कर्मणः सुकृतस्याहुः सात्त्विकं निर्मलं फलम्।रजसस्तु फलं दुःखमज्ञानं तमसः फलम्॥
karmaṇaḥ sukṛtasyāhuḥ sāttvikaṃ nirmalaṃ phalamrajasas tu phalaṃ duḥkham ajñānaṃ tamasaḥ phalam
Word by word
The verse says
The fruit of good action, they say, is clean and belongs to clarity. The fruit of drive is pain, and the fruit of heaviness is not knowing.
In plain words
Three results, and the middle one is the warning.
Rajasas tu phalaṃ duḥkham — the fruit of drive is pain.
Not failure. Pain. The driven life is not described as unsuccessful. It is described as hurting.
Where you've felt this · at work
The most successful person from your school year has the house, the title and the second home. He also has not had an unstructured hour since 2011, and the two facts have the same cause, and he would tell you so after two drinks.
Going deeper
Naming pain rather than failure as the fruit of drive is precise and it is the chapter's most checkable claim.
If the warning were that driven people fail, it would be easy to refute — they often do extremely well. The claim is different: that the mode itself produces suffering regardless of outcome. Thirst, which verse 7 named as the root, does not stop when it is satisfied. It produces the next thirst, and the pain is in the mechanism rather than in the results.
Chapter 5 said the same thing in one line: pleasures born of contact have a beginning and an end, and the wise do not rest in them.
Which makes this verse a question rather than a reproach. Look at the thing you are driving at. Ask what the two years of getting there will cost, and whether you would make the same trade if the arrival changed nothing, because on this account that is roughly what arrival does.