BG 3.1: Arjuna said: If, O Krishna, you consider that Buddhi (knowledge) is superior to works, why do you engage me in this terrible deed?

BG 3.2: You confuse my mind with statements that seem to contradict each other; tell me for certain that one way by which I could reach the highest good.

BG 3.3: The Lord said: In this world a two-fold way was of yore laid down by Me, O sinless one: by Jñana Yoga for the Sankhyas and by Karma Yoga for the Yogins.

BG 3.4: No man experiences freedom from activity (Naishkarmya) by abstaining from works; and no man ever attains success by mere renunciation of works.

BG 3.5: No man can, even for a moment, rest without doing work; for everyone is caused to act, in spite of himself, by the Gunas born of Nature.

BG 3.6: He who, controlling the organs of action, lets his mind dwell on the objects of senses, is a deluded person and a hypocrite.

BG 3.7: But he who, subduing his senses by the mind, O Arjuna, begins to practise Karma Yoga through the organs of action and who is free from attachment—he excels.

BG 3.8: You must perform your obligatory action; for action is superior to non-action (Jñana Yoga). For a person following non-action not even the sustentation of the body is possible.

BG 3.9: This world is held in the bondage of work only when work is not performed as sacrifice. O Arjuna, you must perform work to this end, free from attachment.

BG 3.10: In the beginning the Lord of all beings, creating man along with the sacrifice, said: ‘By this shall you prosper; this shall be the cow of plenty granting all your wants.’

BG 3.11: By this, please the gods, and the gods will support you. Thus nourishing one another, may you obtain the highest good.

BG 3.12: The gods, pleased by the sacrifice, will bestow on you the enjoyments you desire. He who enjoys the bounty of the gods without giving them anything in return, is but a thief.

BG 3.13: Pious men who eat the remnants of sacrifices are freed from all sins. But the sinful ones who cook only for their own sake earn only sin.

BG 3.14: From food arise all beings (i.e., their bodies); from rain food is produced; from sacrifice comes rain; and sacrifice springs from activity.

BG 3.16: He who does not follow the wheel thus set in motion here, lives in sin, satisfying the senses, O Arjuna. He lives in vain.

BG 3.17: But the man whose delight is only in the self, who is satisfied with the self, who rejoices in the self, for him nothing remains to be accomplished.

BG 3.18: He has no purpose to gain by work done or left undone, nor has he to rely on any end.

BG 3.19: Therefore without attachment do your work which ought to be done. For, a man who works without attachment attains to the Supreme.

BG 3.20: Indeed by Karma Yoga alone did Janaka and others reach perfection. Even recognising its necessity for the guidance of the world, you must perform action.

BG 3.21: Whatever a great man does, other men also do. Whichever standard he sets, the world follows it.

BG 3.22: For me, Arjuna, there is nothing in all the three worlds which ought to be done, nor is there anything unacquired that ought to be acquired. Yet I go on working.

BG 3.23: If I did not continue to work unwearied, O Arjuna, men would follow my path.

BG 3.24: If I do not do work, these men would be lost; and I will be causing chaos in life and thereby ruining all these people.

BG 3.25: Just as the ignorant, attached to their work, act, O Arjuna, so too the learned should act without any attachment, and only for the welfare of the world.

BG 3.26: He should not bewilder the minds of the ignorant who are attached to work; rather himself performing work with devotion, he should cause others to do so.

BG 3.27: Actions are being performed in every way by the Gunas of Prakrti. He whose nature is deluded by egoism, thinks, ‘I am the doer.’

BG 3.28: But he who knows the truth about the division of the Gunas and works, O mighty-armed one, through his knowledge that ‘Gunas operate on their products,’ is not attached.

BG 3.29: Those who are deluded by the Gunas of Prakrti are attached to the works of the Gunas. But he who knows the whole truth should not unsettle the ignorant who do not know the whole truth.

BG 3.30: Surrendering all your actions to Me with a mind focussed on the self, free from desire and selfishness, fight with the heat of excitement abated.

BG 3.31: Those men who, full of faith, ever practise this teaching of Mine and those who receive it without cavil—even they are released from Karma.

BG 3.32: But those who calumniate it, and those who do not practise this teaching of Mine—know them to be absolutely senseless and devoid of all knowledge, and therefore lost.

BG 3.33: Even the man of knowledge acts according to his nature; all beings follow their nature. What will repression do?

BG 3.34: Each sense has fixed attachment to, and aversion for, its corresponding object. But no one should come under their sway; for they are his foes.

BG 3.35: Better is one’s own duty, though ill-done, than the duty of another well-performed. Better is death in one’s own. duty; the duty of another is fraught with fear.

BG 3.36: Arjuna said: But, impelled by what, O Krishna, does one (practising Jñana Yoga), commit sin even against his own will, constrained as it were, by force?

BG 3.37: The Lord said: It is desire, it is wrath, born of the Guna of Rajas; it is a great devourer, an impeller to sin. Know this to be the foe here.

BG 3.38: As a fire is enveloped by smoke, as a mirror is covered by dust, and as an embryo is encased in the membrane, so is this (world) enveloped by it (desire).

BG 3.39: The knowledge of the intelligent self is enveloped by this constant enemy, O Arjuna, which is of the nature of desire, and which is difficult to gratify and is insatiable.

BG 3.40: The senses, the mind and the intellect are said to be its instruments. By these it overpowers the embodied self after enveloping Its knowledge.

BG 3.41: Therefore, O Arjuna, controlling the senses in the very beginning, slay this sinful thing that destroys both knowledge and discrimination.

BG 3.42: The senses are high, they say: the mind is higher than the senses; the intellect is higher than the mind; but what is greater than intellect is that (desire).

BG 3.43: Thus, knowing that which is higher than the intellect and fixing the mind with the help of the intellect in Karma Yoga, O Arjuna, slay this enemy which wears the form of desire, and which is difficult to overcome.