What Brahman is, what the self-principle is, and what action means.
Arjuna asked for plain definitions, and Krishna gives them one by one. The imperishable supreme is named first, then the self as it stands in the body, then action as the force that brings beings to be.
Krishna said: The supreme Brahman is the imperishable. Its own nature is what pertains to the Self. The creative act that brings beings into existence is called action.
Arjuna had ended the last exchange with a string of questions, and here Krishna begins to answer them in the very order they were asked, settling three at once: what Brahman is, what adhyatma is, and what karma is.
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 takes up your questions in the order you asked them, answering one by one, so that each answer settles cleanly against the question that called for it.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara · BaladevaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 9 others’ words
This verse is Krishna beginning to answer Arjuna's questions in the exact order they were asked. Arjuna had raised several questions at the end of the previous discussion, and the commentators note that Krishna takes them up one by one across three verses, settling three of them here: what is Brahman, what is adhyatma (the self-principle), and what is karma (action). Answering them in their original sequence is itself a kindness, because the questioner can then grasp each answer easily, matched to the question he asked.
Hear the first word rightly: the imperishable here is the supreme Brahman, the highest reality beyond which nothing stands, and not the syllable Om; nothing is higher than what is called supreme.
Across Advaita, Bhedābheda, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Bhāskara · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Sivananda · Tilak · Ramsukhdas · Vallabha · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 12 others’ words
The first answer: 'akshara' (the imperishable, literally that which does not perish or waver) here means the supreme Brahman, the highest reality, and not the syllable Om. The commentators are careful on this point because 'akshara' can conventionally mean 'syllable,' and Om is later called 'the one-syllabled Brahman.' But the qualifier 'paramam' (supreme) settles it: what is supreme, beyond which there is nothing higher, must be the unconditioned Brahman, not a mere sound. They anchor this in the scriptural passage where the sage tells Gargi, 'This indeed is that imperishable, of which the knowers of Brahman speak,' the imperishable under whose rule sun, moon, heaven and earth stand held apart. Brahman is thus the all-pervading, indestructible, supreme source.
The self-principle is named in the body: adhyatma is your own being as it stands with reference to this embodied self, the dimension of reality met as the inmost one who dwells here.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Madhva · Jayatīrtha · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Abhinavagupta · SivanandaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 12 others’ words
The second answer: 'svabhava' (one's own being or nature) is what is called 'adhyatma' (the self-principle, that which pertains to the self in the body). Across the schools this names the dimension of reality as it stands with reference to the individual body, present as the inmost self or experiencer. Beyond that shared frame the schools differ sharply on what exactly svabhava is, but they agree the verse is identifying the term 'adhyatma' with svabhava and locating it in relation to the embodied self.
And action is a sending-forth, the releasing that brings beings into being; it is not any ordinary work but the creative act from which the world of living things arises and is fed.
Across Advaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Sivananda · Vallabha · TilakIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 8 others’ words
The third answer: 'karma' (action) is here defined as 'visarga,' a letting-go or sending-forth, that brings about the coming-to-be of beings ('bhuta-bhava-udbhava-kara'). The most widely held reading takes visarga as Vedic sacrifice: the releasing of an oblation, with a deity in view, into the fire. This is action because it sets in motion the chain that produces and sustains living beings, summed up by the recollected verse 'the oblation cast in the fire reaches the sun; from the sun comes rain; from rain, food; from food, beings.' On this view karma is not ordinary work but specifically the creative, ritual act that feeds the cycle of life.
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
Akshara is the unconditioned, attributeless Brahman, pure consciousness free of every limiting adjunct, the ruler and upholder of the whole display up to unmanifest space. The argument is built carefully: 'akshara' could by convention mean the syllable Om, but the mark stated in scripture (ruling over and holding up everything) is possible only in the unconditioned consciousness, and when scripture's surface convention is thus overruled, the etymological sense ('that which does not perish' or 'that which pervades all') is taken as primary. On adhyatma, svabhava is Brahman's very own nature as the inmost self that, taking the body as its base, abides in each body as the experiencer; one of these voices reads it as the array of instruments (hearing and the rest) present in the body as the object of 'I'-cognition, while another insists it is the very nature of Brahman itself, not something merely related to Brahman. One Advaitin voice further offers an alternative that 'akshara' as jiva (the kutastha, the unchanging witness), once its conditioning falls away, is itself the whole supreme Brahman, the sense of the great saying 'thou art that.'
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Akshara is the supreme imperishable understood as the self (the field-knower) in its liberated, matter-free own-form; scripture supports this with 'the unmanifest is dissolved into the imperishable.' Strikingly, on this reading svabhava/adhyatma is matter, not spirit: one's own 'being' here is prakriti, the subtle elements and their impresses, the not-self that becomes connected with the self and is set forth in the doctrine of the five fires. The seeker must know both, but differently: the imperishable self as a thing to be attained, and this material svabhava as a thing to be given up. Consistent with this, karma/visarga is read as biological emission: the procreative act, born of the union with a woman, by which a being comes to be a man, established by the text 'at the fifth oblation the waters come to be called man.' This karma too the seeker must know as a thing to be shunned and recoiled from, as the next verse will confirm with 'wishing for which they practise continence.'
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
Akshara is the supreme Brahman. Adhyatma/svabhava is the individual soul (jiva), understood as the being or portion belonging to the Supreme Self denoted by 'imperishable'; with reference to the body it functions as the experiencer. This source gives two readings of karma. Primarily, the becoming or bringing-into-being of the souls is action: at dissolution this being lies dormant, and its coming-forth, its being given the capacity to bear fruit, is brought about by the creative emission, the sending-forth of Hiranyagarbha and the rest; this activity of the Lord, the inner controller, is termed action, supported by the verse 'In the beginning he brought Hiranyagarbha into being.' Secondarily it reports the view of others that the sacrificer's offering of oblation-cakes with a deity in view is the emission that, through the intellect, brings beings into being.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Akshara is Brahman, the qualifier 'supreme' added precisely to ward off the doubt that the word might mean the Veda or prakriti. Adhyatma is read in two compatible ways, 'that which exists with reference to the self' and the name of a textual section ('atma-adhikara'), and svabhava answers both. Svabhava is the own-being belonging to the living being, which always exists in one constant manner; the word 'bhava' (existing, becoming) is added to exclude the inner organ and the rest, which are not constant but undergo modification, and the word 'sva' (own) is added to exclude the Lord, since the Lord is not the 'own' of the living beings (that would conflict with the proofs of real difference between soul and Lord). Karma/visarga is firmly the Lord's own activity: the action of the Lord that brings about the arising of beings (living beings) and states (insentient things) is the special creative sending-forth, and naming it as the Lord's activity is what makes it one in meaning with 'karma,' not the action of a potter and the like. This voice explicitly rejects the reading that ties karma to the unseen potency of sacrificial cake-offering, holding that this is already covered by 'adhyatma.'
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
Drawing on the Bhagavata's teaching that the one non-dual reality is named Brahman, Paramatman and Bhagavan, this school reads akshara-Brahman as the unmanifest, uncounted-bliss aspect, the field-knower and kutastha that is the root of the aggregate and the individual, a form not different from Bhagavan yet spoken of apart because it serves as Bhagavan's own abode (dhama). Svabhava/adhyatma is the becoming of the Self, that is, of Bhagavan himself, in the form of jiva for the perfecting of servitude; it is the sixteenfold subtle (senses and mind) reached within the self, the disposition of the jiva taken with reference to a body fit for service. Distinctively, karma/visarga is here devotional: the outflow that produces the rasa-bearing state of jivas, accomplished by offering food and other articles fit for the Lord, taking the form of service; karma names this outward-projecting function by which the body is sent forth.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
Brahman is so called from being vast (brhattva) and from making things grow (brmhakatva). It is what 'adhyatma' names: the being called consciousness (caitanya), one's own self, whose nature never lapses. Having no bounding outer mark, this consciousness holds the power of the whole universe within itself, and from its sovereign freedom there arises the out-flowing (visarga), which is at once a shining-forth of outward being and of further beings become outward. This out-flowing brings into being the conscious knowers (Brahma and the rest) and the insentient things, and makes the variety of sentient and insentient appear; it also brings about the true being of beings, the being in which the whole false expanse has dissolved away. This entire luminous self-projection is what is called action. Here visarga is neither ritual nor biology but the universe-creating self-expansion of free consciousness.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Akshara is the supreme imperishable that is the root cause of the worlds, distinguished from the jiva (which is also called akshara) precisely by the qualifier 'supreme.' On adhyatma these voices differ in emphasis. One reads svabhava as Brahman's own being appearing, by way of a portion, in the form of the jiva, with Brahman standing as the body's enjoyer named adhyatma. Another reads svabhava as the individual soul that through superimposition of the body conceives its own self, or alternatively the pure soul that attains the Supreme Self. A Gaudiya voice reads svabhava as the substance of subtle elements with their latent impressions, taught in the five-fires doctrine and connected with the self. On karma they also split: some take visarga as the Vedic sacrifice that is a representative naming for all action, producing the coming-into-being and raising-up of beings; one Gaudiya voice instead reads karma as the soul's worldly existence (samsara) itself, arising from action, and develops the five-fires sacrifice at length as the soul's transit through heaven, cloud, earth, food and seed back to a human body, the karmic residue (anushaya) that drives rebirth. The Marathi voice renders the whole verse as a vision of the formless Brahman from which prakriti, ego-sense and the elements suddenly spring like clouds in a clear sky, the universe germinating from a primeval desire 'I am many,' all of it overfull with Brahman and seeming to unfold as a kind of effortless pastime; this uncaused yet rapidly appearing manifestation is what is called karma.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These voices restate the core in accessible terms. Brahman is the imperishable, immutable, eternal, self-luminous and all-pervading source, root and womb of everything, in which all beings live, move and have their being; it is supreme (paramam) and imperishable (akshara), and emphatically not the holy word Om nor the unmanifest Nature, since Om has absorption (laya) and unmanifest Nature has destruction, whereas Brahman alone is undying. Svabhava, Brahman's essential nature, is adhyatma: Brahman dwelling in each body as the innermost Self (Pratyagatma). One voice frames the verse as naming the goal at the very chapter's opening in its highest, most unconditioned form, the sat-chit-ananda, nirguna-nirakara Paramatma, so that no seeker may mistake what 'brahma' means in the questions and answers that follow. Karma is the sacrificial act of offering cooked rice and cakes to the gods, which causes the genesis and support of beings, since the oblations reach the sun, return as rain, become grains and food, and so sustain all living beings; one voice names karma simply as the creative activity that produces the moving and unmoving from the immutable Brahman.
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 what this verse is doing for you at the very threshold of the chapter. Before any practice or instruction, it plants a stake about the word 'brahma' so you will not be confused later. The word can mean many things in the Gita: the sacred syllable Om, the Veda, even prakriti, primal Nature. But here, fenced in by two words, 'supreme' (parama) and 'imperishable' (akshara), it can only mean the all-surpassing reality, the dense fullness of being, consciousness and bliss (sat-chit-ananda-ghana), the undying, formless, attribute-free Supreme Self. So as you read on, hold this firmly: when the chapter speaks of the goal, it is pointing not at a sound or a scripture or Nature, but at that highest, most unconditioned reality. Letting that settle first keeps every later answer in its right place.
As you go on reading, let the first word settle and hold it firmly: when the goal is named, it points not at a sound or a scripture or Nature, but at the one undying supreme, and every later answer falls into its right place.
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 is Krishna beginning to answer Arjuna's questions in the exact order they were asked. Arjuna had raised several questions at the end of the previous discussion, and the commentators note that Krishna takes them up one by one across three verses, settling three of them here: what is Brahman, what is adhyatma (the self-principle), and what is karma (action). Answering them in their original sequence is itself a kindness, because the questioner can then grasp each answer easily, matched to the question he asked.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva
The first answer: 'akshara' (the imperishable, literally that which does not perish or waver) here means the supreme Brahman, the highest reality, and not the syllable Om. The commentators are careful on this point because 'akshara' can conventionally mean 'syllable,' and Om is later called 'the one-syllabled Brahman.' But the qualifier 'paramam' (supreme) settles it: what is supreme, beyond which there is nothing higher, must be the unconditioned Brahman, not a mere sound. They anchor this in the scriptural passage where the sage tells Gargi, 'This indeed is that imperishable, of which the knowers of Brahman speak,' the imperishable under whose rule sun, moon, heaven and earth stand held apart. Brahman is thus the all-pervading, indestructible, supreme source.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Bhāskara · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
The second answer: 'svabhava' (one's own being or nature) is what is called 'adhyatma' (the self-principle, that which pertains to the self in the body). Across the schools this names the dimension of reality as it stands with reference to the individual body, present as the inmost self or experiencer. Beyond that shared frame the schools differ sharply on what exactly svabhava is, but they agree the verse is identifying the term 'adhyatma' with svabhava and locating it in relation to the embodied self.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Swami Sivananda
The third answer: 'karma' (action) is here defined as 'visarga,' a letting-go or sending-forth, that brings about the coming-to-be of beings ('bhuta-bhava-udbhava-kara'). The most widely held reading takes visarga as Vedic sacrifice: the releasing of an oblation, with a deity in view, into the fire. This is action because it sets in motion the chain that produces and sustains living beings, summed up by the recollected verse 'the oblation cast in the fire reaches the sun; from the sun comes rain; from rain, food; from food, beings.' On this view karma is not ordinary work but specifically the creative, ritual act that feeds the cycle of life.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Vallabhācārya · Lokmanya Tilak
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Akshara is the unconditioned, attributeless Brahman, pure consciousness free of every limiting adjunct, the ruler and upholder of the whole display up to unmanifest space. The argument is built carefully: 'akshara' could by convention mean the syllable Om, but the mark stated in scripture (ruling over and holding up everything) is possible only in the unconditioned consciousness, and when scripture's surface convention is thus overruled, the etymological sense ('that which does not perish' or 'that which pervades all') is taken as primary. On adhyatma, svabhava is Brahman's very own nature as the inmost self that, taking the body as its base, abides in each body as the experiencer; one of these voices reads it as the array of instruments (hearing and the rest) present in the body as the object of 'I'-cognition, while another insists it is the very nature of Brahman itself, not something merely related to Brahman. One Advaitin voice further offers an alternative that 'akshara' as jiva (the kutastha, the unchanging witness), once its conditioning falls away, is itself the whole supreme Brahman, the sense of the great saying 'thou art that.'
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Akshara is the supreme imperishable understood as the self (the field-knower) in its liberated, matter-free own-form; scripture supports this with 'the unmanifest is dissolved into the imperishable.' Strikingly, on this reading svabhava/adhyatma is matter, not spirit: one's own 'being' here is prakriti, the subtle elements and their impresses, the not-self that becomes connected with the self and is set forth in the doctrine of the five fires. The seeker must know both, but differently: the imperishable self as a thing to be attained, and this material svabhava as a thing to be given up. Consistent with this, karma/visarga is read as biological emission: the procreative act, born of the union with a woman, by which a being comes to be a man, established by the text 'at the fifth oblation the waters come to be called man.' This karma too the seeker must know as a thing to be shunned and recoiled from, as the next verse will confirm with 'wishing for which they practise continence.'
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
Akshara is the supreme Brahman. Adhyatma/svabhava is the individual soul (jiva), understood as the being or portion belonging to the Supreme Self denoted by 'imperishable'; with reference to the body it functions as the experiencer. This source gives two readings of karma. Primarily, the becoming or bringing-into-being of the souls is action: at dissolution this being lies dormant, and its coming-forth, its being given the capacity to bear fruit, is brought about by the creative emission, the sending-forth of Hiranyagarbha and the rest; this activity of the Lord, the inner controller, is termed action, supported by the verse 'In the beginning he brought Hiranyagarbha into being.' Secondarily it reports the view of others that the sacrificer's offering of oblation-cakes with a deity in view is the emission that, through the intellect, brings beings into being.
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
Akshara is Brahman, the qualifier 'supreme' added precisely to ward off the doubt that the word might mean the Veda or prakriti. Adhyatma is read in two compatible ways, 'that which exists with reference to the self' and the name of a textual section ('atma-adhikara'), and svabhava answers both. Svabhava is the own-being belonging to the living being, which always exists in one constant manner; the word 'bhava' (existing, becoming) is added to exclude the inner organ and the rest, which are not constant but undergo modification, and the word 'sva' (own) is added to exclude the Lord, since the Lord is not the 'own' of the living beings (that would conflict with the proofs of real difference between soul and Lord). Karma/visarga is firmly the Lord's own activity: the action of the Lord that brings about the arising of beings (living beings) and states (insentient things) is the special creative sending-forth, and naming it as the Lord's activity is what makes it one in meaning with 'karma,' not the action of a potter and the like. This voice explicitly rejects the reading that ties karma to the unseen potency of sacrificial cake-offering, holding that this is already covered by 'adhyatma.'
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
Drawing on the Bhagavata's teaching that the one non-dual reality is named Brahman, Paramatman and Bhagavan, this school reads akshara-Brahman as the unmanifest, uncounted-bliss aspect, the field-knower and kutastha that is the root of the aggregate and the individual, a form not different from Bhagavan yet spoken of apart because it serves as Bhagavan's own abode (dhama). Svabhava/adhyatma is the becoming of the Self, that is, of Bhagavan himself, in the form of jiva for the perfecting of servitude; it is the sixteenfold subtle (senses and mind) reached within the self, the disposition of the jiva taken with reference to a body fit for service. Distinctively, karma/visarga is here devotional: the outflow that produces the rasa-bearing state of jivas, accomplished by offering food and other articles fit for the Lord, taking the form of service; karma names this outward-projecting function by which the body is sent forth.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
Brahman is so called from being vast (brhattva) and from making things grow (brmhakatva). It is what 'adhyatma' names: the being called consciousness (caitanya), one's own self, whose nature never lapses. Having no bounding outer mark, this consciousness holds the power of the whole universe within itself, and from its sovereign freedom there arises the out-flowing (visarga), which is at once a shining-forth of outward being and of further beings become outward. This out-flowing brings into being the conscious knowers (Brahma and the rest) and the insentient things, and makes the variety of sentient and insentient appear; it also brings about the true being of beings, the being in which the whole false expanse has dissolved away. This entire luminous self-projection is what is called action. Here visarga is neither ritual nor biology but the universe-creating self-expansion of free consciousness.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Akshara is the supreme imperishable that is the root cause of the worlds, distinguished from the jiva (which is also called akshara) precisely by the qualifier 'supreme.' On adhyatma these voices differ in emphasis. One reads svabhava as Brahman's own being appearing, by way of a portion, in the form of the jiva, with Brahman standing as the body's enjoyer named adhyatma. Another reads svabhava as the individual soul that through superimposition of the body conceives its own self, or alternatively the pure soul that attains the Supreme Self. A Gaudiya voice reads svabhava as the substance of subtle elements with their latent impressions, taught in the five-fires doctrine and connected with the self. On karma they also split: some take visarga as the Vedic sacrifice that is a representative naming for all action, producing the coming-into-being and raising-up of beings; one Gaudiya voice instead reads karma as the soul's worldly existence (samsara) itself, arising from action, and develops the five-fires sacrifice at length as the soul's transit through heaven, cloud, earth, food and seed back to a human body, the karmic residue (anushaya) that drives rebirth. The Marathi voice renders the whole verse as a vision of the formless Brahman from which prakriti, ego-sense and the elements suddenly spring like clouds in a clear sky, the universe germinating from a primeval desire 'I am many,' all of it overfull with Brahman and seeming to unfold as a kind of effortless pastime; this uncaused yet rapidly appearing manifestation is what is called karma.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These voices restate the core in accessible terms. Brahman is the imperishable, immutable, eternal, self-luminous and all-pervading source, root and womb of everything, in which all beings live, move and have their being; it is supreme (paramam) and imperishable (akshara), and emphatically not the holy word Om nor the unmanifest Nature, since Om has absorption (laya) and unmanifest Nature has destruction, whereas Brahman alone is undying. Svabhava, Brahman's essential nature, is adhyatma: Brahman dwelling in each body as the innermost Self (Pratyagatma). One voice frames the verse as naming the goal at the very chapter's opening in its highest, most unconditioned form, the sat-chit-ananda, nirguna-nirakara Paramatma, so that no seeker may mistake what 'brahma' means in the questions and answers that follow. Karma is the sacrificial act of offering cooked rice and cakes to the gods, which causes the genesis and support of beings, since the oblations reach the sun, return as rain, become grains and food, and so sustain all living beings; one voice names karma simply as the creative activity that produces the moving and unmoving from the immutable Brahman.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If 'karma' in this verse can be read as Vedic sacrifice, as biological procreation, as the soul's whole worldly existence, or as the cosmos-creating self-expression of consciousness, what is it actually telling me to do or understand?
Start with what every reading shares: karma here is 'visarga,' a sending-forth, and it is defined by its function, namely that it brings beings into existence ('bhuta-bhava-udbhava-kara'). So the verse is not first telling you to do something; it is defining a technical term in answer to Arjuna's question 'what is karma?' Karma in this chapter means the creative force that produces and sustains the world of beings, not just any ordinary act.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vedānta Deśika · Dhanapati Sūri
The different pictures are different angles on that one defining function, not contradictions you must resolve before acting. Several voices point to the Vedic sacrifice, because the offering feeds the chain 'oblation, sun, rain, food, beings' that literally sustains life. Others point to procreation or the soul's samsaric transit through the five fires, because that is how an individual being is sent forth into a human body. Another points to consciousness itself shining out as the universe. In each case the same truth holds: existence as you know it is something projected, set in motion, sent forth, and that sending-forth is what 'karma' names here.
Swami Sivananda · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
So what it asks of you is understanding before doing: to see that the world of beings, including your own embodiment, rests on this current of creative action, and to hold it together with the verse's first word, the supreme imperishable Brahman that does not perish. The next verses build on exactly this groundwork, so grasping that karma is the world-producing emission, distinct from the undying Brahman, is the practical takeaway here.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Notice what this verse is doing for you at the very threshold of the chapter. Before any practice or instruction, it plants a stake about the word 'brahma' so you will not be confused later. The word can mean many things in the Gita: the sacred syllable Om, the Veda, even prakriti, primal Nature. But here, fenced in by two words, 'supreme' (parama) and 'imperishable' (akshara), it can only mean the all-surpassing reality, the dense fullness of being, consciousness and bliss (sat-chit-ananda-ghana), the undying, formless, attribute-free Supreme Self. So as you read on, hold this firmly: when the chapter speaks of the goal, it is pointing not at a sound or a scripture or Nature, but at that highest, most unconditioned reality. Letting that settle first keeps every later answer in its right place.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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, tap a name in The seating.