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What the Gītā says about karma

You act. You have always acted — before you knew the word karma, before you weighed a single consequence. The Gītā does not ask you to stop. It asks you to notice what you attach to the act: the hope, the dread, the silent ledger of what you think you are owed. Karma in these verses is not a cosmic scorecard. It is the plain fact that action binds when you grip the result and frees when you let it go. Krishna's instruction is surgical: do the work that is yours, offer it, and put the weight down. The hands stay busy. The clinging stops. That changes everything — not later, but now, in the next thing you do.

Verses

2.47
Do the work. The result was never yours to carry.
The foundational teaching: act, but the result was never yours to carry
2.48
Act from steadiness, letting attachment go, the same in success and failure. That evenness is yoga.
Defines yoga as evenness in action — steady whether you succeed or fail
3.5
No one sits actionless even for a moment. Nature's own forces drive everyone to act.
No one can opt out of action; nature itself compels you to move
3.9
Work binds the world — except work done as offering. So act as offering, free of attachment.
Work done as offering breaks the chain; all other work binds
3.19
Do what must be done, without clinging. Acting unattached, you reach the highest.
The unattached worker, not the idle one, reaches the highest
3.27
Nature's forces do all the doing. Fooled by ego, a man thinks: I am the doer.
Nature does the doing; ego's claim of authorship is the real trap
4.18
One who sees stillness within action and action within stillness — that one is wise, and does all work.
Seeing stillness inside action — the mark of real wisdom about karma
4.33
The offering of knowledge outweighs any offering of things. In the end, all action ripens into knowing.
All action finally comes to rest in knowledge, not in more action
5.10
Set your work in the eternal, act without clinging — sin slides off you like water off a lotus leaf.
Action offered to the eternal lets consequence slide off like water
18.11
No one who wears a body can drop all action. The one who drops the fruit — that one has truly let go.
Dropping the fruit, not the work — the true meaning of renunciation
18.48
Never drop your born work for its flaws. Every undertaking is wrapped in some flaw, as fire in smoke.
Every undertaking is flawed; do your own work anyway, as you are