Sanskrit
व्यवसायात्मिका बुद्धिरेकेह कुरुनन्दन । बहुशाखा ह्यनन्ताश्च बुद्धयोऽव्यवसायिनाम् ॥
vyavasāyātmikā buddhir ekeha kurunandana bahuśākhā hy anantāś ca buddhayo'vyavasāyinām
Translation
The determinate Reason is but one-pointed, O joy of the Kurus; many-branched and endless are the thoughts of the irresolute.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The central claim of this whole passage: a resolved mind (buddhi) has a single point of focus, while an unresolved one scatters across endless branching goals. This is the diagnosis Krishna applies directly to the ritual-obsessed in verses 42–44 — not that their aims are evil, but that wanting many things at once is itself a kind of unfocus. The contrast is between one and many-branched — vyavasāyātmikā versus bahu-śākhā — and it is structural, not moral: a mind pulled toward many outcomes cannot settle, regardless of how worthy the outcomes are. This is the working definition of buddhi-yoga as a practice.
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Word by word
- vyavasāyātmikāव्यवसायात्मिका
- resolute, single in aim (vyavasāya-ātmikā)
- buddhirबुद्धिः
- understanding
- ekehaएकेह
- is one here (ekā + iha)
- kurunandanaकुरुनन्दन
- O joy of the Kurus
- bahuśākhāबहुशाखा
- many-branched
- hy anantāś caह्य् अनन्ताश् च
- and endless (hi + anantāḥ + ca)
- buddhayo'vyavasāyināmबुद्धयोऽव्यवसायिनां
- the understandings of the irresolute (buddhayaḥ + avyavasāyinām)
Commentary
Site Commentary
The image for scattered thought is specifically botanical — many-branched, not many-directioned. That’s a precise choice: an irresolute mind isn’t necessarily unproductive, it’s a mind that keeps adding new branches without ever pruning old ones. The failure isn’t a lack of effort or ideas; it’s the absence of subtraction.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
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Lessons
Personal
- If you feel scattered, the fix usually isn't generating a clearer new goal — it's pruning the goals you're already carrying that never got dropped. Add one focus without removing the others, and you've only grown another branch.
Professional
- When a team's roadmap feels unfocused, look for how many old initiatives were never formally closed rather than how many new priorities were added — scope creep is usually a pruning failure, not a planning failure.
Family & Social
- If your attention at home feels split across too many half-finished commitments, look for which ones you never actually said no to — clarity often comes from subtraction, not from picking one more thing to focus on.
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