— Bhagavad Gita 2.50 (tr. Swami Swarupananda, 1909)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
इस समत्व-बुद्धि से युक्त होकर मनुष्य इसी जीवन में पाप और पुण्य — दोनों से मुक्त हो जाता है। इसलिए तू इस योग में लग जा। योग ही कर्म की कुशलता है।
What it means
The startling phrase is alike from vice and virtue. A reader expects evenness of mind to be repaid in virtue; the verse says it frees you from virtue as well, because a good deed you are counting binds as surely as a bad one. What is offered is release from the ledger, not a better line in it.
Then comes a definition — and it defines work, not withdrawal: yoga is skill in action. It is often read as a productivity maxim, that the discipline will make you better at your job. The verse runs the other way. The skill named is the evenness of the first line, carried into the working, and better work is a by-product nobody is told to aim at.
What it teaches you
After your next piece of work, answer two questions separately: was it done well, and did it land well. Most of us can only answer the second and let it recolour the first — careful work that failed gets remembered as sloppy, careless work that succeeded as skilled. Keeping the two answers apart, on ordinary tasks, is the practical form of the evenness this verse asks for.
अर्थ और सीख
श्लोक कहता है कि समत्व-बुद्धि पा लेने पर मनुष्य इसी जन्म में पाप और पुण्य — दोनों के बंधन से छूट जाता है; ध्यान दीजिए, पुण्य से भी, क्योंकि गिना हुआ पुण्य भी बाँधता है। फिर योग की परिभाषा आती है — योग यानी कर्म में कुशलता; काम छोड़ना नहीं, काम करते हुए फल से अपना नाता बदलना। सीख यह कि ‘काम ठीक हुआ या नहीं’ और ‘नतीजा अच्छा निकला या नहीं’ — इन दो सवालों के जवाब अलग-अलग दीजिए।
Where it comes from
This verse comes from Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita, Sankhya Yoga (The Yoga of Knowledge) — the Gita in miniature: the immortality of the Self, the discipline of equanimity, and the first statement of acting without attachment to results.
The Bhagavad Gita — ‘the Song of the Lord’ — is the dialogue between Krishna and the warrior Arjuna set within the Mahabharata, and one of the most influential spiritual texts ever composed. English translation by Swami Swarupananda (1909), a public-domain rendering from the Sanskrit; the exact chapter and verse are cited with this quote.
