BG 2.47 is 32 syllables in two lines, and it gives four separate instructions. You have seen the first half on motivational posters and in graduation speeches: “You have the right to action, not to its fruits.” Most people stop there. The second line keeps the first from turning into a platitude about letting go.
The Sanskrit, Word by Word
Here is the text itself. Read it slowly once.
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥
mā karmaphalaheturbhūrmā te saṅgo'stvakarmaṇi ||
Krishna speaks the verse to Arjuna on the battlefield. Arjuna has sat down in his chariot and refused to fight (2.9). He has said the cost is too high, the grief too great, and that he cannot tell whether winning or losing would be better (2.6). Krishna has been answering since 2.11, and here he turns from the nature of the self to the question of action.
That context matters. The listener is a man in the hardest situation of his life, using uncertainty about outcomes as a reason to stop. Krishna tells him how action works and why his relationship to results is the problem.
Four Instructions in One Line
The verse breaks into four clauses. Each is worth holding separately, because folding them into one vague idea of “detachment” loses most of what the verse says.
Your authority is in action. The particle eva, “only”, makes the act itself your domain and your proper territory. Krishna is affirming Arjuna's agency and telling him to use it.
Never in the fruits. The word kadachana, joined to mā, means “never, at any time.” Your authority stops at the act and does not reach into the result.
Do not let the fruit be your motive for acting. People often miss this clause. It concerns what drives you before the act as well as how you take the result afterwards. If the anticipated reward is why you are doing it, the quality of your action changes. You will cut corners when no one is watching. You will stop when the reward seems unlikely. You will do different things for different audiences.
Have no attachment to inaction. This clause keeps the verse from becoming a philosophy of passivity: “detachment from results” cannot serve as a reason not to act.
All four together describe the practice, and removing any one leaves a partial reading. A common one keeps instructions one and two and drops three and four, leaving something like “act, and accept whatever happens.” That reading keeps something useful and loses the two hardest parts.
What “Don't Claim the Fruit” Means
Instruction two needs the most unpacking, because it is easy to read as indifference to outcomes.
The verse says your right does not extend to the fruit. You can still care whether your work is good. Caring about the quality of your work is different from claiming ownership of the outcome.
Take a surgeon, who cares a great deal about whether the patient recovers. They prepare thoroughly, execute carefully, make adjustments in real time. But they cannot control every variable. The patient's underlying health, the rare complication, the unforeseen bleeding: these are not in the surgeon's domain. What is in their domain is the quality of their attention and their skill. That is where their authority lies.
If the surgeon measures their professional worth by whether the patient survived, they have placed their identity inside territory they do not control. The outcome still matters; where the surgeon places the measure of success changes how they work.
Why the Fourth Instruction Is Usually Ignored
The fourth clause, ma te sango'stvakarmaṇi, is rarely quoted, and it holds the verse together.
Without it, “detachment from results” becomes an alibi. Someone who avoids effort, avoids commitment, avoids showing up for difficult things can dress all of that in the language of the Gita. “I'm not attached to outcomes. I am just being present. I am practicing nishkama karma.” The verse rules this reading out with its last words, mā te saṅgo'stv akarmaṇi.
The Sanskrit word sanga means attachment or clinging. The verse treats inaction as a form of attachment too: you can cling to the comfortable position of doing nothing. Krishna asks for full action, free of attachment to results, without results as the motive, and without any of this becoming a reason to stop.
That makes the verse demanding. It lets you off the hook in neither direction.
The Four Failure Modes This Verse Addresses
Clause one corrects: paralysis, the failure to act at all.
Clause two corrects: entitlement, the assumption that good action guarantees good outcome.
Clause three corrects: instrumental action, doing things only for personal reward and cutting corners when the reward seems unlikely.
Clause four corrects: false detachment, using the language of non-attachment to justify not showing up.
How This Changes Work, Anxiety, and Failure
The pattern this verse describes shows up everywhere. People have long worried about whether their work will land, whether their effort will be recognised, and whether what they built will succeed. Krishna's point is that two separate things have been confused: the quality of your effort and the fate of the result.
At work, separating your identity from the outcome can make some decisions easier. You can try things that might fail, because failure does not define you. You are willing to give honest feedback, because your relationship with someone does not depend on whether they approve of what you say. You can do the unglamorous parts of a job, because you are doing what the work requires and not performing for an audience.
After a failure, the teaching changes what the failure means. If you measure yourself by results, failure is evidence that you are insufficient. If you measure yourself by the quality of your action, failure becomes information. You did the work, the outcome failed to arrive, and now you have data about what to do differently. It is easier to read that data when you are not also defending your ego.
Much worry about the future is worry about whether an outcome will confirm or deny a person's worth. Read through 2.47, that worth sits in the quality of present action, the part you control.
The Verses That Build on This
The Gita returns to this teaching several times, each time from a slightly different angle. Two verses that extend the same idea:
असक्तो ह्याचरन्कर्म परमाप्नोति पूरुषः ॥
asakto hyācaran karma paramāpnoti pūruṣaḥ ||
कर्मण्यभिप्रवृत्तोऽपि नैव किञ्चित्करोति सः ॥
karmaṇyabhipravṛtto'pi naiva kiñcitkaroti saḥ ||
The three verses form an arc. 2.47 gives the instruction. 3.19 says to practise it always, under pressure or not. 4.20 describes what it looks like when the practice is complete: full engagement in work, with none of the ego-weight of ownership attached to it.
A Note on Translation
The word adhikara in the first clause is often translated as “right,” as in “you have a right to action.” It also means authority, domain, or proper sphere. Read that way, action is where you have power, and results lie outside it.
Revised October 2026: corrected the syllable count wording, the translation of 2.47, where Krishna's answer begins (2.11, not 2.47), and removed the Gita's age in years and an unsupported claim about measurable work effects; copy edited.