Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 5, Verse 14: Krishna to Arjuna — Karma-Sannyāsa-Yoga
The inner sovereign neither creates agenthood in the world nor actions nor their bond to fruit. Nature alone moves.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
The sovereign (prabhuh, the ātman) neither fabricates agenthood (kartrtva) for the world, nor its desired objects — chariots, pots, palaces — nor the union of action with fruit; it is svabhāva (the nature that is māyā, avidyā) that moves. From the ultimate standpoint (paramārthatah), the ātman neither does nor causes anything: what appears as doing is entirely the projection of beginningless nescience. Liberation is the recognition that no real agenthood ever belonged to the self.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
The sovereign ātman — abiding in its own intrinsic form (svābhāvika-svarūpa), untouched by karma — does not generate the distinctive agenthood belonging to devas, animals, humans, or plants, nor their specific actions, nor their species-specific fruit-unions. What moves is svabhāva: the residual tendency (vāsanā) built up through beginningless prior karma that has conjoined the ātman with particular forms of prakṛti. Agenthood belongs to conditioned nature, not to the ātman's own essence.
- Madhvadvaita
The jīva (prabhuh here read as the jīva, lord with respect to inert matter) does not in truth (vastutah) possess agenthood on its own: it is always dependent (jāda-apekṣya, dependent on inert instruments). Agency appears when the jīva misidentifies itself with the body-instrument complex, not as a property of the ātman as such. Hari alone is the ultimate ordainer; the jīva's apparent activity is fully contingent.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
The Paramātman (prabhu, Īśvara) does not author the agenthood, actions, or fruit-unions of the world of embodied beings — for Īśvara to do so would implicate Him in partiality (vaiṣamya) and cruelty (nairghṛṇya). Rather it is the svabhāva immanent in the world — the nature constituted of manifold womb-seeds and impressions (nānā-yoni-bīja-āśaya) — that moves of itself. The way out is not more karma but surrender of the ego's false agenthood: only then does the ātman's self-mastery (ātmaiva ātmano bandhuḥ) become operative.
- Śrīdharabhakti
The verse answers an Upaniṣadic objection: since śruti says 'He (Paramīśvara) causes the worthy to perform good deeds and the unworthy to perform bad' (Kauṣītakī), is the jīva not simply compelled — and if so, how can it renounce action? Śrīdhara resolves this: Īśvara does not himself generate (na sṛjati) the jīva's agenthood, its actions, or its fruit-unions. Instead Īśvara sets in motion what is already the jīva's own svabhāva — the nature of avidyā and desire accumulated over beginningless time — without becoming its creator. The karmic weight rests entirely with the jīva.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Madhusūdana distinguishes three distinct negations with surgical precision: the ātman (prabhu, the inner sovereign) is neither the inducer of agenthood ('do this' — niyoga-kartā), nor the direct doer of desired objects (ghaṭa, etc.), nor the binder of the doer to fruit (bhojayitā-bhoktā). All three roles are svabhāva's — the divine māyā that appears as avidyā. As a sky does not actually become soiled by the cloud it seems to hold, the ātman is untouched. The upaniṣadic witness-self ('sa samānaḥ san ubhau lokāv anusañcarati... dhyāyatīva lelāyatīva') abides unchanged, luminous beneath every apparent motion.