A declaration · expansive in mood · builds on earlier teachings
“What looks like personal control is nature moving through form.”
The supreme being creates neither doership nor actions nor the link between action and result for people. Nature alone keeps moving.
The verse in reading order — each Sanskrit word with its meaning beneath. Tap a word to focus on it.
Read literallynot · doership · not · actions · creates · the supreme being · not · connection with action-result · nature · but
The supreme being does not manufacture a separate doer, the actions, or the binding link between action and result. What actually operates is nature.
Krishna speaks this verse, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, in the chapter titled "Karma Sanyasa Yoga" (The Yoga of Renunciation).
Verse 14 sits in Chapter 5 of the Bhagavad Gita — Karma Sanyasa Yoga, "The Yoga of Renunciation". The chapter has 29 verses in total.
A mother blames God for her son failing his exams. Krishna's answer would be gentle: the result came from habits, effort and circumstance, the workings of nature, and those can still change.
Did you like this verse?
Krishna says the Lord creates neither doership nor actions nor their link to results; nature does the moving.
What this verse means
The supreme being does not manufacture a separate doer, the actions, or the binding link between action and result. What actually operates is nature.
Context & commentary
Krishna goes deeper than duty and explains that the sense of personal doership belongs to a lower level of reality. Actions unfold through nature, without a separate self running them.
What it looks like today
A mother blames God for her son failing his exams. Krishna's answer would be gentle: the result came from habits, effort and circumstance, the workings of nature, and those can still change.
“Actions come from nature, and the Lord hands no one their sense of doership.”
Explore related themes: prakriti (31 verses), karma phala (10 verses)