Sanskrit
न मां कर्माणि लिम्पन्ति न मे कर्मफले स्पृहा । इति मां योऽभिजानाति कर्मभिर्न स बद्ध्यते ॥
na māṃ karmāṇi limpanti na me karma-phale spṛhā iti māṃ yo 'bhijānāti karmabhir na sa baddhyate
Translation
Nor do actions affect Me, nor is the fruit of action desired by Me. He who thus knoweth Me is not bound by actions.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Krishna extends verse 13’s claim of actionless authorship into a general principle: actions don’t cling to him and he has no craving for their fruit, so anyone who truly understands this about him isn’t bound by action either. This is karma yoga’s core claim from 2.47 restated at the level of Krishna’s own nature — non-attachment isn’t just good psychological practice, it’s how the ultimate agent already operates. The logic is imitative: to know how the unbound agent acts — no stain, no craving for the fruit — is already to begin acting that way. This is why chapter 4 keeps making liberation a matter of correct seeing; the model is BG 2.47, now shown running at the top of the system.
Study deeper
Word by word
- na māṃ karmāṇi limpantiन मां कर्माणि लिंपन्ति
- actions do not stain me (na + mām + karmāṇi + limpanti)
- na me karma-phale spṛhāन मे कर्म-फले स्पृहा
- nor have I a craving for the fruit of action (na + me + karma-phale + spṛhā)
- iti māṃ yo 'bhijānātiइति मां यो ऽभिजानाति
- who knows me thus (iti + mām + yaḥ + abhijānāti)
- karmabhir na sa baddhyateकर्मभिः न स बद्ध्यते
- he is not bound by actions (karmabhiḥ + na + saḥ + badhyate)
Commentary
Site Commentary
The reasoning here runs backward from how moral instruction usually works. Rather than arguing non-attachment is virtuous and therefore worth practicing, Krishna grounds it in a claim about how reality’s ultimate agent already, factually, operates — an appeal to imitation of what is, not an appeal to what ought to be. Descriptive grounding for a prescriptive practice is a different kind of persuasion than moral argument.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Instead of arguing yourself into believing detachment is virtuous, try modeling your stance on how the calmest, most capable people you know actually operate — imitation of what demonstrably works can persuade where moral argument stalls.
Professional
- When advocating a practice like blameless postmortems or shared ownership, point to how your most effective leaders or teams already operate that way — descriptive proof that it works often lands harder than an argument that it's the right thing to do.
Family & Social
- When asking someone close to you to loosen their grip on an outcome, it can help more to point to a specific person they respect who already lives that way than to argue abstractly that it's the healthier attitude.
Ask yourself
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