निश्चयं शृणु मे तत्र त्यागे भरतसत्तम ।त्यागो हि पुरुषव्याघ्र त्रिविधः सम्प्रकीर्तितः॥
niścayaṃ śṛṇu me tatra tyāge bharata-sattamatyāgo hi puruṣa-vyāghra tri-vidhaḥ samprakīrtitaḥ
Word by word
The verse says
Hear my conclusion about letting go, best of the Bharatas. Letting go has been described as being of three kinds.
In plain words
He announces a verdict and then does something unexpected with it.
Instead of picking a side, he splits the question. Letting go is not one thing. There are three kinds of it, and they look identical from outside.
This is the move the whole chapter runs on. Twice more he will take something everybody treats as single and show you it comes in three.
Where you've felt this · in study
Three students hand in the same essay topic late. One was ill. One left it to the last night and ran out of time. One decided the topic was beneath him. The teacher receives three late essays and, on paper, three identical failures. What actually happened in the three cases has nothing in common.
Going deeper
Sorting one act into three kinds by what is behind it is the method of this entire chapter, and it is worth seeing the method before the content.
Chapter 17 did this with faith, food, offering, discipline and giving. Now it comes for letting go, knowledge, action, the doer, understanding, firmness and happiness. The same blade, applied over and over.
The reason it keeps working is that human behaviour is poorly described by what it looks like. Two people perform the identical act and one is building something while the other is running from something.
So when you want to understand your own conduct, the question is almost never what did I do. It is what was underneath it, and that question has to be asked separately for each thing, because the answer changes.