Sanskrit
यतन्तो योगिनश्चैनं पश्यन्त्यात्मन्यवस्थितम् । यतन्तोऽप्यकृतात्मानो नैनं पश्यन्त्यचेतसः ॥
yatanto yoginaś cainaṃ paśyanty ātmany avasthitam yatanto 'py akṛtātmāno nainaṃ paśyanty acetasaḥ
Translation
Yogîs also, struggling, perceive Him, established in the Self; but though struggling, the unintelligent perceive Him not, their selves untrained.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Even among those who make the effort, this verse draws a further distinction: striving yogis do perceive the self established within, but others who strive without having disciplined themselves (akṛtātmānaḥ) fail regardless of effort. It is a deliberately uncomfortable claim — that trying is not sufficient, only trying with a prepared instrument works — and it functions as a check against reading the chapter’s earlier tree-and-portion metaphors as promising automatic liberation once grasped intellectually. Yatantaḥ — “striving” — appears on both sides: the difference between seeing and not seeing the Self is not effort but kṛta-ātman vs. akṛta-ātman, whether the self has been made ready. Raw trying is not enough, the same point as BG 6.36.
Study deeper
Word by word
- yatanto yoginaś cainaṃयतन्तो योगिनश् चैनं
- striving yogins [see] this (yatantaḥ + yoginaḥ + ca + enam)
- paśyanty ātmany avasthitamपश्यन्त्य् आत्मन्य् अवस्थितं
- see [it] seated in the self (paśyanti + ātmani + avasthitam)
- yatanto 'py akṛtātmānoयतन्तो ऽप्य् अकृतात्मानो
- but the imperfect, even striving (yatantaḥ + api + akṛta-ātmānaḥ)
- nainaṃ paśyanty acetasaḥनैनं पश्यन्त्य् अचेतसः
- the unintelligent do not see it (na + enam + paśyanti + acetasaḥ)
Commentary
Site Commentary
This is a genuinely uncomfortable claim: some who strive perceive, and some who strive equally hard don’t, because their instrument — the disciplined self — was never trained in the first place. It functions as a check against reading the chapter’s tree-and-portion imagery as something that liberates automatically once intellectually grasped; understanding the map is not the same as having the capacity to walk it. Effort applied to an unprepared self, the verse insists, simply isn’t sufficient.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- If you keep trying hard at something important without the results changing, check whether the instrument itself — your discipline, your underlying preparation — needs training first. More effort applied to an untrained capacity often just repeats the same outcome.
Professional
- Throwing more hours or effort at a persistent problem without first building the underlying capability — the skills, the tooling, the team's actual readiness — will keep failing the same way. Invest in preparing the instrument before asking it to work harder.
Family & Social
- Trying harder to repair a relationship without first doing the inner work needed to actually listen and respond well rarely changes the outcome. Effort without a prepared, disciplined self falls short in the same way here as anywhere else.
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