त्रैगुण्यविषया वेदा निस्त्रैगुण्यो भवार्जुन।निर्द्वन्द्वो नित्यसत्त्वस्थो निर्योगक्षेम आत्मवान्॥
trai-guṇya-viṣayā vedā nistrai-guṇyo bhavārjunanirdvandvo nitya-sattva-stho niryoga-kṣema ātmavān
Word by word
The verse says
The scriptures deal with the three strands of nature. Get free of those three, Arjuna. Let go of the opposites, stay in what is true, stop managing what you get and what you keep, and be your own.
In plain words
The most radical instruction so far, and it is aimed at the tradition itself.
The scriptures operate inside nature's three strands. Krishna tells Arjuna to get past them.
Then four quick directions: drop the opposites, stay in what is real, stop managing gain and safety, possess yourself.
Where you've felt this · with money
You spend fifteen years arranging a safe life - the savings, the insurance, the plan if the job goes. All of it is sensible. None of it has made you less afraid at three in the morning, because the arranging was never what the fear was about.
Going deeper
This is the Gita's first mention of the guṇas - the three strands of nature that Chapter 14 describes in full - and it uses them to say something startling.
The Vedas, Krishna says, have those three strands as their subject matter. Scripture works inside nature, and so it cannot by itself carry you past nature. He is putting a limit on the very authority he is speaking with.
Then three instructions, and each one is a subtraction. Be free of the pairs - hot and cold, praise and blame, gain and loss. Not free of feeling them. Free of being organised by them.
Be niryoga-kṣemaḥ, the most practical phrase in the verse and the least quoted. It joins two things: getting what you do not have, and protecting what you do. Between them, those two describe most of adult life. Krishna is saying: stop running that program.
And then the one positive instruction - ātmavān, be in possession of yourself. Everything else in the verse clears space. This is what is left standing in it.