BG 18.6 — Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga

Bhagavad Gītā 18.6Chapter 18 · Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga · Krishna → Arjuna · Pārtha · anuṣṭubh

एतान्यपि तु कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा फलानि च ।

कर्तव्यानीति मे पार्थ निश्चितं मतमुत्तमम् ॥

etānyapi tu karmāṇi saṅgaṃ tyaktvā phalāni ca

kartavyānīti me pārtha niścitaṃ matamuttamam

spokensingle-voice recital; rendered via IndicF5 conditioned on a Sanskrit reference clip

meaning

Even these acts of sacrifice, giving, and austerity should be performed, Arjuna, dropping all attachment to agency and to their fruits. This is my settled, supreme view.

ekras · bhāṣya

Etani api tu karmani — even these acts. Sangam tyaktva — having abandoned attachment. Phalani cha — and fruits. Kartavyani — to be done. Iti me partha nishchitam matam uttamam — this is My settled supreme view.

Krishna names two abandonments — sanga and phala — that the rite must be wrapped in. The form continues; the inner orientation is doubled-released. This is the chapter's uttama-mata, supreme settled view.

Shankara reads yajna, dana, tapas as purifying precisely because they can be performed without sanga and without phala-craving. The api is not comparison to other rites but pointer at the mumukshu: even these can bind if done with desire, so they must be done with double-release. The chapter's diagnostic for sattvika action: same outer act, two inner removals — attachment and fruit — produce the operative purification.

Madhusudana opens by closing a logical gap: could not even kamya-karma purify, making fruit-abandonment unnecessary? He cites Vachaspati Mishra's vartika: kamya-rites do purify, but only for bhoga-siddhi — enjoyment of their fruit — not for jnana-yogyata. The purification that counts for the mumukshu is antahkarana-shuddhi, and that requires sanga-tyaga and phala-tyaga both. The chapter's nishchaya is precise on what kind of purification is operative.

Ramanuja reads yajna, dana, tapas as mat-aradhana-rupani — forms of worship of the Lord — not merely purificatory acts with secondary devotional flavor. Sanga is mamata — possessiveness — toward the act itself; its abandonment allows the mumukshu to perform these rites ahar-ahar — day after day — continuously right up to liberation, in the same spirit as upasana. The bhakta's life is structured by this continuous offering.

Madhva reads on the bheda-frame: even these acts of yajna, dana, tapas are to be performed without sanga and without phala-asakti. This is Krishna's uttama-mata. The jiva is paratantra; insisting on agency or expecting fruit is the inversion of the dependent mode. Sanga-tyaga and phala-tyaga together constitute the jiva's correct paratantra-orientation in each act.

Vallabha reads even where kartavyatva has been established among the brahma-vadinah — evam brahma-vadinam kartavyatve prapte api tu — the teaching presses further. Sanga is sva-kartritva-abhinivesha — insistence on one's own agency. Phala is guna-maya-rochana-arthani — fruits whose appeal is woven from the three gunas. Both must be relinquished. Action remains; the agent's claim and the result-target both go. Pushti-marga: the act becomes Krishna's lila operating through the bhakta when both releases are operative.

Shridhara asks: in what manner must these purifying acts be done? The answer is twofold: abandon sanga as kartritva-abhinivesha — the sense 'I am doer' — and abandon phala-apeksha — expectation of fruit. What remains is kevalam Ishvara-aradhana — pure worship of the Lord alone. The act becomes puja when self-claim and fruit-claim are both released.

Context

where

Chapter 18 · Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga · meter anuṣṭubh

who speaks

Krishna → Arjuna · vocative Pārtha

preceded by — BG 18.5

Sacrifice, generosity, and austerity must never be abandoned — they purify even the wise.

What's going on

Even these acts of sacrifice, giving, and austerity should be performed, Arjuna, dropping all attachment to agency and to their fruits. This is my settled, supreme view.

Vyavahāra · try it in your life

Advaita

A professional who is genuinely qualified (adhikara) for their work and continues doing it well without identity-investment in outcomes is practicing what Sankara describes: the rite of their craft done without kartrtva-abhinivesa, as preparation for the recognition that the doer was never finally there.

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Ramanuja's ahar-ahar (day after day, up to final release) maps onto sustaining a daily practice — morning prayers, charitable giving, self-discipline — not as steps toward a goal but as continuous kainkarya: each act complete in itself as service, not installment-payment toward liberation.

show all 6

Dvaita

Madhva's paratantra (radical dependence) applied daily: before any significant act, pause and acknowledge that the capacity, the circumstance, and the outcome all belong to Hari. This is not fatalism but a corrective to the inflation of personal agency that makes failure devastating and success addictive.

Śuddhādvaita

Vallabha's release of guna-maya-rocana (the attractive shimmer of outcomes) is practically the practice of acting from sufficiency rather than scarcity: doing your work because the work itself is Krishna's lila-space, not because the reward will finally complete you.

Bhakti

Sridhara's kevalam Isvara-aradhana suggests treating any obligatory duty — filing taxes, caring for a sick parent, meeting a deadline — as an act of worship: not by adding ritual overlay, but by removing the ego-ownership and the reward-calculation, leaving only the act offered to the Lord.

Advaita-Bhakti

Madhusudana's distinction between bhoga-purification and jnana-purification invites a diagnostic question before each major effort: 'Is this improving my outer situation, or is this clearing my inner instrument?' Both are valid, but confusing them — expecting circumstances to produce clarity — is precisely the sanga that blocks liberation.

Adhiṣṭhāna · substrate signature

substratev2.6-frozen

parserByT5-Sanskrit-multitask (Nehrdich/Hellwig/Keutzer EMNLP 2024)

mūlaGRETIL e-text of the Bhagavadgītā with Śaṅkara's commentary (data entry: Gaudiya Grantha Mandira) for chapters 1-17; sanskritdocuments.org sd_bgnew.itx for chapter 18; ingested via a local Ambuda TEI build; per-verse repairs logged in post_generation_repairs

show all metadata

weightsa=1 · b=0.01 · e_v=0.005 · z=0.2 · h=0 · th=0.01

anchorfit on Ramsukhdas's Sādhak Sañjīvanī (1980), frozen across the eight-commentator panel; cross-validated R@4 = 71.6% on Śaṅkara

extracted2026-04-21

methodPaper 1, Section II.B

↓ view raw per-verse object (JSON)↗ per-verse-object schema ↗ substrate code (MIT) + data (CC-BY 4.0)

The schema generalizes to any bounded-polysemy corpus with discrete primary text units, attested witness traditions, identifiable schools, and formal substrate. Port the per-verse object; refit weights on a domain-appropriate Layer-3 anchor; ship.

Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 18, Verse 6: Krishna to Arjuna — Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga