Sanskrit
सुखदुःखे समे कृत्वा लाभालाभौ जयाजयौ । ततो युद्धाय युज्यस्व नैवं पापमवाप्स्यसि ॥
sukhaduḥkhe same kṛtvā lābhālābhau jayājayau tato yuddhāya yujyasva naivaṃ pāpam avāpsyasi
Translation
Taking as equal pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, gird thee for the battle; thus thou shalt not incur sin.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The first statement of what becomes the chapter’s central practical teaching: treat pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat as equal, and then act. This isn’t indifference to outcome as a matter of temperament — it’s a discipline: engage fully in the action while refusing to let the anticipated result distort the decision to act. Verses 47–48 return to this same idea and give it its technical name, yoga. The three paired opposites — sukha/duḥkha, lābha/alābha, jaya/ajaya — are the ledger a warrior actually keeps, and Krishna asks that it be zeroed out before acting, not that the action be skipped. This is the bridge from the duty argument to samatva.
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Word by word
- sukhaduḥkhe same kṛtvāसुखदुःखे समे कृत्वा
- having made pleasure and pain the same (sukha-duḥkhe + same + kṛtvā)
- lābhālābhauलाभालाभौ
- gain and loss (lābha-alābhau)
- jayājayauजयाजयौ
- victory and defeat (jaya-ajayau)
- tatoततो
- then
- yuddhāyaयुद्धाय
- for battle
- yujyasvaयुज्यस्व
- engage
- naivaṃ pāpam avāpsyasiनैवं पापं अवाप्स्यसि
- thus you will not incur sin (na + evam + pāpam + avāpsyasi)
Commentary
Site Commentary
This verse arrives one line after Krishna offered Arjuna heaven or earth as reasons to fight — and immediately asks him to hold gain and loss as equal. The consequentialist bait of verse 37 turns out to be a stepping stone, not the destination; Krishna meets Arjuna where his motivation currently is, then immediately raises the bar past it, toward a discipline that no longer needs the reward to function.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
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Lessons
Personal
- If you needed a tempting outcome to get yourself moving on something hard, that's a fine starting point — but don't stop there. The more durable discipline is doing the work well regardless of how it turns out, once you've gotten yourself started.
Professional
- If you motivated a team to commit to a hard project using a specific incentive, plan to shift the culture past that incentive over time — toward doing the work well independent of whether that particular outcome materializes, since incentives that vanish shouldn't take the discipline with them.
Family & Social
- If a reward or promised outcome got someone you're guiding to start something difficult, use it, but aim to help them find steadiness in the doing itself over time — so their effort doesn't collapse the day the specific outcome stops being available.
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