Sanskrit
प्रयत्नाद्यतमानस्तु योगी संशुद्धकिल्बिषः । अनेकजन्मसंसिद्धस्ततो याति परां गतिम् ॥
prayatnād yatamānas tu yogī saṃśuddhakilbiṣaḥ anekajanmasaṃsiddhas tato yāti parāṃ gatim
Translation
But the Yogi, labouring with assiduity, purified from sin, fully perfected through manifold births, he reacheth the supreme goal.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
This closes the arc opened at verse 37 with the full answer: sustained effort across many births eventually reaches the supreme goal. No sincere striving is wasted, but the text is equally clear that this can take more than one lifetime — a direct, unhurried answer to Arjuna’s anxiety about failure. Aneka-janma-saṃsiddha — “perfected across many lives” — is the Gita’s calm long view: liberation is not gated on finishing in this body, and none of the partial work is lost.
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Word by word
- prayatnād yatamānas tuप्रयत्नाद् यतमानस् तु
- but striving with effort (prayatnāt + yatamānaḥ + tu)
- yogī saṃśuddhakilbiṣaḥयोगी संशुद्धकिल्बिषः
- the yogi, cleansed of sin (yogī + saṃśuddha-kilbiṣaḥ)
- anekajanmasaṃsiddhasअनेकजन्मसंसिद्धस्
- perfected over many births (aneka-janma-saṃsiddhaḥ)
- tato yāti parāṃ gatimततो याति परां गतिं
- then reaches the supreme goal (tataḥ + yāti + parām + gatim)
Commentary
Site Commentary
The three qualifiers aren’t listed in arbitrary order — assiduous labor, then purification, then perfection accumulated across many births — and that sequence mirrors the actual process being described rather than just describing it. The verse’s own grammar performs the gradualism it’s teaching: effort first, then the gradual cleaning that effort produces, then, eventually and only eventually, the result.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Site Commentary — Second Reading
“Aneka-janma” — across many births — is doing quieter work than it first appears: the claim isn’t that a single unbroken effort eventually succeeds, but that discontinuous effort, resumed again and again across gaps and failures, still accumulates toward the same result. That reframes what “not wasted” means for any real practice interrupted by illness, distraction, or years of neglect — the count that matters is the sum across every restart, not the length of an unbroken streak. Assiduous effort resumed is still assiduous effort, even when it has been broken many times before.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
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Lessons
Personal
- When you evaluate your own progress on something hard, check whether you're expecting the end-state (mastery, peace, resolution) before you've done the earlier stages — effort and gradual refinement — that actually have to come first, in that order, before the eventual result.
Professional
- When building a capability on your team, don't skip straight to expecting mature results — the sequence matters: sustained effort first, then refinement of process, then eventually the outcome. Treating the sequence as optional is usually why it takes longer than planned.
Family & Social
- When working through something difficult with someone close to you, don't expect resolution before the earlier stages — sustained effort, then the slow cleaning up of old patterns — have actually had time to happen. The order isn't optional, even when you wish it were faster.
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