Sanskrit
अव्यक्तोऽयमचिन्त्योऽयमविकार्योऽयमुच्यते । तस्मादेवं विदित्वैनं नानुशोचितुमर्हसि ॥
avyakto'yam acintyo'yam avikāryo'yam ucyate tasmād evaṃ viditvainaṃ nānuśocitum arhasi
Translation
Unmanifest, unthinkable, immutable, he is called; therefore knowing him as such, thou shouldst not grieve.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
A shift from physical to epistemic description: having established what can’t touch the self (weapons, elements), Krishna now says the self can’t even be grasped by ordinary perception or thought. “Unmanifest, unthinkable, immutable” moves the argument from indestructibility to incomprehensibility — a claim that becomes explicit again in verse 29’s admission that almost no one actually understands this, even after hearing it. The “therefore” is doing a lot: from the self being avikārya, beyond change, Krishna draws the practical conclusion he keeps returning to — na anuśocitum arhasi, grief is not the fitting response. Verse 27 supplies a second, independent route to the same conclusion.
Study deeper
Word by word
- avyakto'yamअव्यक्तोऽयं
- this is unmanifest (avyaktaḥ + ayam)
- acintyo'yamअचिन्त्योऽयं
- this is unthinkable (acintyaḥ + ayam)
- avikāryo'yam ucyateअविकार्योऽयं उच्यते
- this is called unchanging (avikāryaḥ + ayam + ucyate)
- tasmādतस्माद्
- therefore
- evaṃ viditvainaṃएवं विदित्वैनं
- having known it thus (evam + viditvā + enam)
- nānuśocitum arhasiनानुशोचितुं अर्हसि
- you ought not to grieve (na + anuśocitum + arhasi)
Commentary
Site Commentary
“Unthinkable” is doing something odd here — Krishna doesn’t ask Arjuna to fully grasp the self before he stops grieving, he says “knowing him as such” is enough, where “as such” explicitly includes being told the self can’t be grasped by thought. The instruction is to accept a description of something acknowledged to exceed comprehension, and act on that acceptance, without waiting for understanding to catch up first.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When you face something you can't fully make sense of — grief, uncertainty, a decision under incomplete information — you don't need to resolve it intellectually before choosing how to act. Accepting a working description, even one that admits its own incompleteness, can be enough to move forward.
Professional
- When a system is too complex for anyone to model fully, you don't need complete understanding before you set operating principles for it — accepting a bounded, honest description of what's unknown can still guide action correctly.
Family & Social
- When someone you love is going through something you can't fully understand, you don't have to grasp it completely before you can respond well — accepting what they've told you as true is enough to act with care.
Ask yourself
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