Sanskrit
एतैर्विमुक्तः कौन्तेय तमोद्वारैस्त्रिभिर्नरः । आचरत्यात्मनः श्रेयस्ततो याति परां गतिम् ॥
etair vimuktaḥ kaunteya tamodvārais tribhir naraḥ ācaraty ātmanaḥ śreyas tato yāti parāṃ gatim
Translation
A man liberated from these three gates of darkness, O son of Kunti, accomplisheth his own welfare, and thus reacheth the highest goal.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
This verse mirrors the previous one’s triad but flips its valence: liberated from these three gates of darkness, a person accomplishes their own welfare (śreyas) and reaches the highest goal. Notice the framing is subtractive rather than additive — liberation here is described as what remains once kāma, krodha, and lobha are removed, not as some further virtue that must be separately acquired. That’s a meaningfully different model of ethical progress than the positive cataloguing of verses 1–3, where the divine nature was described entirely in terms of qualities present rather than absent. Tamo-dvāra — “the gates of darkness” — the same tamas of chapter 14. Once free of the three, a person “does what is good for the self” naturally: the supreme goal is not a further achievement but what is left once the gates are shut.
Study deeper
Word by word
- etair vimuktaḥ kaunteyaएतैः विमुक्तः कौन्तेय
- freed from these, O son of Kuntī (etaiḥ + vimuktaḥ + kaunteya)
- tamodvārais tribhir naraḥतमोद्वारैस् त्रिभिः नरः
- the man [freed] from the three gates of darkness (tamaḥ-dvāraiḥ + tribhiḥ + naraḥ)
- ācaraty ātmanaḥ śreyasआचरत्य् आत्मनः श्रेयस्
- practises what is good for the self (ācarati + ātmanaḥ + śreyaḥ)
- tato yāti parāṃ gatimततो याति परां गतिं
- and so reaches the supreme goal (tataḥ + yāti + parām + gatim)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Notice the verse doesn’t even re-name kāma, krodha, and lobha — it just says “these three gates of darkness,” relying entirely on the previous verse to supply the content. The form quietly performs what the content describes: liberation arrives by removal, and here the verse itself removes the words, leaving only a pronoun where a list used to be.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Once you've correctly named a problem in yourself, you don't need to keep re-listing it every time you address it — refer back to it briefly and move to what remains, the way this verse drops the names entirely and just says 'these three.' Constant re-naming can itself become a way of not moving past it.
Professional
- Once a team has clearly named the issues blocking progress, stop restating the full list in every subsequent conversation — refer to it briefly and focus on what's left to do. Over-repeating a diagnosis, instead of moving to removal, can become its own form of stalling.
Family & Social
- Once you and someone close to you have clearly named what's been causing friction, you don't need to re-litigate the full list every time it comes up again — a brief reference back is enough, and then the real work is what remains to be removed, not restating the diagnosis again.
Ask yourself
A few ways to take this verse past reading. Ticks and the note stay in this browser.