9.22

One of the most quoted verses in the whole text, and it earns the attention: exclusive devotion (ananyāḥ … paryupāsate) is answered not with a promise of liberation but with a startlingly practical guarantee — yoga-kṣema, literally “acquisition and preservation,” the getting of what one lacks and the safeguarding of what one has. It’s worth noticing what kind of claim this is: not that devotees never face hardship, but that Krishna personally assumes the logistics so the devotee doesn’t have to split attention between worship and self-provision. The term itself is deliberately unglamorous — a householder’s word repurposed for grace — which is part of why it lands as intimate rather than abstract. Yoga-kṣemaṃ vahāmy aham — “I bear their getting-and-keeping” — takes the exact word BG 2.45 told Arjuna to become free of and turns it into Krishna’s own undertaking for the undivided devotee. The unglamorous term is the point.