Bhagavad Gita 2.47
You have a claim to action, not to its fruits. Do not make the fruit of action your motive, and do not cling to inaction.
GITA.YOGA.ORG · THEMATIC PATH
The Gita on selfless action
A thematic path connecting original verses, translations and context. This page does not replace the existing Gita film, cartoon, or chapter path. It is a reading companion around action without clinging to results.
Read the verse
Wording below is a short paraphrase with verse numbers. Full Sanskrit and published English editions live at the IIT Kanpur Gita Supersite. Yoga.org does not reprint a copyrighted translation here.
Bhagavad Gita 3.19 · start here
Therefore, always do the work that is yours to do, without attachment. By acting without clinging, a person reaches the highest.
Bhagavad Gita 3.9
The world is bound by action other than action offered as yajña. Free of attachment, act as an offering.
Bhagavad Gita 18.11
It is not possible for an embodied being to abandon action entirely. One who relinquishes the fruit of action is called a true relinquisher.
Context matters
Commentators do not all hear these verses the same way. Bhakti readings often hear offering as devotion to Krishna. Advaita readings often hear non-attachment as a way of seeing the self. Karma-yoga readings treat dedicated action in the world as the practice itself. This page does not pick a school, and it does not reduce the Gita to a gift-economy slogan.
Selfless action in the Gita is not a demand for unpaid labor, a karma score, or a guarantee that giving will be repaid. It is a teaching about how to act without clinging.
Reflect
If a verse lands, sit with one question: what work is mine to do today, and what result am I gripping? Then, if you want the comparative map of giving traditions, read the education center — optional, with no account required.
Yoga.org is the fiscal sponsor of both GiftingEconomy.org and iGift.com. Fiscal sponsorship is not ownership or operating control.