कर्म ब्रह्मोद्भवं विद्धि ब्रह्माक्षरसमुद्भवम्।तस्मात्सर्वगतं ब्रह्म नित्यं यज्ञे प्रतिष्ठितम्॥
karma brahmodbhavaṃ viddhi brahmākṣara-samudbhavamtasmāt sarva-gataṃ brahma nityaṃ yajñe pratiṣṭhitam
Word by word
The verse says
Know that action comes from what was spoken, and what was spoken comes from what does not perish. So the all-pervading is present, always, in the act of offering.
In plain words
The chain closes here, and it closes upward.
Action comes from brahma - here meaning the Veda, the word. The word comes from akṣara, the imperishable. So the whole circuit is anchored in something that does not change.
And the conclusion: what pervades everything is pratiṣṭhitam, established, in the act of giving.
Where you've felt this · in creative work
The potters in one lane have made the same water jar for generations. Every one of them learned the shape from somebody older, and not one of them invented it. The design is older than anyone alive who makes it, and it is completely alive in their hands this morning.
Going deeper
One word in this verse carries two meanings at once, and that is deliberate.
Brahma is doing double duty here.
It means the Veda, the sacred word - so action arises from instruction. It also means the absolute, the ground of everything. The verse uses both senses in two lines, which is a compression the commentators have worked over for centuries.
Akṣara - imperishable, and literally unfalling, the syllable that does not decay. It is the word Chapter 8 will build an entire teaching on.
The payoff is the last line, and it is the reason the chain was built. If the infinite is established in the act of offering, then giving is not a way of reaching what is ultimate. It is the place where it already is.
That is a large claim made very quietly. Arjuna has been treating the battlefield as the obstacle between himself and anything worth having. Krishna has spent six verses describing a world in which ordinary work, done as offering, is not the detour.