He holds nature, and nature holds the beings he sends forth again and again.
The worlds come back because he sends them forth: holding his own prakriti, he pours out the whole host of beings that lay dissolved since the last ending. And the same nature he holds is, from the beings' side, a current that sweeps them helplessly back into embodied life.
Presiding over my own nature, I send forth again and again this whole multitude of beings. They are helpless, ruled by their nature.
It picks up the host of beings that lay merged in dissolution and tells how they are sent forth again, standing as the doorway to the next verse, where this creating will be said not to bind him.
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.
Nature is not a power apart from him; it is his own, held under his sway, and the sending forth repeats without any first beginning.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · Vallabha · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 13 others’ words
Krishna says he creates the whole world by taking hold of his own prakriti and sending forth the entire host of beings again and again. Prakriti means nature, the material stuff and the formative power out of which everything is made. The verse names the Lord's relation to it with one strong word, avashtabhya, which the commentators unpack as holding it down, presiding over it, controlling it, leaning on it, or actively employing it. The shared point is that prakriti is not independent. It is the Lord's own, under his sway, and he is the one who governs it. The creation happens 'punah punah,' again and again, which several commentators read as a sign that this cycle of creation has no beginning; samsara, the round of worldly existence, repeats endlessly with no first start.
What he sends forth is the whole host of beings, the same host that dissolved at the great ending, drawn out again rather than made new.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, ŚuddhādvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Vallabha · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 4 others’ words
What he sends forth is the 'bhuta-grama,' the whole aggregate or troop of beings, the entire mass of living things at every level. Several commentators specify that this host is fourfold, often counted as gods, animals, humans, and unmoving things like plants. The host that is now sent forth is the same one that had dissolved at the cosmic dissolution, pralaya, and lay merged until the next creation drew it out again. So the verse describes the regular re-emergence of the same beings, not the making of something brand new each time.
The beings do not choose their return; their own past deeds and ingrained leanings carry them, an irresistible current, back into embodied life.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Tilak · Ramsukhdas · JñāneśvarIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 11 others’ words
These beings are 'avasha,' helpless, with no power of their own, dragged out 'prakriter vashat,' under the sway of prakriti. The commentators explain why they are helpless. It is because they are ruled by their own ingrained tendencies, by passion and aversion and the other faults, and ultimately by their own past karma, their prior actions, whose latent impressions decide the form and lot into which they are reborn. The beings do not choose their re-emergence; their accumulated karma carries them. So the same nature that the Lord holds in his hand is, from the beings' side, an irresistible current that sweeps them helplessly back into embodied existence.
A question presses: does so unequal a making bind its maker? He presides untouched, and the labor with its weight falls to nature and to karma.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, DvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Madhva · JayatīrthaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 6 others’ words
A pressing question hangs over the verse, and the commentators raise it explicitly: if the Lord fashions an unequal world full of high and low births, does he not get bound by the merit and demerit, even by cruelty, that such partial creation seems to involve? The verse is set up as the answer's doorway; it establishes the Lord as the one who acts upon prakriti precisely so the next verse can declare that this creating does not bind him. Many commentators stress here that, even as he governs prakriti, the Lord himself remains unattached, changeless, and untouched. He is like an overseer or a king who rules while the work is done by others, so that the labor and its consequences fall to prakriti and to the beings' karma, not to him.
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 identify the Lord's prakriti with maya, the indefinable power that veils and projects, marked by nescience, ignorance of the truth. The creation is read as an appearance rather than a real transformation of the Lord. One develops this fully: the Lord, who is mere consciousness and the witness of all, has no need to create for his own enjoyment, for he has no enjoyership; there is no other conscious being for whose sake he could create; and creation is not even for the sake of release, since at the deepest level there is no real bondage. So the whole display is shown to be of the nature of maya, false like a magician's trick or a dreamer's dream, brought forth by mere imagining and firmed up only by the Lord's being and shining. The point of the verse, on this reading, is to establish the maya-nature of the cosmos so that it raises no objection against the Lord's true actionless nature. The Lord 'creates' only as the unchanging substrate; the world's seeming reality rests on him as a dream rests on the dreamer.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Here prakriti is real, not an illusion. It is the Lord's own nature that genuinely transforms, going through its eightfold modification, and the Lord truly employs it as his instrument. The careful distinction these commentators draw is that the Lord is the karta, the real agent or doer of the cosmic process, while prakriti is the karana, the instrument or tool through which he works. The word 'holding' marks his active use of prakriti; prakriti is not autonomous. The beings are helpless in respect of their own efforts, but it is the Lord who holds and projects them through his deluding, quality-made nature. The verse is thus read as the doctrinal anchor fixing the Lord as the true cause who really creates a real world by really using a real prakriti.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator gives a spare, mechanism-focused reading. The Lord takes the support of his own material nature and sends forth the beings; their helplessness is dependence under prakriti's control. The distinctive emphasis is the tight link to past works: in accordance with the living beings' prior deeds, material nature transforms itself, and it is under that karma-shaped transformation of nature that the Lord sends them forth. Creation is real and follows the prior karma of the beings through the medium of a really transforming nature.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators are emphatic that the Lord's 'leaning on prakriti' implies no lack of power in him. The image given is of a man fully able to walk on his own feet who nonetheless walks in play leaning on a staff; the Lord rests on prakriti as sport, not from need. A wide range of scriptural citations is marshaled to show that the Lord is complete in all power, of endless forms and qualities, and that nowhere is his power hindered; mounting maya by his own free choice, he engages in creation and dissolution. They also guard against the misreading that 'I send forth by the power of prakriti' makes the Lord's agency a mere product of nescience while he is truly actionless. On the contrary, the Lord is the genuine doer who really creates, sustains, and devours this world, which is itself helpless and under the sway of maya.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
For these commentators prakriti is the Lord's own being in its 'sat,' existence aspect, identical with his yoga-shakti, his own divine power, and called maya only because it bewilders through the gunas. One commentator develops a striking image: the Lord, taking the form of purusha, holds prakriti firmly and as it were accepts her as a wife by his look, or draws near to gaze upon her, and so sends forth the dissolved company of beings through the various prajapatis. The whole self-division through prakriti is wrought by the Lord alone of his own free will, by no other. The second commentator adds that this prakriti is uncommon, her very nature delight, and the beings are sent forth as fit for the Lord's play and his darshana, his being beheld; even for those brought forth into the world, the form of bliss alone abides. Creation is the Lord's free, joyous play, and its inmost essence remains delight.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This brief comment draws out one specific point from the words 'resting on My own prakriti.' The host of beings is in itself insentient, lacking awareness; yet through its connection with the higher prakriti it reaches the state of being lit up, that is, of becoming conscious or illumined. The verse, on this reading, marks how the inert mass of beings comes to share in light and life by being joined to the Lord's own higher nature.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators answer the puzzle of how the Lord, who is unattached and changeless, can create at all. Their shared solution is that he creates as the un-acting overseer or presider: he holds and rules prakriti, but the engine that actually turns is the beings' own karmic momentum and prakriti's force, so no action and no taint touch him. One stresses that the Lord, of unattached nature and inconceivable potency, accomplishes everything by mere will, with not the slightest contact or weariness. Another, in extended poetic images, likens him to a king who rules while subjects toil, to the moon that lifts the tide without drudgery, to a magnet that moves iron without being affected, and to a lamp that lights a house without prompting or preventing any deed; prakriti is the warp and woof, the milk that clots into curd, the seed that swells into a tree, and the Lord is the unconcerned witness through whom all this has its being yet who is never reached by its action.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
The modern commentators stay close to the plain mechanism while drawing out specific senses of prakriti. One reads avashtabhya warmly as the Lord leaning on, pressing, or embracing Nature: he invigorates and fertilizes Nature, which had gone to sleep at the cosmic dissolution, gazes at each level, and brings plane after plane into being; and he glosses prakriti as the five afflictions, ignorance, egoism, likes, dislikes, and clinging to life. Another reads avasha simply as the beings' being bound by their respective karma under prakriti. A third specifies prakriti here as vyashti prakriti, each being's individual nature or causal body, and gives a detailed account of how at the great dissolution every being dissolves stage by stage into the supreme, and at the new creation the jivas' karmas turn ripe, the Lord's will to 'become many' stirs a disturbance in cosmic prakriti, the three gunas and the three worlds emerge, and beings are born high or low according to their guna, karma, and innate disposition.
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 the verse's central image and let it loosen your grip on the feeling that you are the doer of your life. The Lord is shown ruling prakriti the way a king rules a town: the king's hands never toil at the building, yet the town rises. The moon lifts the whole sea into high tide and never drudges for it. A magnet draws the iron and is itself unmoved and unworn. A lamp set in a house neither pushes nor stops anyone; it simply shines, unconcerned with who acts and what is done, and yet by its light everything gets done. Carry this into your own hours. So much of what churns in you, the tendencies, the reactions, the pull back into old patterns, is prakriti turning, the warp and woof weaving its web, the milk quietly clotting into curd. You can learn to be more like the lamp and less like the one straining at the work: present, lit, allowing, but not knotted into every action as if your small self were grinding it out. The same stillness the verse attributes to the Lord is offered to you as a place to stand.
What would today be if you stood in it as the lamp stands in the house, neither pushing nor preventing, shining, while by its light the work gets done?
Read deeper
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Word by word
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machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rishna says he creates the whole world by taking hold of his own prakriti and sending forth the entire host of beings again and again. Prakriti means nature, the material stuff and the formative power out of which everything is made. The verse names the Lord's relation to it with one strong word, avashtabhya, which the commentators unpack as holding it down, presiding over it, controlling it, leaning on it, or actively employing it. The shared point is that prakriti is not independent. It is the Lord's own, under his sway, and he is the one who governs it. The creation happens 'punah punah,' again and again, which several commentators read as a sign that this cycle of creation has no beginning; samsara, the round of worldly existence, repeats endlessly with no first start.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
What he sends forth is the 'bhuta-grama,' the whole aggregate or troop of beings, the entire mass of living things at every level. Several commentators specify that this host is fourfold, often counted as gods, animals, humans, and unmoving things like plants. The host that is now sent forth is the same one that had dissolved at the cosmic dissolution, pralaya, and lay merged until the next creation drew it out again. So the verse describes the regular re-emergence of the same beings, not the making of something brand new each time.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
These beings are 'avasha,' helpless, with no power of their own, dragged out 'prakriter vashat,' under the sway of prakriti. The commentators explain why they are helpless. It is because they are ruled by their own ingrained tendencies, by passion and aversion and the other faults, and ultimately by their own past karma, their prior actions, whose latent impressions decide the form and lot into which they are reborn. The beings do not choose their re-emergence; their accumulated karma carries them. So the same nature that the Lord holds in his hand is, from the beings' side, an irresistible current that sweeps them helplessly back into embodied existence.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
A pressing question hangs over the verse, and the commentators raise it explicitly: if the Lord fashions an unequal world full of high and low births, does he not get bound by the merit and demerit, even by cruelty, that such partial creation seems to involve? The verse is set up as the answer's doorway; it establishes the Lord as the one who acts upon prakriti precisely so the next verse can declare that this creating does not bind him. Many commentators stress here that, even as he governs prakriti, the Lord himself remains unattached, changeless, and untouched. He is like an overseer or a king who rules while the work is done by others, so that the labor and its consequences fall to prakriti and to the beings' karma, not to him.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators identify the Lord's prakriti with maya, the indefinable power that veils and projects, marked by nescience, ignorance of the truth. The creation is read as an appearance rather than a real transformation of the Lord. One develops this fully: the Lord, who is mere consciousness and the witness of all, has no need to create for his own enjoyment, for he has no enjoyership; there is no other conscious being for whose sake he could create; and creation is not even for the sake of release, since at the deepest level there is no real bondage. So the whole display is shown to be of the nature of maya, false like a magician's trick or a dreamer's dream, brought forth by mere imagining and firmed up only by the Lord's being and shining. The point of the verse, on this reading, is to establish the maya-nature of the cosmos so that it raises no objection against the Lord's true actionless nature. The Lord 'creates' only as the unchanging substrate; the world's seeming reality rests on him as a dream rests on the dreamer.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here prakriti is real, not an illusion. It is the Lord's own nature that genuinely transforms, going through its eightfold modification, and the Lord truly employs it as his instrument. The careful distinction these commentators draw is that the Lord is the karta, the real agent or doer of the cosmic process, while prakriti is the karana, the instrument or tool through which he works. The word 'holding' marks his active use of prakriti; prakriti is not autonomous. The beings are helpless in respect of their own efforts, but it is the Lord who holds and projects them through his deluding, quality-made nature. The verse is thus read as the doctrinal anchor fixing the Lord as the true cause who really creates a real world by really using a real prakriti.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This commentator gives a spare, mechanism-focused reading. The Lord takes the support of his own material nature and sends forth the beings; their helplessness is dependence under prakriti's control. The distinctive emphasis is the tight link to past works: in accordance with the living beings' prior deeds, material nature transforms itself, and it is under that karma-shaped transformation of nature that the Lord sends them forth. Creation is real and follows the prior karma of the beings through the medium of a really transforming nature.
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
These commentators are emphatic that the Lord's 'leaning on prakriti' implies no lack of power in him. The image given is of a man fully able to walk on his own feet who nonetheless walks in play leaning on a staff; the Lord rests on prakriti as sport, not from need. A wide range of scriptural citations is marshaled to show that the Lord is complete in all power, of endless forms and qualities, and that nowhere is his power hindered; mounting maya by his own free choice, he engages in creation and dissolution. They also guard against the misreading that 'I send forth by the power of prakriti' makes the Lord's agency a mere product of nescience while he is truly actionless. On the contrary, the Lord is the genuine doer who really creates, sustains, and devours this world, which is itself helpless and under the sway of maya.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
For these commentators prakriti is the Lord's own being in its 'sat,' existence aspect, identical with his yoga-shakti, his own divine power, and called maya only because it bewilders through the gunas. One commentator develops a striking image: the Lord, taking the form of purusha, holds prakriti firmly and as it were accepts her as a wife by his look, or draws near to gaze upon her, and so sends forth the dissolved company of beings through the various prajapatis. The whole self-division through prakriti is wrought by the Lord alone of his own free will, by no other. The second commentator adds that this prakriti is uncommon, her very nature delight, and the beings are sent forth as fit for the Lord's play and his darshana, his being beheld; even for those brought forth into the world, the form of bliss alone abides. Creation is the Lord's free, joyous play, and its inmost essence remains delight.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This brief comment draws out one specific point from the words 'resting on My own prakriti.' The host of beings is in itself insentient, lacking awareness; yet through its connection with the higher prakriti it reaches the state of being lit up, that is, of becoming conscious or illumined. The verse, on this reading, marks how the inert mass of beings comes to share in light and life by being joined to the Lord's own higher nature.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators answer the puzzle of how the Lord, who is unattached and changeless, can create at all. Their shared solution is that he creates as the un-acting overseer or presider: he holds and rules prakriti, but the engine that actually turns is the beings' own karmic momentum and prakriti's force, so no action and no taint touch him. One stresses that the Lord, of unattached nature and inconceivable potency, accomplishes everything by mere will, with not the slightest contact or weariness. Another, in extended poetic images, likens him to a king who rules while subjects toil, to the moon that lifts the tide without drudgery, to a magnet that moves iron without being affected, and to a lamp that lights a house without prompting or preventing any deed; prakriti is the warp and woof, the milk that clots into curd, the seed that swells into a tree, and the Lord is the unconcerned witness through whom all this has its being yet who is never reached by its action.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
The modern commentators stay close to the plain mechanism while drawing out specific senses of prakriti. One reads avashtabhya warmly as the Lord leaning on, pressing, or embracing Nature: he invigorates and fertilizes Nature, which had gone to sleep at the cosmic dissolution, gazes at each level, and brings plane after plane into being; and he glosses prakriti as the five afflictions, ignorance, egoism, likes, dislikes, and clinging to life. Another reads avasha simply as the beings' being bound by their respective karma under prakriti. A third specifies prakriti here as vyashti prakriti, each being's individual nature or causal body, and gives a detailed account of how at the great dissolution every being dissolves stage by stage into the supreme, and at the new creation the jivas' karmas turn ripe, the Lord's will to 'become many' stirs a disturbance in cosmic prakriti, the three gunas and the three worlds emerge, and beings are born high or low according to their guna, karma, and innate disposition.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the Lord himself holds and projects everything, how can the beings he sends forth be blamed or held responsible for the helpless, unequal lives they are forced back into?
Look closely at where the verse locates the force. The beings are helpless 'prakriter vashat,' under the sway of prakriti, and the commentators are unanimous that this sway is the beings' own past karma and ingrained dispositions coming due. The helplessness is real, but it is not arbitrary; each being is carried back into the very life its prior actions, passions, and aversions have shaped. So the inequality of births is not the Lord imposing favoritism but each being's own accumulated momentum unfolding.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The Lord's role is repeatedly described as that of an overseer or presider, not a hands-on agent who micromanages each fate. He holds prakriti and lets it turn, like a king under whose rule the subjects do their own work, or a lamp that lights the house without prompting or preventing any deed. The actual engine is the beings' karma and prakriti's force; that is why, on this reading, the consequences and the labor fall to prakriti and to the beings, while the Lord stays unattached and untouched.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
It also helps to see that this verse is deliberately the doorway to the next teaching, where Krishna declares that such creating does not bind even him. The whole point of describing the Lord as the un-acting holder of prakriti is to show that being involved in the cosmic process need not entangle the doer in its merit and demerit. If even the Lord can preside without being bound, the deeper invitation to the seeker is the same freedom: to act and live within prakriti's turning while loosening identification with being its helpless instrument, which is exactly the liberation the Gita is pointing toward.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīla Baladeva
Contemplation
Sit for a moment with the verse's central image and let it loosen your grip on the feeling that you are the doer of your life. The Lord is shown ruling prakriti the way a king rules a town: the king's hands never toil at the building, yet the town rises. The moon lifts the whole sea into high tide and never drudges for it. A magnet draws the iron and is itself unmoved and unworn. A lamp set in a house neither pushes nor stops anyone; it simply shines, unconcerned with who acts and what is done, and yet by its light everything gets done. Carry this into your own hours. So much of what churns in you, the tendencies, the reactions, the pull back into old patterns, is prakriti turning, the warp and woof weaving its web, the milk quietly clotting into curd. You can learn to be more like the lamp and less like the one straining at the work: present, lit, allowing, but not knotted into every action as if your small self were grinding it out. The same stillness the verse attributes to the Lord is offered to you as a place to stand.
Sit with this · Sant Jñāneśvar
All the translations and commentary
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