Sanskrit
नैव किञ्चित्करोमीति युक्तो मन्येत तत्त्ववित् । पश्यन्शृण्वन्स्पृशञ्जिघ्रन्नश्नन्गच्छन्स्वपन्श्वसन् ॥
naiva kiñcit karomīti yukto manyeta tattvavit paśyan śṛṇvan spṛśañ jighrann aśnan gacchan svapan śvasan
Translation
"I do not anything," should think the harmonised one, who knoweth the essence of things; seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The knower of the essence of things holds, even while performing every ordinary bodily function, the conviction “I do nothing” — a claim that only makes sense given verse 14’s later statement that the true self is never an agent to begin with; the senses and body act on their own among their objects (verse 9 makes this explicit), not the self. The list of eight everyday acts is deliberately mundane: this isn’t a claim about extraordinary states, but about how to regard completely ordinary embodied life. The eight verbs are all present participles — while seeing, while eating — so the “I do nothing” is held during activity, not instead of it. It is BG 4.18’s “inaction in action” said in the first person.
Study deeper
Word by word
- naiva kiñcit karomītiनैव किञ्चित् करोमीति
- 'I do nothing at all' (na + eva + kiñcit + karomi + iti)
- yukto manyeta tattvavitयुक्तो मन्येत तत्त्ववित्
- the yoked knower of truth should think (yuktaḥ + manyeta + tattva-vit)
- paśyan śṛṇvan spṛśañ jighrannपश्यन् शृण्वन् स्पृशञ् जिघ्रन्न्
- seeing, hearing, touching, smelling (paśyan + śṛṇvan + spṛśan + jighran)
- aśnan gacchan svapan śvasanअश्नन् गच्छन् स्वपन् श्वसन्
- eating, moving, sleeping, breathing (aśnan + gacchan + svapan + śvasan)
Commentary
Site Commentary
The list Krishna picks — seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing — is aggressively unglamorous, almost daring the reader to find a dramatic exception. The point isn’t demonstrated with heroic renunciation or a hard moral choice; it’s demonstrated with breathing. Whatever this teaching is, it has to be practicable at the most banal, involuntary-feeling moments of an ordinary day, or it isn’t the teaching being described here.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Test any practice you're building — staying present, staying detached from outcomes — against your most boring, automatic moments, not just your big decisions; a practice that only works during dramatic moments isn't actually load-bearing yet.
Professional
- When building a habit like responding without ego or staying detached from outcomes, rehearse it on trivial daily interactions — a routine status update, a minor comment — before trusting it to hold up under real pressure.
Family & Social
- Notice how you show up in the most mundane shared moments with family — a car ride, dishes after dinner — since that ordinary texture, not the big occasions, is where a relationship's real quality actually lives.
Ask yourself
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