Chapter 2, Verse 47

Sanskrit

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥

Transliteration

karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ‘stv akarmaṇi

Translation

Your right is to action alone, never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.

Concepts discussed

• karma-yoga — the verse around which this yoga is organized
• nishkama-karma — the verse’s operational definition
• karma — action, in its full philosophical register
• karta / bhokta — both structures are addressed
• chitta-shuddhi — the purification 2.47 produces over time
• shiva-jnana-jiva-seva — the Ramakrishna Order’s reading of the verse
• swadharma — the content; nishkama the manner

Swami’s commentary

2.47 is the single most quoted verse of the Gita and the structural heart of karma-yoga. Swami treats it as ten observations in Ep 17:

1. The three-way contrast. Human action comes in three registers:

• tamasic — inaction, laziness, refusal. Destructive. No benefit.
• rajasic — action driven by desire. Binds; gives rise to samsaric suffering.
• sattvic / karma-yoga — action as duty, as worship, without personal fruit-grasping. Purifies.

2. Disinterested, not uninterested. 2.47 does not prescribe casual, half-done work. The quality of the action is preserved or enhanced; what is released is the internal grasping for its results.

3. The two sides — karma and its phala. Two attitudes are needed:

• Toward karma (what I do): “this is my duty / worship; I do it for its own sake or as offering.”
• Toward phala (what happens to me): received with equanimity. Success → gratitude. Failure → “bad karma being exhausted; a call to return to God; an ethical warning.”

4. Mā phaleṣu kadācana — “never to the fruits.” Why not? Because attempting to claim the fruits is dishonest (many causes co-produced them, not only me), and because the attempt to claim them generates bhoktritva (enjoyership), which generates kartritva (agency-sense), which generates further karma. Cut the bhoga-side and the karma-loop unwinds.

5. Why reduce desires — the four reasons (see nishkama-karma):

• Every desire manufactures apurnatvam (incompleteness).
• Desire costs independence — “slave to a good word, slave to a bad word” (Vivekananda).
• Unfulfilled desires breed frustration.
• Fulfilled desires proliferate, never satiate — “pouring ghee on fire.”

6. Karma fundamentally cannot give atman anything. Karma is anitya; atman is nitya. The ultimate value of karma is indirect: through chitta-shuddhi it prepares the mind for meditation and eventually for realization. Karma’s real gift is the knowledge it sets the stage for.

7. Mā te saṅgo ‘stv akarmaṇi — “nor let attachment be to inaction.” Two failure modes are blocked: the rajasic failure of action-with-desire, and the tamasic failure of no-action-at-all. Krishna preempts the spiritualized dropout who reads Vedanta and concludes “if all this is mithya, why act?” Wrong move — give up attachment, not action. Even the renounced monastic is put to work.

8. Shiva-jnana-jiva-seva — spiritualized service. Ramakrishna’s innovation, Vivekananda’s order-defining doctrine. Beyond doing one’s duties as worship, service to all beings as God becomes a way of life. The order’s motto: ātmano mokṣārthaṁ jagad-hitāya ca.

9. Three simultaneous dimensions of that service. The same activity is karma-yoga (action as worship), upasana (meditation-in-the-act, seeing God in the served), and jnana (the recognition that all beings are Brahman — not imagined, known).

10. The verse in Sri Ramakrishna’s own life. The doctrine is not theory: the Swami who bowed to an empty classroom before entering to teach; the order’s schools, hospitals, and famine-relief services framed categorically not as social work but as karma-yoga. The outer form is service; the inner form is simultaneously karma-yoga, upasana, and jnana.

Episode 17 [entire]: 2.47 unfolded through ten observations; the bhokta→karta chain; four reasons to reduce desires; karma’s indirect role; the Ramakrishna Order’s founding doctrine as embodiment of the verse.