The effect is the body; the instruments are the thirteen that stand in it. The five elements that begin the body, and the objects, born of Nature, the modifications told before, are here taken by the word 'effect'. And the qualities born of Nature, made of pleasure, pain and delusion, since they rest in the instruments, are taken by the word 'instrument'. The doership, the producership, with regard to those effect and instrument, has Nature for its cause, by way of producing it; so Nature is the cause of transmigration through the doership with regard to effect and instrument. In the reading 'the doership with regard to effect and cause', the effect is what undergoes transformation, the modification, and the cause is the modifying thing, and the doership is with regard to those two; or else the sixteen modifications are the effect, the seven that are Nature-and-modification are the cause, those are called effect and cause, and Nature is the cause, by way of producing, of their doership. And how the Puruṣa is the cause of transmigration is told: the Puruṣa, the living being, the field-knower, the enjoyer, these being words for the same, is said to be the cause in the enjoyership, the experiencing, of the things to be enjoyed, pleasure and pain. How is it that, by this doership with regard to effect and instrument and this enjoyership of pleasure and pain, Nature and the Puruṣa are said to be the cause of transmigration? In the absence of Nature's transformation in the form of effect, instrument, pleasure and pain, in the form of cause and fruit, and in the absence of the conscious Puruṣa experiencing it, whence would transmigration come? But when Nature, the thing to be enjoyed, has been transformed into the form of effect, instrument, pleasure and pain, and there is the enjoyership of the Puruṣa, who is its opposite, then, that joining being of the nature of ignorance, transmigration comes to be. So it is fitting that Nature and the Puruṣa are said to be the cause of transmigration through the doership with regard to effect and instrument and the enjoyership of pleasure and pain. And what is this thing named transmigration? The full enjoyment of pleasure and pain is transmigration; and the Puruṣa's being a full enjoyer of pleasure and pain is the transmigrant state. What is the occasion of that which was called the Puruṣa's enjoyership of pleasure and pain, the transmigrant state? It is told.

The word 'qualities' is used figuratively for their effects. The person, of itself having the single happiness of the experience of itself, abiding in nature, conjoined with nature, experiences the qualities born of nature, that is, the pleasures, pains, and the rest that are the effects of the qualities sattva and the rest and are occasioned by the conjunction with nature. The Lord states the cause of the conjunction with nature: this person, abiding in the particular wombs, god, man, and the rest, which are the transformations of nature one after another, attached to the pleasures, pains, and the rest, made of the qualities sattva and the rest and set going by this and that womb, engages in the meritorious and sinful actions that are their means; and then, for the experience of the fruit of those merits and sins, is born in good and bad wombs, in worthy and unworthy wombs; and from that begins action; and from that is born again; and, until he serves the qualities, freedom from conceit and the rest, which are the means of attaining the self, just so long he transmigrates. This is what is said: 'the cause of his birth in good and bad wombs is the attachment to the qualities'.

'The effect' (karya) is the body, as the lexicon has it, 'the body is called the effect'. The 'causes' (karana) are the senses; 'enjoyment' is experiencing, for the person experiences, being of the nature of consciousness, while prakriti, being insentient, is what undergoes change. So the Bhagavata says, 'in the agency of effect and cause they know prakriti as the cause; in the enjoyership of pleasures and pains, the person, higher than prakriti' (Bhagavata 3.26.8).