न हि कश्चित्क्षणमपि जातु तिष्ठत्यकर्मकृत् ।कार्यते ह्यवशः कर्म सर्वः प्रकृतिजैर्गुणैः॥
na hi kaścit kṣaṇam api jātu tiṣṭhatyakarma-kṛtkāryate hyavaśaḥ karma sarvaḥ prakṛti-jair guṇaiḥ
Word by word
The verse says
Nobody stays still even for a moment. Everyone is made to act, whether they like it or not, by the forces that nature is built from.
In plain words
Here is why not-acting is not available.
Not for a moment, Krishna says. Kṣaṇam api - even an instant. You are always doing something, including when you are doing nothing.
And the word is avaśaḥ - helpless, not in control of it. You are not choosing to keep acting. It is happening.
Where you've felt this · in health
You sit down on Sunday afternoon to do nothing at all. Ten minutes later you are tidying the post. Or checking your phone. Or working out what Monday looks like. Sitting still turns out to be hard work, and almost nobody can keep it up.
Going deeper
This is the first appearance of the guṇas as a working idea - the three strands of nature that Chapter 14 will describe in full.
The claim is mechanical. Bodies and minds are made of nature, nature is in motion, so bodies and minds move. Digestion is action. Thinking is action. Deciding not to decide is action.
Which exposes what Arjuna was actually proposing. He was not offering to stop acting; he was offering to stop acting visibly, and to let the results happen without his name on them.
The verse is also doing something for the reader that is easy to miss. If action is unavoidable, then the question should I act? was never a real question. The only live question is how. That reframing is what makes the rest of the chapter possible.
And there is a limit worth noting. Krishna says you are compelled by the guṇas. That sounds like determinism, and Chapter 18 will return to it. The freedom the Gita offers is not freedom from acting. It is freedom in how you stand while it happens.