Bhagavad Gita Chapter 3 in English IAST: Karma Yoga

oṃ tatsaditi śrīmadbhagavadgītāsūpaniṣatsu brahmavidyāyāṃ yogaśāstre śrīkṛṣṇārjunasaṃvāde karmayogo nāma tṛtīyo’dhyāyaḥ ||

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About Karma Yoga

The second chapter ended with the description of the person of steady wisdom. Hearing it, a natural doubt rises in Arjuna: if understanding is the higher thing, why this terrible war? The third chapter opens not with a question but with that protest.

The whole chapter turns on one point: nobody becomes free of work by giving up work. What has to be given up is not the work but the grip on it. To make that case the Gita offers three kinds of support: argument, the example of good men, and Krishna’s own conduct.

How the chapter moves

• Verses 1 to 8: Arjuna’s protest, the answer of the two standings, and the statement that nobody can stay even a moment without acting.
• Verses 9 to 16: Sacrifice and the wheel of the world. The life of one who breaks the circle of giving and receiving is wasted.
• Verses 17 to 24: The state of one who needs nothing, the holding together of the world, the example of Janaka, and Krishna putting himself forward as the example.
• Verses 25 to 35: Do not unsettle the understanding of the ignorant; it is the qualities that do the work; the force of one’s own nature; and the worth of one’s own duty.
• Verses 36 to 43: Arjuna asks what makes a man sin against his will, desire is named, and its seat and its defeat are described.

The two standings

In the third verse Krishna speaks of the yoga of knowledge for the Sankhyas and the yoga of action for the yogis. A large part of the commentarial debate turns on that single line. For Shankara these are two distinct roads for two distinct kinds of people. For Ramanuja they are two stages of one road, and karma yoga is both the earlier and the safer. Madhva puts it through persons: some, like Sanaka and his brothers, stood in knowledge having left their work, while others, like Janaka, became knowers while standing inside it.

These pages do not decide between the readings. Wherever the acharyas part, each position is recorded in its own terms.

Lokasangraha

One important word this chapter gives is lokasangraha, the holding together of the world: keeping people steady in their own duty and keeping the order from collapsing. It is for this that a person who needs nothing for himself still works. The twenty-first verse, that people learn by watching what their seniors do, is as true now as it was then.

Sources: several.