What is Niṣkāma Karma in the Bhagavad Gita?
Niṣkāma karma is action without desire for the fruit, and it is the Gita's single most quoted idea. 2.47 states it: you have a claim on the action, never on its results, so do not let the results be your motive and do not be attached to inaction either.
The instruction is routinely misread as not caring. That is not it, and the book rules it out twice. 18.26 describes the clear worker as full of resolve and energy, which is not indifference. And chapter 18 spends its length distinguishing genuine letting go from the version where somebody quietly avoids a hard thing and finds a philosophy for it afterwards.
What is actually being released is the claim: the private account of what you are owed for what you did. 18.25 gives the mechanism from the other side by describing a change of address, where the act is pointed somewhere other than yourself and the caring follows it there. The promised result is not detachment from your work. It is that the work stops costing several times what it should.
The verses 16
2.47
Your claim is on the action alone, never on its fruits.
2.48
Stand in yoga and do your work, Arjuna, letting go of the holding-on.
2.51
Thoughtful people joined to that mind give up what their actions would have earned them.
3.7
But the one who gets the senses in hand with his mind, Arjuna, and then sets his body to work without holding on to it - that one is doing far better.
3.9
Work binds a person, except when it is done as an offering.
3.19
So do the work that is there to be done, always, without holding on to it.
3.25
The unknowing act because they are attached to what they are doing.
4.20
Having let go of holding on to what his actions bring, always content, depending on nothing - he does nothing at all, even while fully at work.
5.10
Whoever acts placing his actions in the infinite, having given up attachment, is not stained by wrong - as a lotus leaf is not wetted by water.
5.12
The one who is joined, giving up what his action will fetch, reaches a settled peace.
6.1
Krishna said: Whoever does the work that has to be done without leaning on what it will fetch - he is the renouncer and he is the practitioner.
12.12
Knowledge is better than practice done by rote.
17.11
An offering made the way it should be made, by people wanting nothing back, with the mind settled on this simply being what is done - that one is clear.
18.6
But even these actions should be done with attachment and fruits let go.
18.9
When work that is genuinely yours is done simply because it is to be done, Arjuna, with attachment and fruit let go, that letting go is the clear kind.
18.23
Work that is in order, done without clinging, without liking or disliking, by someone not reaching for the fruit: that work is called clear.