Chapter XVIII, Section 1a

CHAPTER XVIII. Ar g una said: O you of mighty arms! O H ri shîke s a! O destroyer of Ke s in! I wish to know the truth about renunciation and abandonment distinctly. The Deity said: By renunciation the sages understand the rejection of actions done with desires. The wise call the abandonment of the fruit of all actions (by the name) abandonment. Some wise men say, that action should be abandoned as being full of evil; and others, that the actions of sacrifice, gift, and penance should not be abandoned. As to that abandonment, O best of the descendants of Bharata! listen to my decision; for abandonment, O bravest of men! is described (to be) threefold. The actions of sacrifice, gift, and penance should not be abandoned; they must needs be performed; for sacrifices, gifts, and penances are means of sanctification to the wise. But even these actions, O son of P ri thâ! should be performed, abandoning attachment and fruit; such is my excellent and decided opinion. The renunciation of prescribed action is not proper. Its abandonment through delusion is described as of the quality of darkness. When a man abandons action, merely as being troublesome, through fear of bodily affliction, he does not obtain the fruit of abandonment by making (such) passionate abandonment. When prescribed action is performed, O Ar g una! abandoning attachment and fruit also, merely because it ought to be performed, that is deemed (to be) a good abandonment. He who is possessed of abandonment , being full of goodness, and talented, and having, his doubts destroyed, is not averse from unpleasant actions, is not attached to pleasant (ones). Since no embodied (being) can abandon actions without exception , he is said to be possessed of abandonment, who abandons the fruit of action. The threefold fruit of action, agreeable, disagreeable, and mixed, accrues after death to those who are not possessed of abandonment, but never to renouncers . Learn from me, O you of mighty arms! these five causes of the completion of all actions, declared in the Sâ n khya system . The substratum, the agent likewise, the various sorts of organs, and the various and distinct movements, and with these the deities, too, as the fifth. Whatever action, just or otherwise, a man performs with his body, speech, and mind, these five are its causes. That being so, the undiscerning man, who being of an unrefined understanding, sees the agent in the immaculate self, sees not (rightly) . He who has no feeling of egoism , and whose mind is not tainted, even though he kills (all) these people, kills not, is not fettered, (by the action). Knowledge , the object of knowledge, the knower--threefold is the prompting to action. The instrument, the action, the agent, thus in brief is action threefold. Knowledge and action and agent are declared in the enumeration of qualities (to be) of three classes only, according to the difference of qualities. Hear about these also as they really are. Know that knowledge to be good, by which (a man) sees one entity, inexhaustible, and not different in all things (apparently) different (from one another). Know that knowledge to be passionate, which is (based) on distinctions (between different entities), which sees in all things various entities of different kinds. And that is described as dark, which clings to one created (thing) only as everything, which is devoid of reason, devoid of real principle, and insignificant .