कर्मण्यकर्म यः पश्येदकर्मणि च कर्म यः।स बुद्धिमान् मनुष्येषु स युक्तः कृत्स्नकर्मकृत्॥
karmaṇyakarma yaḥ paśyed akarmaṇi ca karma yaḥsa buddhimān manuṣyeṣu sa yuktaḥ kṛtsna-karma-kṛt
Word by word
The verse says
Whoever sees not-acting in action, and acting in not-acting, is the one with understanding among people. He is joined, and he has done everything that needed doing.
In plain words
The famous line, and it reads like a puzzle until you have the key.
See akarma in karma. See karma in akarma.
It is not mysticism. It is the new criterion stated compactly: what looks like doing may involve no grasping, and what looks like stillness may be full of it.
Where you've felt this · in creative work
Someone works all afternoon and is entirely absent from it, ticking off hours. Someone else sits apparently idle and is at full stretch. From the doorway you would describe both of them exactly backwards.
Going deeper
The riddle resolves as soon as you accept the shift Chapter 3 made.
If what binds is the grasping rather than the motion, then the visible categories stop tracking anything. A person can be furiously busy and bind nothing, because nothing is being claimed. A person can be perfectly still and be generating every kind of consequence, because the mind is at work.
So seeing inaction in action is not a paradox. It is accurate perception, once you know what you are looking for.
Kṛtsna-karma-kṛt — one who has done all actions, complete. It is a large claim to attach to someone who may be doing very ordinary things.
And the reason it can be made is that on this account there was only ever one thing to get right. Not the doing — the standing. Get that, and nothing is left outstanding, whatever your afternoon looked like.