Sanskrit
यो न हृष्यति न द्वेष्टि न शोचति न काङ्क्षति । शुभाशुभपरित्यागी भक्तिमान्यः स मे प्रियः ॥
yo na hṛṣyati na dveṣṭi na śocati na kāṅkṣati śubhāśubhaparityāgī bhaktimān yaḥ sa me priyaḥ
Translation
He who neither loveth nor hateth, nor grieveth, nor desireth, renouncing good and evil, full of devotion, he is dear to Me.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Four paired negations in a single line (delight/hatred, grief/desire) read almost as a compressed restatement of 2.56-57’s vītarāga formula, now extended to a moral register with “renouncing good and evil” (śubhāśubhaparityāgī) — not indifference to ethics, but non-attachment to the outcome of having acted rightly or wrongly, in keeping with the phalatyāga theme running since verse 11. Four paired negations compress BG 2.56–BG 2.57’s vīta-rāga formula, now with śubha-aśubha-parityāgī — not indifference to ethics, but non-attachment to the outcome of having acted rightly or wrongly, keeping with the fruit-renunciation (tyāga) theme since BG 12.11.
Study deeper
Word by word
- yo na hṛṣyati na dveṣṭiयो न हृष्यति न द्वेष्टि
- who neither rejoices nor hates (yaḥ + na + hṛṣyati + na + dveṣṭi)
- na śocati na kāṅkṣatiन शोचति न काङ्क्षति
- neither grieves nor desires (na + śocati + na + kāṅkṣati)
- śubhāśubhaparityāgīशुभाशुभपरित्यागी
- who renounces good and evil [outcomes] (śubha-aśubha-parityāgī)
- bhaktimān yaḥ sa me priyaḥभक्तिमान् यः स मे प्रियः
- who is full of devotion, he is dear to Me (bhakti-mān + yaḥ + saḥ + me + priyaḥ)
Commentary
Site Commentary
“Renouncing good and evil” sounds, out of context, like moral indifference — but the verse has spent its first three clauses on delight, hatred, and desire, not on right and wrong themselves. What’s released here is attachment to having been praised or blamed for an outcome, not the underlying judgment of whether the outcome was actually good.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When you practice not clinging to outcomes, be careful the target is the clinging, not your ethics — you can fully care about doing right while still releasing your need to be praised or blamed for it.
Professional
- When you stop needing credit for a good call or blame-shielding for a bad one, keep your actual judgment about right and wrong fully intact — you're releasing attachment to outcome, not the standard by which it's judged.
Family & Social
- When you stop keeping score of who was right in a family disagreement, that's different from no longer caring what's actually fair — you can drop the scorekeeping without abandoning your values.
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