Sanskrit
न कर्तृत्वं न कर्माणि लोकस्य सृजति प्रभुः । न कर्मफलसंयोगं स्वभावस्तु प्रवर्तते ॥
na kartṛtvaṃ na karmāṇi lokasya sṛjati prabhuḥ na karmaphalasaṃyogaṃ svabhāvas tu pravartate
Translation
The Lord of the world produceth not the idea of agency, nor actions, nor the union together of action and its fruit; nature, however, manifesteth.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Prabhu here names the indwelling Lord, the Self within each being, and the claim is a clean metaphysical severing: it manufactures neither the sense of agency, nor the actions themselves, nor the linkage between action and fruit — svabhāva, one’s own inherent nature, does all of that work. This is the philosophical spine underneath every “you are not the doer” statement in the chapter, not a comforting metaphor but a specific claim about causality that assigns doership entirely to nature’s machinery and leaves the Self as witness. It sets up the harder question of the next verse: if the Self doesn’t act, why does it seem implicated in either sin or merit at all. Svabhāva here does the same work as prakṛti’s guṇas in BG 3.27: all the causal machinery is on nature’s side, none on the witness’s. Chapter 13’s BG 13.29 restates this exactly.
Study deeper
Word by word
- na kartṛtvaṃ na karmāṇiन कर्तृत्वं न कर्माणि
- not agency, nor actions (na + kartṛtvam + na + karmāṇi)
- lokasya sṛjati prabhuḥलोकस्य सृजति प्रभुः
- does the Lord create for the world (lokasya + sṛjati + prabhuḥ)
- na karmaphalasaṃyogaṃन कर्मफलसंयोगं
- nor the union of action and fruit (na + karma-phala-saṃyogam)
- svabhāvas tu pravartateस्वभावस् तु प्रवर्तते
- but [one's] own nature operates (svabhāvaḥ + tu + pravartate)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Notice the specificity of the denial: not a vague claim that “the self does nothing,” but three distinct things itemized and withheld one by one — the very idea of agency, the actions themselves, and the linking of action to its fruit. That precision matters, because it means the claim can be checked against experience piece by piece rather than accepted as a single unfalsifiable mystical assertion, and each piece maps onto something the surrounding verses individually build on.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When you're trying to examine a belief about yourself that feels too abstract to test — I am not my thoughts, I am not my job — break it into specific, separable claims the way this verse does, rather than accepting or rejecting it as one indivisible package.
Professional
- When a design principle feels too abstract to apply — the system should be resilient — decompose it into itemized, checkable properties like failure isolation and recovery time, the way this verse itemizes agency, action, and fruit, rather than treating it as one vague virtue.
Family & Social
- When you're evaluating a sweeping claim someone makes about you — you never listen — ask them to break it into specific, checkable instances rather than accepting or rejecting the whole vague charge at once.
Ask yourself
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