यं संन्यासमिति प्राहुर्योगं तं विद्धि पाण्डव।न ह्यसंन्यस्तसङ्कल्पो योगी भवति कश्चन॥
yaṃ sannyāsam iti prāhur yogaṃ taṃ viddhi pāṇḍavana hyasannyasta-saṅkalpo yogī bhavati kaścana
Word by word
The verse says
Know that what they call renunciation is the practice itself, Arjuna. For nobody becomes a practitioner without setting down his plans.
In plain words
The two words are now formally the same word.
And then the condition, which is smaller and harder than it sounds.
Saṅkalpa — not the wish, but the plan built on top of the wish.
Where you've felt this · in study
You cannot start writing until you stop planning the essay. The planning feels like work and puts nothing on the page. The first real sentence usually arrives on the day you abandon the outline.
Going deeper
Saṅkalpa is the word to slow down on, because it is not what people usually think is being renounced.
It does not mean desire. It means the construction the mind builds on a desire — the sequence, the picture of how it goes, the version of the future you have already half moved into.
So the renunciation being asked for is not of wanting things. It is of the scaffolding around the wanting, which is where most of the grip actually is.
That is a more precise target and a more practical one. You cannot decide to stop wanting. You can notice that you have built twenty minutes of imaginary conversation around a wish and put it down.
And it explains why this is called the entry condition. Nobody becomes a practitioner while still living inside the plan, because a person inside a plan is not where their body is.