कर्मेन्द्रियाणि संयम्य य आस्ते मनसा स्मरन्।इन्द्रियार्थान्विमूढात्मा मिथ्याचारः स उच्यते॥
karmendriyāṇi sanyamya ya āste manasā smaranindriyārthān vimūḍhātmā mithyācāraḥ sa ucyate
Word by word
The verse says
Someone who holds his hands still while his mind runs after the same things he gave up — that man is fooling himself, and the word for him is hypocrite.
In plain words
The harshest line in the chapter so far, and it is aimed at a specific person.
The outward discipline is perfect. The hands are still. And the mind is doing exactly what it was doing before.
Krishna's word is mithyācāraḥ — false-conduct, a pretender. It is blunt and it is meant to be.
Where you've felt this · in sport
Someone gives up the thing and talks about having given it up, often. They think about it more now than they did before. The abstaining is real. So is the appetite, and it has simply moved indoors.
Going deeper
It is worth being precise about who is being criticised, because this verse is often read as an attack on renunciation generally.
It is not. The target is a specific mismatch: the karma-indriyas, the organs of action, are restrained while the mind sits smaran — remembering, dwelling on — the very objects given up.
That is 2.59 again, stated as a character rather than as a principle. Withdrawal removes the object and leaves the taste. Here is what that looks like in a person.
The word vimūḍhātmā — deluded self — is the more interesting half of the charge. The problem is not mainly that he is deceiving others. It is that the arrangement has convinced him. He believes the stillness of his hands is the measure of where he stands.
And Krishna is not saying the discipline is worthless. He is saying it is not yet what it is being taken for. The next verse describes the same discipline with the one missing piece added, and the verdict flips completely.