The previous stanza would, at the outset, look as an impossible thesis to any strong man of action and adventure. Perhaps the royal heart of Arjuna could not comprehend such a person who fulfils his obligatory duty “only because it ought to be done” (karyamiti)” renouncing attachment and fruit.” As though answering the look of surprise on Arjuna’s face, which faithfully registers his failure to appreciate the idea, Krishna gives in this stanza a more elaborate picture of such an individual.

A man established in Sattwic abandonment never hates, nor does he ever feel attached. He is not miserable in disagreeable environments nor does he get attached to the circumstances and schemes-of-things which are agreeable to his taste. He does his duties under all circumstances agreeable or disagreeable, without feeling elated when he finds himself on the “peaks,” or feeling dejected when he discovers himself in the “pits” of life.

He is overwhelmed neither by extreme joy, nor by extreme sorrow; equanimity becomes his essential nature. He stands as a rock, ever at ease, and watches with an unbroken balance-of-vision, the waves of happenings rising and falling all around him at all times. He is, in short, independent of the happenings in the outer world around him.

When, to such a man of Sattwic Tyaga, impulses such as jealousy, anger, passion, greed etc., come, he does not get involved in those impulses, as we do in our attachments and identifications with them. That is, a man of abandonment (tyaga) readily discovers in himself a secret faculty to abandon his identification with the false, the lower instincts in himself. He does not become a victim of his own mental impressions (vasanas); he stands ever free and surely apart from the tumults of his mind.

Such a man is said to be an educated and cultured man. An uncultured man is like a dry leaf that is tossed hither and thither by every passing breeze; is like a reed upon the bosom of the sea, rising and falling in the mad revelry of the tireless waves. It is the privilege of the animal alone to get faithfully coloured by its own instincts and act according to the dictates of its impulses. It is only man, the inheritor of an intellect, who can enquire into the nature of the rising waves of impulses, judge them in the light of the ideal he holds onto in himself, and, if need be, stand apart from them and allow them to die away.

But ordinarily, an individual finds it impossible to stand apart and live, to act independently of his impulses. According to the Geeta, this is because man has allowed his faculty of ‘abandonment’ (Tyaga) to die away. A Tyagi is he who has cultivated this habit to live intelligently in life, practising from moment to moment the ‘abandonment’ of all the animal whisperings in himself, and following diligently the Melody of the Soul. Such a man is established in Sattwic Tyaga.

In order that one may come to judge correctly and renounce the false, one must have a very clear and steady picture of the Perfect in oneself. Medha-shakti is not merely the intellect’s power of understanding or reasoning, but it is also the intellect’s FACULTY TO MEMORISE AND RETAIN THINGS. A cultured man of unbroken equipoise and steady understanding must have a constant memory of: (1) the constituents of the field of his activity, (2) the instruments through which he contacts the world outside, (3) his own essential infinitely divine nature, and (4) his exact relationship with the world-of-objects when he is contacting it through his senses. Such a person is called Medhaavee, “A MAN OF FIRM UNDERSTANDING.” And in case his knowledge be spotted with patches of doubts or slightly poisoned by traces of false knowledge, there will be in him endless confusions, which in their turn will bring about wrong judgements. Therefore, Krishna indicates that a man of Sattwic Tyaaga is one whose “DOUBT IS CLEFT.”

The highest type of Tyaga is not, perhaps, abundantly found except in a minority who have accomplished their detachments from all their matter vestures completely. But to the majority, identification with the body-mind-intellect equipment is so natural that they have the SENSE OF AGENCY and come to live in the world, conditioned by the happenings around.

SUCH AN AVERAGE MAN, WHO WORKS WITH AN EGO AND ATTACHMENT, MUST LEARN TO WORK, AT LEAST RENOUNCING THE FRUIT. KRISHNA EXPLAINS:

Na devesti, he does not hate; akusalam, unbefitting; karma, action, rites and duties meant for desired results-with the idea, ‘What is the usefulness of this which is a cause of transmigration through fresh embodiment?’ Na anusajjate, he does not become attached to; kusale, befitting activity, daily obligatory duties, by thinking that this is the cause of Liberation by virtue of its being the cause of purification of the mind, rise of Knowledge and steadfastness in it. That is to say, he does not entertain any liking even for it, because he finds no purpose in it. Who, again, is he? Tyagi, the man of renunciation, who has become so by having given up attachment and rewards of action in the manner stated above. He is a tyagi who performs nityakarmas by relinquishing attachment to those acts and (their) results. Again, it is being stated as to when that person does not hate an unbefitting act and does not become attached to a befitting activity: When he has become sattva-samavistah, imbued with sattva, i.e., when he is filled with, possessed of, sattva, which is the means to the knowledge that discriminates between the Self and the not-Self; and hence medhavi, wise-endowed with intelligence (medha), intuitive experience, characterized as knowledge of the Self; one possessed of that is medhavai (wise)-; and owing to the very fact of being wise, chinnasamsayah, freed from doubts-one whose doubts created by ignorance have been sundered, one who is freed from doubts by his firm conviction that nothing but abiding in the ture nature of the Self is the supreme means to the highest Good. The person competent (for rites and duties) who, having gradually become purified in mind through the practice of Karma-yoga in the way described above, has realized as his own Self the actionless Self, which is devoid of modifications like birth etc., he, ‘…having given up all actions mentally, remaining at without doing or causing (others) to do anything at all’ (cf. 5.13), attains steadfastness in Knowledge, which is characterized as ‘actionless-ness’. In this way, the purpose of the aforesaid Karma-yoga has been stated through the present verse. On the other hand, since, for the unenlightened person-who, while being qualified (for rites and duties), holds on to the body owing to the erroneous conception that the body is the Self, and who has the firm conviction, ‘I am the agent,’ because of the persistence of his idea that the Self is the agent-it is not possible to renounce actions totally, therefore he has competence only for performing enjoined duties by giving up fruits of actions. But he is not to renounce them (actions). In order to point out this idea the Lord says: