3.20

Krishna doesn’t tell Arjuna he must become enlightened before his action can count — he points to Janaka, who reached perfection through action itself. The order most people assume, wisdom first and then right action follows, gets quietly inverted: action can be the route to perfection, not only its downstream product.

Janaka’s example answers “do I need enlightenment first,” but it doesn’t fully explain why someone who no longer needs anything from acting would keep showing up — that’s what lokasaṅgraha is doing, and the verb attached to it, sampaśyan, “keeping in view,” locates the motive in sustained attention rather than in any personal stake. The pattern is recognizable in any senior person — a longtime engineer, a parent of grown children, a founder past needing the money — whose continued visible effort is what keeps everyone junior to them believing the standard is real. Take that person out of the room and the standard doesn’t collapse instantly, but it stops being demonstrated — which is precisely the gap this verse is asking Arjuna to fill.