न कर्मणामनारम्भान्नैष्कर्म्यं पुरुषोऽश्नुते।न च संन्यसनादेव सिद्धिं समधिगच्छति॥
na karmaṇām anārambhān naiṣkarmyaṃ puruṣo ’śnutena ca sannyasanād eva siddhiṃ samadhigacchati
शब्दार्थ
व्याख्या अभी अंग्रेज़ी में उपलब्ध है। हिन्दी व्याख्या एक-एक अध्याय करके जोड़ी जा रही है।
श्लोक कहता है
You do not get free of action by not starting anything. And you do not reach the goal just by walking away.
सरल शब्दों में
Two exits closed in one line.
You cannot escape the consequences of action by refusing to act. And renunciation on its own does not get you there either.
Arjuna has been considering both. Krishna deals with them in a single sentence.
आपने इसे कहाँ महसूस किया है
You avoid the difficult conversation for a year. You have not stayed neutral. You have made a series of decisions, every day, and the situation has been quietly shaped by all of them.
और गहराई में
Naiṣkarmya — the state of being free from action and its binding. Arjuna assumes you get there by stopping. Krishna says the arithmetic does not work.
The reasoning arrives in the next verse, and it is physical rather than moral: you cannot actually stop. So a plan built on stopping is built on something unavailable.
Sannyasa, renunciation, gets the same treatment. Krishna is not dismissing it — Chapter 5 takes it seriously and Chapter 18 opens by defining it properly. What he denies is that the outward move is sufficient. Leaving the field does not by itself change the person leaving.
This is the Gita's steady position and it is worth stating plainly. The book is not against renunciation. It is against the belief that changing your circumstances is the same as changing your relationship to them.
Arjuna wants to put down the bow and have that settle something. Krishna is telling him it would settle nothing, because he would take himself with him.