— Popular modern rendering associated with the Bhagavad Gita; not a specific verse
About this quote
हिन्दी में
जो करना है, सब करो — पर अहंकार से नहीं, वासना से नहीं, ईर्ष्या से नहीं; प्रेम, करुणा, विनम्रता और भक्ति के साथ करो।
What it means
Note what the line leaves untouched. The duties stay exactly as they were — everything you have to do is not trimmed, deferred or made optional. What is put up for replacement is the motive, three named drives swapped for four others, with the work itself unchanged on either side of the swap. The demand is therefore invisible from outside: two people doing an identical job may be on opposite sides of this sentence.
It is often quoted as a licence for ambition — proof that one need not withdraw from the world to be spiritual — and half of that is right. But the three items removed are precisely the engines most ambition runs on: wanting to be seen as the one who did it, wanting the thing itself, and wanting it more than the person beside you has it. Take those three out and the workload is the same while almost all of the usual fuel is gone, which is a harder instruction than the reassuring version suggests.
What it teaches you
Before a task you are about to do anyway, ask whose reaction you are picturing when it is finished — that answer, not the task, is what this line is about. The test works because motive shows up in small choices: the same report written from envy is longer, names more names, and quietly places you above someone; written from duty it is shorter. Watch for the ones you do only when they will be noticed, since those are the ones where swapping the motive changes something real.
अर्थ और सीख
यह पंक्ति आपके काम नहीं घटाती — जो करना है, वह सब करना है; बदलना है केवल भाव, अहंकार-वासना-ईर्ष्या की जगह प्रेम, करुणा, विनम्रता और भक्ति। इसे महत्वाकांक्षा की छूट समझना अधूरा पाठ है, क्योंकि जो तीन भाव हटाए गए हैं वही अक्सर महत्वाकांक्षा का ईंधन होते हैं। सबक यह है कि काम शुरू करने से पहले देखें कि पूरा होने पर आप किसकी प्रतिक्रिया की कल्पना कर रहे हैं — जो काम केवल दिखने पर किए जाते हैं, वहीं यह बात असर करती है।
Where it comes from
This is a popular modern rendering associated with the Bhagavad Gita rather than a literal translation of a specific verse. The Gita — Krishna’s dialogue with Arjuna within the Mahabharata — reaches most readers today through such free renderings.
For word-for-word translations with chapter-and-verse citations, see the sourced Gita quotes on this site, drawn from Swami Swarupananda’s 1909 public-domain translation.
