What is Mokṣa in the Bhagavad Gita?
Mokṣa means release or letting loose. It is the goal the Indian traditions broadly share, and the interesting question is always what exactly a person is released from.
The Gita's answer is not the world and not the body. It is the binding quality of action, and under that, the sense of being the sole doer. 18.49 describes the state as one where action no longer binds, and the person is still acting. 5.10 gives the image: a lotus leaf sits in water and does not get wet, which is a description of contact without saturation rather than of escape.
That makes the Gita's version unusually available. If release required withdrawal, it would be for people with fewer obligations than most readers have. 18.56 says the opposite in as many words: even while always doing all kinds of work, the one who takes refuge reaches the lasting place. 18.66, the last teaching, adds the part that cannot be earned, promising freedom as something given rather than achieved.
The verses 16
2.51
Thoughtful people joined to that mind give up what their actions would have earned them.
2.71
The person who gives up wanting and goes about without craving, without "mine", without "I am the one" - that person comes to peace.
2.72
This is what it is to stand in the infinite, Arjuna.
4.9
Whoever truly knows how my coming and my acting are divine does not take another birth when he leaves the body.
5.28
… the sage with senses, mind and understanding held steady, aiming at release, with wanting, fear and anger gone: he is free already, always.
7.29
Those who take refuge in me and work toward freedom from age and death - they come to know that whole ground, and the self, and how action works, completely.
8.15
Having come to me, the great souls who have reached the highest completion are not born again into this impermanent house of sorrow.
8.16
All the worlds, right up to the world of Brahmā, come round again, Arjuna.
13.34
As one sun lights up this whole world, so the owner of the field lights up the whole field, Arjuna.
14.20
Going beyond these three strands, which come with the body, one who has a body is freed from birth, from age, and from pain - and comes to what does not die.
14.26
And whoever serves me with unwavering devotion, and nothing else, goes beyond these strands and becomes fit to be Brahman.
15.4
Then that place must be searched out, the place where those who go do not come back.
15.5
Free of pride and confusion, with the fault of clinging beaten, settled in the self, their wanting gone quiet, released from the pairs we call pleasure and pain - the unfooled reach that pl…
15.6
No sun lights that place, no moon, no fire.
18.49
Whose understanding is unattached everywhere, who has mastered himself, whose wanting has gone: by letting go he reaches the highest fulfilment, where action no longer binds.
18.66
Let go of all duties and come to me alone for shelter.