Sanskrit
पुरुषः प्रकृतिस्थो हि भुङ्क्ते प्रकृतिजान्गुणान् । कारणं गुणसङ्गोऽस्य सदसद्योनिजन्मसु ॥
puruṣaḥ prakṛtistho hi bhuṅkte prakṛtijān guṇān kāraṇaṃ guṇasaṅgo 'sya sadasadyonijanmasu
Translation
Spirit seated in Matter useth the qualities born of Matter; attachment to the qualities is the cause of his births in good and evil wombs.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
This verse supplies the mechanism verse 21 left implicit: purusha, “seated in” prakriti, uses the qualities (gunas) that prakriti produces, and it’s specifically attachment (sanga) to those qualities — not mere contact with them — that causes rebirth into good or evil wombs. The distinction matters practically: contact with the gunas is unavoidable for anything embodied, but the text locates the actual cause of bondage in the attachment layered on top of that contact, which is a problem of orientation rather than of embodiment itself. The mechanism: it is specifically attachment (guṇa-saṅga) — not mere contact — that causes rebirth. Contact with the guṇas is unavoidable for anything embodied; the actual cause of bondage sits in the attachment layered on top of it, which is a problem of orientation, not of embodiment itself.
Study deeper
Word by word
- puruṣaḥ prakṛtistho hiपुरुषः प्रकृतिस्थो हि
- spirit, seated in nature (puruṣaḥ + prakṛti-sthaḥ + hi)
- bhuṅkte prakṛtijān guṇānभुङ्क्ते प्रकृतिजान् गुणान्
- enjoys the guṇas born of nature (bhuṅkte + prakṛti-jān + guṇān)
- kāraṇaṃ guṇasaṅgo 'syaकारणं गुणसङ्गो ऽस्य
- its attachment to the guṇas is the cause (kāraṇam + guṇa-saṅgaḥ + asya)
- sadasadyonijanmasuसदसद्योनिजन्मसु
- of births in good and evil wombs (sat-asat-yoni-janmasu)
Commentary
Site Commentary
The verse is precise about where it locates the problem: not contact with the gunas, which anything embodied can’t avoid, but sanga — attachment layered on top of that contact. It’s a fine distinction doing a lot of work, since it means the fix was never going to be escaping embodiment, only correcting the orientation added on top of it.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Contact with a stressor is unavoidable; attachment to it is optional — locate your actual problem at the second layer, not the first, before you try to eliminate something you can't actually remove from your life.
Professional
- Exposure to volatile requirements or noisy metrics is unavoidable in your role; getting attached to any single reading of them is what actually causes downstream trouble — fix the attachment, not the exposure.
Family & Social
- You can't avoid all contact with a difficult relative's moods; what you can change is your attachment to needing them to be different — locate the actual leverage point before trying to control what you can't.
Ask yourself
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