Sanskrit
संन्यासं कर्मणां कृष्ण पुनर्योगं च शंससि । यच्छ्रेय एतयोरेकं तन्मे ब्रूहि सुनिश्चितम् ॥
saṃnyāsaṃ karmaṇāṃ kṛṣṇa punar yogaṃ ca śaṃsasi yac chreya etayor ekaṃ tan me brūhi suniścitam
Translation
Renunciation of actions Thou praisest, O Krishna, and then also yoga. Of the two which one is the better? That tell me conclusively.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Arjuna opens the chapter by naming an apparent inconsistency: across the two preceding chapters Krishna has praised both giving up action and performing action in yoga, and Arjuna wants one unambiguous answer rather than two paths held in tension. The demand for a conclusive reply is pointed — he is asking Krishna to resolve the tension, not restate it. Krishna’s answer across the rest of the chapter will in fact do both: name a preference (verse 2) and then dissolve the apparent conflict by showing the two are really one for anyone who understands either correctly (verses 4-5). This is the same “give me one thing” demand as BG 3.2, and it gets structurally the same answer: a distinction that turns out to converge. BG 4.41 already welded yoga-sannyasta-karmāṇam and jñāna-sañchinna-saṃśayam into one person; chapter 5 is the unpacking of that compound.
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Word by word
- saṃnyāsaṃ karmaṇāṃ kṛṣṇaसंन्यासं कर्मणां कृष्ण
- renunciation of actions, O Krishna (saṃnyāsam + karmaṇām)
- punar yogaṃ ca śaṃsasiपुनः योगं च शंससि
- and again you praise yoga (punaḥ + yogam + ca + śaṃsasi)
- yac chreya etayor ekaṃयच् छ्रेय एतयोः एकं
- which of these two is the one that is better (yat + śreyaḥ + etayoḥ + ekam)
- tan me brūhi suniścitamतन् मे ब्रूहि सुनिश्चितं
- tell me that for certain (tat + me + brūhi + su-niścitam)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Arjuna doesn’t ask “which is right” in the abstract — he demands one conclusive answer to a binary he has set up himself, renunciation or yoga. Krishna’s actual response across the rest of the chapter never honors that binary; instead of picking a side, it spends the next several verses dissolving the very opposition Arjuna insisted on. The chapter’s real answer isn’t the verdict Arjuna asked for — it’s a demonstration that his question was built on a false either/or.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Site Commentary — Second Reading
Arjuna doesn’t only ask which path is better — “suniścitam,” conclusively, asks for the uncertainty itself to end. That urgency is diagnostic: a mind under real pressure often mistakes “give me one fixed answer” for “help me think clearly,” when the two aren’t the same request. Krishna’s refusal to simply pick a side isn’t evasion; it declines to feed a need for certainty that was never actually what would resolve Arjuna’s confusion.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When you frame a decision to yourself as strictly either/or, stay open to the honest answer dissolving the framing rather than picking a side — sometimes the useful response to a forced choice is questioning why it had to be a choice at all.
Professional
- When a stakeholder demands you pick option A or option B under pressure to look decisive, consider whether the honest answer reframes the question instead — showing that both approaches converge on the outcome they actually care about can be more useful than declaring a winner.
Family & Social
- When someone demands you settle an argument by picking a side, notice whether the more honest move is questioning the terms of the disagreement itself rather than declaring a winner — sometimes both sides are closer to right than the framing admits.
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