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How do you start reading the Bhagavad Gītā, a supposedly accessible text? How do you read it if you don’t know enough Sanskrit to read the original? You will probably start with one of many, many translations. This works well at the start. The translation draws you in. But at some point, it stops making sense. And then suddenly you are left stranded.
This is how it happened to me. I had been working through Swami Mukundananda’s translation online, which I mostly picked because it is an easy website to navigate. Things were going alright, barring the occasional hiccup, until I got to the fourth adhyāya. Here is shloka 4:16 where it happened.
| किं कर्म किमकर्मेति कवयोऽप्यत्र मोहिता: |
| तत्ते कर्म प्रवक्ष्यामि यज्ज्ञात्वा मोक्ष्यसेऽशुभात् | 16 |
Which Swami Mukundananda translates as
“What is action and what is inaction? Even the wise are confused in determining this.
Now I shall explain to you the secret of action, by knowing which, you may free yourself from material bondage.”
That can’t be right. There’s nothing transcendental about knowing that idleness is the opposite of doing. What exactly are the wise confused about?
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The fourth adhyāya is titled jynāna-karma-sannyāsa-yōga. Shri Krshna continues to talk about the idea of “karma” that he introduces in the second and third adhyāyas, and how the very knowledge (jnyāna) of karma can liberate one from bondage. Over 42 shlokas Krshna builds up an argument to make the extraordinary claim that karma-yogis do karma as akarma, and that’s the secret sauce to mōksha. The words in the shlokas shimmer with the promise of the highest serenity, with a style that is at once personal and intimate but also radiant, superlative. And right when you are getting to the good bits when the ultimate passage seems so close at hand, the translator hits us with…
What is action and what is inaction?
Perhaps I’m wiser than whoever the Gītā is talking about here. but perhaps that’s getting too indulgent. My next instinct is to question my comprehension of this translation. I go back to see if I am forgetting context. I scramble ahead to make sure I am not jumping the gun. But this is all the translator has to offer. And it makes no sense. Action and inaction.
What’s going on here? On the face of it, karma and akarma do indeed mean “action” and “inaction”. I would have translated these the same way. But what do I know about the Gītā. I needed a better translation to know what about these words is “confusing”. And so begins a quest to find this fuller sense of karma and akarma.
The following is a little account of how I navigated this search. It is a travelogue that describes a journey through multiple translations, commentaries, dictionaries, and finally works outside the Gītā (Parts 2-7). I arrive at a new translation in 8. But the journey proves fruitful in more than one way. I explain this in 9 and reflect in 10. And what gets us started on this journey is one incongruity in a single translation of a single shloka.
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First step, let’s see if we can simply find a better English translation of 4:16. Here are some others I found online:
“What is action and what is inaction?”
-holybhagavadgita.org
“Even the intelligent are bewildered in determining what is action and what is inaction.”
-vedabase.io
“What is action, and what is not action? In this matter, even the wise are deluded.”
-vivekavani.com
“What is action? What is inaction?”
-shlokam.org
Suspiciously similar sounding, and none of them are particularly illuminating. Either all these translators think “action” and “inaction”, in the commonplace sense are in fact deep concepts that need explanation that are also somehow self-evident, or these are all just lazy and uncritical. But we are here to understand the Gītā, and in this these translations are unhelpful. Let’s put aside English translations for now.
How else are we to understand what these words mean? I looked at a Hindi translation, a Kannada translation and a Marathi translation and their authors in their wisdom merely use the words karma and akarma in the explanation even when they acknowledge that the commonplace usages are not quite what is being implied here. This works because karma and akarma are in fact common Indian words. Which makes this whole endeavor that much more frustrating! In these non-English translations, the words keep the original meaning intact but they also retain their original opacity. So we are forced to abandon translations of the original altogether.
Maybe the great Acharyas understand our woes, and so we next turn to them. How else are we to understand ancient wisdom if not through their bhāshya-s?
Shankarabhashya on 4:16 translated by Swami Gambhirananda:
“What is called karma is the movement of the body etc. as are well-known in the world; and akarma, inaction, is not doing those, (i.e.) sitting quietly.”
But no, these are not well-known in the world!
To read the bhāshya-s, if you are like me, you need to start with a translation and then you find talk of “action” and “inaction” … and you get the idea. More generally, the bhāshya-s have their arguments they are trying to make. Neither the Shankarabhashya nor the Bhashya of Madhvacharya shed any light on the meaning of the words karma and akarma, which they take as mostly axiomatic, at least in this context.
We are still stuck.
How else can one approach this?
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We can go back to the Sanskrit and see how the dictionary defines these words. The Amarakosha defines it thus
कर्मन् (नपुं) = क्रिया. 3.2.1.2.1
“Action”.
That’s not helpful.
But! I noticed a second usage, in Vyākarana, of akarma:
(In grammar.) Having no direct object, intransitive (as a verb).
And karma means the opposite: “to have a direct object, a transitive verb”.
Now this is surprisingly close to the word’s usage in Vedānta, where the definition involves both action and its “object”:
“Karma (कर्म) refers to “action”, “deed”. 1) any action or deed; 2) the principle of cause and effect; 3) a consequence or “fruit of action” (_karmaphala) or “after effect” (uttaraphala), which sooner or later returns upon the doer. What we sow, we shall reap in this or future lives. Selfish, hateful acts (pāpakarma or kukarma) will bring suffering. Benevolent actions (puṇya-karma or sukarma) will bring loving reaction._”
-wisdomlib.org/definition/karma
It looks like we are finally making some progress. What we’ve been missing is this additional sense of “object”, “fruit of action”, and causality. And what brought us here was looking beyond the literal definition and looking to other, more technical senses in which the words are used.
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We have a picture that is starting to emerge. Some definitions of karma we can distill from this Vedantic sense of the word are:
i. karma can be any action that is done with an object in mind, ii. karma is the fruit that some action accrues
To this I am going to add another definition. One common usage of karma is a Vedic ritual, that we know from injunctions like:
स्वर्गकामो ज्योतिष्टोमेन यजेत
“One desirous of swarga, should perform jyotishhToma”
Here, jyotishhToma is the name of a karma and falls in a category of action that is similar to (i) above, except it involves a ritual act, not just a pedestrian one. It is carried out with an object in mind (swarga), it comes with the promise that the desired object will accrue to the doer. But because the Vēda is privileged, and Vedic rituals are special, we can add a third aspect of karma as
iii. karma is a Vedic ritual action that can yield a specific fruit.
To be even more explicit, we have now added two more senses to the word karma beyond just action. A karma is an action in pursuit of a fruit, and also the fruit of that action.
The one who carries out such an action, and to whom its fruits accrue, is the karta (the “doer”). This makes the karta a doer-as-pursuer to whom the fruits accrue. This will come handy in just a second.
What then is akarma, if not merely inaction? Who is akarta, if not the non-doer?
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Let’s jump to an earlier shloka to understand akarta and akarma. In 4:13, Krshna says to Arjuna
चातुर्वर्ण्यं मया सृष्टं गुणकर्मविभागश:
तस्य कर्तारमपि मां विद्ध्यकर्तारमव्ययम्
It is translated by Swami Mukundananda as
“The four categories of occupations [Varnas] were created by Me according to people’s qualities and activities. Although I am the Creator of this system, know Me to be the Non-doer and Eternal”.
Krshna claims to be both karta and akarta. This is translated as I am both doer and non-doer. How can this be? This reeks of the same glibness we first encountered in 4:16. But now we have a definition of karta beyond just “doer”. We don’t yet know how to understand akarta.
The first line, however, of 4:13,
“The four … [Varnas] were created [srshtam] by Me…”
immediately rang a bell, calling to mind the Purusha Sūkta, in which also there is a description of the origin of the four Varna-s arising out of the cosmic being Purusha. What does this connection mean for our problem at hand?
The Mahābhārata, in which the Gītā is contained, claims to be the fifth Vēda, and claims to be the exposition of the message of the other Vēdas. In this case it might be instructive to go back to the Vēda itself to see if it can at all shed light on this verse from the Mahābhārata. After all Narayana is Krshna and is also Purusha of the Vēda, and these verses must attest each other. To be fully clear, here I am doing something I haven’t seen done explicitly in anything I have read so far. This is new ground, and we must tread carefully.
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The lines in the Purusha Sūkta I was reminded of were
यत्पुरुषंव्यदधुः । कतिधव्यकल्पयन्न् । मुखङ्किमस्य कौ बाहू । कावूरूपादावुच्येते ॥
ब्राह्मणोऽस्यमुखमासीत् । बाहूराजन्यः कृतः । ऊरूतदस्ययद्वैश्यः । पद्भ्याग्ंशूद्रो अजायत ॥
चन्द्रमामनसो जातः । चक्षोस्सूर्यो अजायत । मुखादिन्द्रश्चाग्निश्च । प्राणाद्वायुरजायत ॥
Edited translation from shlokam.org:
“What did the purusha hold within him? How many parts were assigned in his huge form? What were his mouth, arms, thighs and feet?
The Brahmanas were his mouth, Rajanyas were made from his arms, Vaishyas were his thighs and from his feet were born Shudras.
From his mind was born Chandrama, from his eyes appeared Surya, from his mouth and other organs were born Agni and Indra, and from his vital breath Vayu.”
Which on the face of it sounds like a description of the srshti, “creation” of the four Varnas that Krshna mentions in 4:13. So far so good.
Calling the Purusha Sukta a creation story, however, betrays miscomprehension, in a way that is critical to the point I am now about to make. While the Purusha Sukta describes the origin of the world and things in the world, it does not actually describe their origin as a singular act of creation, either ex nihilo, as in the story of creation in Genesis, or otherwise. Because creation would be an act. And an act sounds an awful lot like karma. What we do know is that the world is perpetually arising out of and falling back into Brahman, the Purusha. That is its nature. If not an act of creation, what then is Purusha Sūkta about?
It is in fact a description of another act. It is a description of a Pashubandha Yajnya, in which the Purusha is a primary participant, as both the sacred fire and as the Pashu. It is from this Yajnya are born various animals, the Vēdas, Chhandas, Yajnya itself … but then Sūrya, Chandra, etc. and the four Varnas, are described as being parts of the Purusha itself. They are the organs themselves, or they are “born of it”, or “appear from it” depending on how you translate ajāyata. What’s most pertinent to us is that there doesn’t seem to be an active creator shaping these things that emanate from the Purusha. Rather, they passively appear as facets, manifestations, perhaps even transformations of the Purusha itself.
Let’s break this down further. What is the act that is being described, what is the result of the action and who is the doer in the Purusha Sūkta? What is the relationship between the action, the doer and the fruits of action?
- The action, karma, is the Yajnya itself (karma definition 4.iii, as a Vedic ritual).
- The fruit of the action (karma definition 4.ii, as the fruit), the world and all its constituents, appear as a consequence of the Yajnya as emanations of the Purusha. This makes sense: a Pashubandha Yajnya promises as the fruit of its performance cattle and other worldly things.
- It is unclear who the doer, karta, is. Clearly the eponymous Purusha is central to this act, but in what sense is Purusha the karta? From our definition of karma (karma, definition 4.i, as an act that is a pursuit), we need to establish that the agent of the karma is in fact pursuing an object and accruing the fruit.
But there is no such evidence of fruit-seeking or accrual in the Purusha Sukta. Once again, it is in Brahman’s nature to manifest and then withdraw the world, but this is so without a sense of active agency or intention, or of accruing the karma of “creation”, whatever that may be. This non-desire and non-accrual of the Purusha is also explicit in the very next shloka in the Gīta. In 4:14 Krshna says to Arjuna
न मां कर्माणि लिम्पन्ति न मे कर्मफले स्पृहा
“Activities [sic] do not taint Me, nor do I desire the fruits of action.”
Thus Krshna as the Purusha must become another kind of karta. And he uses a special word for it. He claims that he is the akarta (4:13). He is akarta, not because he “does not do” (akarma, literal), but because he does not pursue, and fruits don’t accrue to him (akarma, new).
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So the akarta (commonly translated as non-doer), in this sense is an doer-who does not-pursue/accrue. It follows that akarma in this sense is not merely inaction, but an act with no object in mind, and the consequent non-accrual of the fruit. But this does not, crucially, mean there are no outcomes of an act that is akarma! The Yajnya in the Purusha Sukta demonstrates this in the most extravagant way. It is just that in akarma that there isn’t a pursuit of a desired object.
Here are the definitions:
Akarma – non-doing, but also an action performed without pursuing its fruits, and its non-accrual
Akarta – nondoer, but also detached doer to whom actions don’t accrue
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So we have four new definitions, and I can now propose a new translation of 4.16
किं कर्म किमकर्मेति कवयोऽप्यत्र मोहिता:
“An action becomes karma by the fruit the doer pursues, and accrues. What indeed is such action, and what then is action that is not oriented this way, akarma? This confuses even the wise.”
This is a mouthful, and definitely not as catchy as all the others. Here’s a shorter version:
“How do some actions bind their doers with their fruits, while others do not? This is the question.”
This makes more sense to me. How our actions are causally connected to the outcomes we experience is unclear. And it makes sense that even the wise are confused about this. And understanding the nature of causality is surely mōksha itself.
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What have we learned? We started with a naïve, literal translation of karma and akarma as action and inaction. We saw that this made a shloka sound nonsensical. That set us on a quest to make sense of it, by looking for a better translation of these ideas. We set out to draw a roadmap to navigate difficult-to-translate concepts using poor translations, we ended up going outwards
literal translation -> bhashyas -> dictionaries -> cross referencing other works
A little back and forth, and some research into what a yajnya is helped along the way. And at the end we now have a more complete understanding of some important words in the Bhagavad Gītā.
Of course, this sort of systematic exploration helps with difficult concepts in general, irrespective of how easy they are to translate. It is just that in this instance the incongruity of the translation helped get us started. The moral is this: watch out for those over-glib koans! But keep thinking about why they are phrased the way they are.
Finally, a careful reading can be enriching in more than one way. With just four new definitions, we now have a new lens to think about texts as far afield as the Purusha Sūkta,_ a text people seem to think they understand completely. Not only does our new toolkit easily overturn common and persistent problems with how people understand the Purusha _Sūkta (as a creation myth, for example) but reveals how tightly interwoven the Mahabharata and the Vedas are. Thinking about just a couple of shlokas in the Gita has carried us beyond the context of the Kurukshtra war into the territory of Vedanta.
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Reflections on translating:
- Some misunderstandings are pervasive and deep-rooted, but mostly because of persistent and bad translations. It isn’t very difficult to pull ourselves out of them once we know the source of the problem.
- How do we know the source of the problem is the translation? This is the hard part. It is probably best to remain cautious of any translation. There are no deep meanings in Sanskrit that are inherently incomprehensible, inarticulable or untranslatable. We must believe this if we are to pursue any understanding. There may not exist perfect translations, but maybe a couple of imperfect ones will work just as well. Stay curious about the original Sanskrit.
- So this means translations are essential, unless you already know Sanskrit. And even if you do, the act of translation can open you up to new shades of meaning. Don’t settle for a received translation. But if you find yourself resorting to a Sanskrit word because you find it untranslatable, it probably means you don’t understand it adequately. Keep pushing past the imperfect translations.
- Texts are replete with intentionally phrased contradictions that clearly have some didactic or illustrative role. But they can only serve their role if the apparent or real contradiction is comprehensible. There are useful contradictions, and less useful ones. We started with the apparent contradiction (action-vs-inaction) but found it opaque. We were able to work through it and with a new translation arrived at a new contradiction (causes that lead to effects and those that are devoid of/free of them). This is more interesting. But this is the value of a poor translation, it is sets us on a journey.
Reflections on reading:
It is exceedingly treacherous to bring different texts together especially when you don’t even understand them individually. This is doubly so if you are dealing with the Vedas which, in opposition to the Bhagavad Gītā, bear the reputation of being incomprehensible. But I would argue it isn’t any more treacherous than reading any single text, such as the Gītā, aided only by poor translations. Since the latter is the task that got us started all of this with, I obviously think the effort of the former, of reading the Vedas alongside the Puranas is also worthwhile: after all, Vedantic ideas that animate the Puranas are sourced in the Vedas themselves.
With sufficient caution, such reading it can be fruitful. I was able to draw a new sense of akarma/akarta from the Purusha Sūkta, which is not often used as a major reference for Vedanta. Although I wasn’t explicit about it, I wasn’t doing anything wholly novel in this reading. I based this definition of akarta by borrowing from Advaita Vedānta where it is as the jīva that Brahman/Purusha becomes karta and bhokta, the technical term that reflects identification with the one to whom the fruits accrue. It is possible that others have made this connection before, in which case I’m happy to have followed them. Is it possible that my use of the Purusha Sūkta in this context is incorrect? It is possible! But I do think it may potentially be one of many possible valid attestations of this idea of the akarta in the Vedas.
But knowing how difficult it can be to make such a claim I will also be the first to accept defeat if it turns out this is an oversimplification. If nothing else, this exercise in cross-referencing has been energizing. Even if only as an academic pursuit it is exhilarating to test my understanding of Vedantic ideas by chancing upon them in the wild.
If nothing else, the act of reading becomes its own reward.
Postscript
I leave this as an exercise for you reader. Use the definitions in 4 of karma and 7 of akarma to retranslate the first line in shloka 4:18.
कर्मण्यकर्म य: पश्येदकर्मणि च कर्म य:
Start with this nonsensical translation “Those who see action [karma] in inaction [akarma] and inaction [akarma] in action [karma]… are truly wise amongst humans.”