Sanskrit
यच्चापि सर्वभूतानां बीजं तदहमर्जुन । न तदस्ति विना यत्स्यान्मया भूतं चराचरम् ॥ ३९ ॥
yac cāpi sarvabhūtānāṃ bījaṃ tad aham arjuna na tad asti vinā yat syān mayā bhūtaṃ carācaram
Translation
And whatsoever is the seed of all beings, that am I, O Arjuna; nor is there aught, moving or unmoving, that may exist bereft of Me.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Closes the enumeration with a generalizing move rather than another category example: whatever is the seed of all beings is Krishna, and nothing moving or unmoving exists apart from him. It functions as a summary claim covering everything the list from verse 21 onward failed to itemize — the transition into verse 40’s explicit statement that the list was never meant to be complete. Na tad asti vinā yat syān mayā — “there is nothing that could be without Me” — is the list’s own catch-all: everything unnamed is covered by this one clause. BG 10.40 makes the incompleteness explicit.
Study deeper
Word by word
- yac cāpi sarvabhūtānāṃ bījaṃयच् चापि सर्वभूतानां बीजं
- and whatever is the seed of all beings (yat + ca + api + sarva-bhūtānām + bījam)
- tad aham arjunaतद् अहं अर्जुन
- that am I, O Arjuna (tat + aham + arjuna)
- na tad asti vinā yat syānन तद् अस्ति विना यत् स्यान्
- there is nothing that could exist apart from Me (na + tat + asti + vinā + yat + syāt)
- mayā bhūtaṃ carācaramमया भूतं चराचरं
- [no] being, moving or unmoving (mayā + bhūtam + cara-acaram)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Cara-acharam, “moving or unmoving,” quietly collapses a distinction the list has been using as one of its organizing axes throughout: the immovable Himalaya of verse 25 sat in a different bucket than the moving lion or bird of verse 30. This closing verse folds both buckets into a single, undivided claim, dissolving the very category boundary the enumeration had relied on to structure itself.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When you've been organizing your thinking around a boundary — this counts, that doesn't — notice when you're ready to let a bigger truth override the boundary instead of forcing every new case back into the old split.
Professional
- When a taxonomy your team built, like this data source versus that one, has served its purpose, be willing to state the higher-level unifying fact rather than perpetuating the split indefinitely just because the categories are already familiar.
Family & Social
- Old categories you've used to divide responsibilities at home may deserve dissolving once a simpler shared truth, that you're both in this together, makes the original split less useful than it once was.
Ask yourself
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