, an out-pouring that brings forth both conscious knowers and insentient things and, finally, the true being of beings in which the false expanse dissolves. This is what he calls karma. His comment here is brief; nothing further of his hand on this verse survives to expand it.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse's word order as itself doctrinally deliberate, three questions answered in three lines, in the order Arjuna asked them. He reads svabhava as Brahman's own being appearing by way of a portion in the form of the jiva, and adhyatma as that same Brahman standing with reference to the body as its enjoyer, so the individual self is Brahman's portioned presence rather than something apart from it. Karma he reads as the sacrificial offering, explicitly noted as a representative stand-in for action generally.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for a wider audience, Madhusudana's careful argument becomes the clearest technical account on offer: akshara is fixed as unconditioned Brahman against the standing convention that would read it as Om, by the method of letting a scripturally stated mark override mere linguistic habit when nothing else fits it. Adhyatma is the Absolute's own nature, not a mere name for the sense-faculties, and karma is restricted to the specific Vedic acts of sacrifice, gift, and offering that sustain the chain of life.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
This verse reads like a dictionary entry, not a teaching. Why does Krishna stop to define words in the middle of comforting Arjuna about death and the imperishable Self?
Because Arjuna had asked exact questions at the end of the previous exchange, and this verse is Krishna keeping his word, answering them in the very order they were raised. A definition given in reply to a direct question is not a digression from the teaching; here it is the teaching, since everything Krishna says about action, remembrance, and the imperishable in the rest of the chapter depends on these three terms being fixed first.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The commentators treat the stakes as real: get 'akshara' wrong, read it as Om or as the Veda or as unmanifest nature, and every later reference to the goal in this chapter drifts loose from its mooring. Fixing vocabulary at the threshold is what lets the chapter's later, more consoling teaching about remembering the Lord at death actually mean what it is supposed to mean.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas
And notice that even a dry definition is not neutral ground; the six readings already disagree about what one's own being and one's own action fundamentally are. So the seeming dictionary entry is already doing the work of a teaching, quietly setting the terms on which the rest of the chapter's more emotionally resonant lines about death and remembrance will be read.
Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Sit for a moment with just the first word before moving on to the rest of the chapter. Whatever else this verse settles, it insists that when the goal is named, it is named as supreme, beyond which nothing stands higher. Let that fix itself quietly before you carry the later teaching forward, so that no later answer about Brahman gets mistaken for something smaller than this.
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.