न कर्तृत्वं न कर्माणि लोकस्य सृजति प्रभुः।न कर्मफलसंयोगं स्वभावस्तु प्रवर्तते॥
na kartṛtvaṃ na karmāṇi lokasya sṛjati prabhuḥna karma-phala-saṅyogaṃ svabhāvas tu pravartate
Word by word
The verse says
The lord does not create the world's doership, or its actions, or the joining of action to its fruit. Its own nature carries on.
In plain words
A denial in three parts, and it is unusually specific.
Not the sense of being a doer. Not the actions. Not the link between what you do and what comes back.
Svabhāva — own-being, nature — is doing all of it.
Where you've felt this · in community
Nobody on the council decided that the corner shop would close. Ten years ago they set the rent, the parking rules and the bus route. The rest followed on its own. You can read every set of minutes and not find the meeting where anyone chose it.
Going deeper
This verse and the next form the Gita's most direct handling of a hard question, and they should be read together.
The claim here is that the lord does not manufacture your sense of being the one who acts, does not produce your actions, and does not wire actions to their consequences. Svabhāva does that — nature running according to what it is.
One reading makes this a defence: if none of it is authored from above, then the suffering in the world is not being arranged by anyone.
Another reading finds it harder. A universe where consequence runs automatically and nobody is steering is not obviously more comforting than one where somebody is.
This edition does not choose between them, and it is worth knowing that the traditions have not either. What the verse plainly rules out is the picture of a god assigning outcomes person by person. What it leaves standing — how much room is left for you — is genuinely unsettled, and the next verse makes it sharper rather than easier.