BG 3.22 — Karma-Yoga — Sūtrakṛt-Gītā

Bhagavad Gītā 3.22Chapter 3 · Karma-Yoga · Krishna → Arjuna · Pārtha · anuṣṭubh

न मे पार्थास्ति कर्तव्यं त्रिषु लोकेषु किञ्चन ।

नानवाप्तमवाप्तव्यं वर्त एव च कर्मणि ॥

na me pārthāsti kartavyaṃ triṣu lokeṣu kiñcana

nānavāptamavāptavyaṃ varta eva ca karmaṇi

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

meaning

There is nothing I must do in any of the three worlds, Pārtha, and nothing unattained that I need to attain, yet I remain engaged in action.

Bhāṣyakāra purports

Śaṅkaraadvaita
For Me, O Pārtha, there is nothing whatsoever that must be done in any of the three worlds (tri-loka), nor is there anything unattained that remains to be attained — and yet I remain active in action (karman). Śaṅkara reads this as Kṛṣṇa establishing the foundational distinction between the knower (jñānin) who acts without kartṛtva-abhimāna (the conceit of agency) and the ajñānin bound by kartā-bhāva. The paradox is deliberately instructive: perfect jñāna does not terminate action; it terminates the sense of ownership over action.
Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
I, the Lord of all (sarveśvara), whose every wish is already fulfilled (avāpta-samasta-kāma), all-knowing, of true resolve, present freely in all three worlds as deva, manuṣya, and more — I have no kartavya whatsoever; yet for the protection of the world (loka-rakṣā) I remain in action. Rāmānuja's expansion ‘avāpta-samasta-kāma' locates Kṛṣṇa's action not in niṣkāmatā (desirelessness born of discipline) but in pūrṇatā (ontological fullness), making every divine act an overflow of grace rather than an obligation discharged.
Madhvadvaita
Reconstructed from the dvaita school's doctrine, not translated from Madhva's commentary at this verse.
Hari (the independently real, self-sufficient Lord) asks: if you doubt the obligatory character of loka-saṃgraha (the holding-together of the world's order), then look to Me — na me pārthāsti kartavyaṃ triṣu lokeṣu kiṃcana, ‘there is nothing whatsoever that I must do in the three worlds,’ nānavāptam avāptavyaṃ, nothing unattained that remains to be attained. As svatantra (the independently real, self-sufficient) Brahman, Kṛṣṇa stands in no lack; no action can increase or complete what is already self-complete. Yet varta eva ca karmaṇi — He persists in action. This is not paradox but the expression of pañca-bheda (the five-fold real distinction): the jīva (the individual self) is paratantra (eternally dependent), utterly unable to sustain itself or the cosmic order without Hari's sovereign activity. The dependent order of jīvas and matter holds only because svatantra Hari wills it into continuance. His action is therefore not necessity but pure sovereignty — the living demonstration to paratantra beings that karma done without self-interest preserves bheda (real distinction) intact and expresses the taratamya (graded ontological hierarchy) in which Hari's supremacy is never diminished by His engagement with the world.
divergence: No Madhva or Jayatīrtha bhāṣya extant on this verse; reading reconstructed from dvaita siddhānta primitives applied directly to the mūla.
Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
Vallabha's bhāṣya is a single compact sūtra — ‘atra cāham eva nidarśanam' (here I myself am the exemplar) — pointing to Kṛṣṇa as self-referential model. In Śuddhādvaita, 3.22 is the locus classicus of līlā: Kṛṣṇa's action (karman) is not duty-bound niṣkāma-karma but spontaneous self-expression (svecchā-pravṛtti) of the ānanda-ghana (bliss-dense) Brahman. Because His essence is already pūrṇānanda, every act is play without privation — the devotee participates in this playfield through puṣṭi-prasāda (grace of nourishment), not through personal striving.
Śrīdharabhakti
Śrīdhara presents the verse cleanly as Kṛṣṇa's own exemplar declaration (dṛṣṭānta): ‘O Pārtha, I have no kartavya — because in all three worlds there is nothing unattained (anavāptam) that remains to be attained (avāptavyam), and yet I engage in action.’ The bhāṣya anchors the ‘so-what' pedagogically: if even Bhagavān, who needs nothing, continues to act, the pravṛtti-dharma (duty of engagement) of the human who does need things is a fortiori binding. Inaction for the aspirant is not freedom; it is evasion.
Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Madhusūdana reads 3.22 as a double instruction: the metaphysical point (I have nothing to gain — nāsti avāptavyam phalam) establishes the jñāna-foundation; the address ‘Pārtha' (son of Pṛthā, heir of a pure kṣatriya lineage) localizes the application — you, of all people, are fit to mirror my action. In the Advaita-Bhakti synthesis, Kṛṣṇa's acting-without-kartṛtva is the template for bhakta-karma: the devotee acts not for personal acquisition but as kainkarya, mirroring the Lord whose action is already liberated from phalāpekṣā (expectation of fruit).

ekras · bhāṣya

Krishna offers himself as the living example. "Partha — there is nothing for me to do in the three worlds, nothing unattained that I have to attain. And yet I act." The verse turns the abstract argument personal. The shreshtha of 3.21 is now identified.

Krishna himself. The Lord who has nothing to gain, no purpose unfulfilled, no fruit unobtained — and yet keeps acting. The two negations are absolute. Na me kartavyam — for me there is nothing that must be done. Nanavaptam avaptavyam — nothing unattained that needs to be attained. By every metric the ordinary mind would use to motivate action, Krishna has no reason to act. And the verse closes with the simple defiance of that logic: varta eva cha karmani — yet I am engaged in action.

Vallabha's gloss for this verse is a single compact sutra — atra caham eva nidarshanam — here I myself am the exemplar. The argument needs no elaboration; the speaker is the proof.

Madhusudana reads the verse as a double instruction. The metaphysical point — nasti avaptavyam phalam — establishes the jnana-foundation: action is not for the doer's benefit. The address Partha is doing soft work alongside it: the mother's name reminds Arjuna of the kshatriya inheritance whose precedent Krishna himself, as Yadava and as Avatar, models. The verse closes Arjuna's last possible objection. If even the Lord with nothing to gain acts continuously, the argument that one might withdraw because one has nothing to gain has no purchase.

Context

where

Chapter 3 · Karma-Yoga · meter anuṣṭubh

who speaks

Krishna → Arjuna · vocative Pārtha

preceded by — BG 3.21

Whatever a great person does, others do too; whatever standard that person sets, the world follows.

What's going on

There is nothing I must do in any of the three worlds, Pārtha, and nothing unattained that I need to attain, yet I remain engaged in action.

Vyavahāra · try it in your life

Advaita

Before beginning any complex task — a difficult conversation, a professional deliverable, a caregiving act — pause and ask: 'What outcome am I actually defending?' Śaṅkara's reading suggests the practitioner trains to distinguish between action proceeding from viveka (discernment) and action proceeding from kartā-abhimāna (the pride of being the doer). Concretely: complete the task fully, and notice whether residual anxiety attaches to 'how it reflects on me' — that residue is the object of practice, not the task itself.

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Rāmānuja's 'loka-rakṣā' framing reorients motivation from personal outcome to relational protection. In practice: identify one recurring action in your week that you perform only when you expect recognition, and perform it once without the cue — not as self-denial, but as rehearsal of pūrṇatā (acting from fullness). The Viśiṣṭādvaita practitioner is training the will to locate action's source in bhagavat-kainkarya (service to the Lord present in the community) rather than in transactional reciprocity.

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Dvaita

Dvaita's insistence that the jīva is always dependent (paratantra) reframes 3.22 as a call to honest role-occupancy. Ask: 'Am I avoiding this action because it feels beneath me, or because I genuinely lack capacity?' The Dvaita practitioner recognizes that acting in one's assigned station — without inflating agency or contracting into false humility — is the daily form of Hari-worship. Refusing kartavya on grounds of spiritual advancement is precisely the ahamkāra (ego-inflation) that Hari's sovereignty corrects.

Śuddhādvaita

Vallabha's līlā-frame: choose one creative or relational act each day and perform it without a metric of success — not to cultivate detachment (that would still be goal-oriented) but to discover whether the act itself carries its own joy (sva-ānanda). This is the Puṣṭi-mārga training: grace (prasāda) is recognized, not manufactured. The practitioner is not striving toward Kṛṣṇa's playfulness — they are noticing where it is already operating and removing the self-monitoring that blocks it.

Bhakti

Śrīdhara's pedagogical point converts into a simple behavioral test: if even Kṛṣṇa does not use completeness as an excuse to withdraw, then 'I have already done enough' is a red flag, not a spiritual achievement. The bhakti practitioner applies this as a daily checkpoint — not guilt-driven busyness, but honest inquiry: 'Am I disengaging from this relationship or responsibility because it is genuinely complete, or because engagement has become uncomfortable?'

Advaita-Bhakti

Madhusūdana's synthesis — jñāna-foundation, bhakti-expression — suggests a two-movement practice: first, identify the action's phalāpekṣā (what fruit am I protecting?); second, dedicate the action explicitly as offering (arpaṇa) to the source of one's lineage or vocation. The 'Pārtha' address reminds practitioners that role-identity is not an obstacle to liberation — it is the specific channel through which the universal teaching becomes actionable for this person in this context.

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

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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 3, Verse 22: Krishna to Arjuna — Karma-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports