BG 3.9 — Karma-Yoga — Sūtrakṛt-Gītā

Bhagavad Gītā 3.9Chapter 3 · Karma-Yoga · Krishna → Arjuna · Kaunteya · anuṣṭubh

यज्ञार्थात्कर्मणोऽन्यत्र लोकोऽयं कर्मबन्धनः ।

तदर्थं कर्म कौन्तेय मुक्तसङ्गः समाचर ॥

yajñārthātkarmaṇo'nyatra loko'yaṃ karmabandhanaḥ

tadarthaṃ karma kaunteya muktasaṅgaḥ samācara

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

meaning

Work done as an offering to the Lord does not bind you, but any other action chains you to this world, so act for that purpose alone, free from attachment.

ekras · bhāṣya

Each commentator anchors yajna in the same Taittiriya shruti — yajno vai vishnuh. Yajna is Vishnu. Action performed for the sake of that — yajnartha-karma — is action offered to the Lord; only such action does not bind. Any other action, however virtuous it looks, leaves a karmic residue that has to be exhausted later.

Madhusudana addresses the mumukshu who has internalized the maxim karmana badhyate jantuh — the creature is bound by action — and concluded action should be abandoned. He confirms the logic: karma does bind. But he qualifies: only the kind of karma that is not yajnartha. Karma offered to Vishnu does not bind because the inner stance from which it is performed has changed. The doer has stopped being the purusha-with-sanga and has become the offering-channel. The closing instruction is the operational rule. Tad-artham karma kaunteya mukta-sangah samachara — for that purpose, perform action mukta-sanga, free from sanga. The two conditions are paired. Yajnartha — for the sake of the Lord — names the orientation. Mukta-sanga — free from sticky attachment — names the inner stance. Both must be present. The action becomes karmically clean only when both are.

Vallabha names the Samkhya interlocutor explicitly — those who argue that since karma binds, it should be abandoned — and rejects the argument for the qualified ritualist. The path is not through abandoning karma; the path is through redirecting its purpose.

Context

where

Chapter 3 · Karma-Yoga · meter anuṣṭubh

who speaks

Krishna → Arjuna · vocative Kaunteya

preceded by — BG 3.8

Do your prescribed duty — action is better than inaction, for without it you cannot even keep your body alive.

What's going on

Work done as an offering to the Lord does not bind you, but any other action chains you to this world, so act for that purpose alone, free from attachment.

Vyavahāra · try it in your life

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Treat the entire workflow — from sourcing materials or preparing for a meeting to delivering the final output — as a chain of śeṣa-bhāva (servant-posture) acts, each subordinate to Bhagavān as the ultimate receiver. When negotiating a fee or managing resources (Rāmānuja's 'dravyārjana'), ask: am I doing this to expand my domain, or to better serve the larger yajña? The reorientation need not be verbal; it lives in the motivation layer, and Bhagavān's grace progressively unwinds the deep karmic impressions one carries from past lives.

Advaita

Before each professional task, pause and consciously re-dedicate the work to Īśvara — not as a ritual formula but as a genuine bhāvanā (mental reorientation) that severs the rope between output and ego. When the task ends, release the fruit completely: no rumination on whether it was praised or criticized. The work becomes karma-yoga as citta-śuddhi — the repeated letting-go trains the mind toward the steadiness required for jñāna-vicāra (inquiry into the nature of the self).

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Dvaita

Structure daily work as direct, named worship of Hari: at the start of any significant task, explicitly acknowledge that you are the jīva (dependent soul) and Hari is the prabhu (master). Do not blur the asymmetry — Madhva's insistence on eternal difference means the posture of dependency is permanent, not a training wheel. Examine desires around outcomes carefully: the binding agent is saṅga with a specific desired result. Even duties prescribed by one's station (svadharma) must be discharged without the 'this fruit should come to me' clause.

Śuddhādvaita

Cultivate the understanding that your skill, your effort, and the result are all Kṛṣṇa's own svarūpa-śakti (innate power) in motion — you are the instrument of Bhagavān's self-expression, not its author. When you catch yourself calculating whether an effort will be 'worth it', that is the moment of para-dharma or kāmya-karma creeping in. In prema-bhakti, even the smallest act — cooking, cleaning, writing — is offered as prasāda-seva (service of the offering), and Kṛṣṇa receives it. The daily practice is to shift from 'I made this' to 'this happened through me as Bhagavān's līlā.'

Bhakti

Keep it simple: before beginning any recurring duty, silently dedicate it to Viṣṇu's prīti (pleasure). This does not require elaborate internal architecture — Śrīdhara's voice is spare and devotional. The practice is niṣkāmatā (desirelessness) paired with Viṣṇu-smaraṇa (remembrance of Viṣṇu). Over time, the habit of Viṣṇu-smaraṇa at the opening and closing of each activity becomes a continuous thread that transforms ordinary karma into yajñārtha-karma without disrupting external form or profession.

Advaita-Bhakti

Bring śraddhā (trust, conviction) into the act itself — not merely detachment from results but a warm belief that the Lord receives the work. Madhusūdana's added layer means mechanical niṣkāmatā without śraddhā is incomplete; the work must be done 'śraddhā-ādi-puraḥsaram' (led by faith and related qualities). Practically: at moments of doubt, anxiety, or fatigue during a task, invoke Kṛṣṇa's presence as parameśvara before resuming — this is not superstition but the Advaita-grounded recognition that the substrate of the work is Brahman, and the bhakti adds the relational warmth that keeps the practice sustainable.

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 9: Krishna to Arjuna — Karma-Yoga