अभिसंधाय तु फलं दम्भार्थमपि चैव यत्।इज्यते भरतश्रेष्ठ तं यज्ञं विद्धि राजसम्॥
abhisandhāya tu phalaṃ dambhārtham api caiva yatijyate bharata-śreṣṭha taṃ yajñaṃ viddhi rājasam
Word by word
The verse says
But an offering made with one eye on what it will bring, or made so as to be seen - know that one as driven, Arjuna.
In plain words
Two faults, and they are cousins.
One eye on the result. One eye on the audience. In both cases something is being watched that is not the thing you are doing.
That is really the whole definition of rajas in this chapter. Not wickedness. Divided attention, with the division pointing at a payoff.
Where you've felt this · in community
A neighbour organises the cleaning of the lane before the festival and does a thorough job of it. He also mentions it four times over the following week, to different people, each time as though it had only just come up. The lane is clean. It would have been just as clean if he had said nothing, and that is the part he cannot leave alone.
Going deeper
Watching the outcome and watching the audience are treated here as one fault, and the reason is worth drawing out.
In both cases attention has left the act. A man cooking a meal while thinking about being thanked for it is not fully cooking. Something is being held back and spent elsewhere, and food made that way is subtly different, as anybody who has eaten both kinds already knows.
Rajas is often translated as passion, which suggests heat and energy. The more accurate sense is divided. It is the state of being in two places, the second of which is always slightly in the future.
And notice how mild the charge is. Nothing here is wicked. Most of the good things most people do have a little of this in them. You are not being asked to stop doing them. You are being told why they tire you out more than they should.