— Bhagavad Gita 3.26 (tr. Swami Swarupananda, 1909)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
कर्म में आसक्त अज्ञानियों की बुद्धि को डगमगाना नहीं चाहिए; ज्ञानी स्वयं स्थिर भाव से कर्म करता हुआ सब कर्मों में लगा रहे।
What it means
The obligation in this verse falls on the one who knows, not on the one who doesn’t. The named danger is precise: unsettling someone’s understanding. Half-transmitted detachment does not produce freedom in a person still working from attachment — it produces someone who has been told the work does not matter and therefore stops, having gained the indifference without the steadiness underneath it.
It is sometimes read as counsel to leave the simple folk alone, which makes it sound condescending. What it actually prescribes is the opposite of withdrawal: the wise person stays in the work, alongside everyone else, and that continued participation is the teaching. No speech is recommended anywhere in the line.
What it teaches you
If you have arrived at some genuine distance from outcomes at work, resist announcing it to colleagues who are still running on caring about them — and keep doing the ordinary tasks at the ordinary standard. The check on whether your detachment is real is simple: whether the people around you can still rely on you for the dull work, not whether they know you have stopped needing it.
अर्थ और सीख
यह श्लोक ज़िम्मेदारी ज्ञानी पर डालता है, अज्ञानी पर नहीं — चेतावनी यह है कि किसी की बुद्धि को अधकचरे वैराग्य से डगमगा मत दो, वरना वह कर्म छोड़ देगा और भीतर की स्थिरता उसे मिलेगी नहीं। समाधान उपदेश नहीं, बल्कि साथ मिलकर काम करते रहना है। सीख यह है कि आपकी निर्लिप्तता की परीक्षा यह है कि साधारण काम में लोग अब भी आप पर भरोसा कर पाते हैं या नहीं।
Where it comes from
This verse comes from Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita, Karma Yoga (The Yoga of Action) — Krishna’s case for engaged action: work done selflessly purifies, inaction is impossible anyway, and the example of the great keeps the world together.
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.
