One who carries a body, who takes the body for the self, is called an 'embodied being'; this does not mean the discerning man, for he has been turned away from any qualification for agency by the words 'know the indestructible' and the rest. So such an embodied and ignorant being cannot give up actions completely, without remainder. Therefore the ignorant man who is qualified, who does the obligatory actions while giving up their fruit, who renounces only the craving for the fruit of action, is called a 'relinquisher', though he is still one who acts; this is said by way of praise. So it is only the seer of the highest truth, who is not an embodied being, who is free of the notion that the body is the self, that can carry out the renunciation of all action. What then is the purpose that would be gained from the renunciation of all action? The Lord says.

For one who carries a body, who keeps the body up, it is not possible to relinquish actions without remainder, since eating, drinking, and the rest, which serve the upholding of the body, and the actions bound up with them, cannot be avoided, and for their sake the carrying out of the great sacrifices and the rest cannot be avoided. But he who, in those actions, the great sacrifices and the rest, is a relinquisher of fruit, he alone is called a 'relinquisher' in such scriptural texts as 'by relinquishment some have reached immortality'. 'Relinquisher of fruit' is by way of indication; he is a relinquisher of attachment to fruit, of agency, and of action, by the lead-in 'it was declared to be of three kinds'. It may be objected: actions, the fire-oblation, the new-moon and full-moon, the Jyotishtoma, and the rest, and the great sacrifices and the rest, are enjoined by the scriptures as connected with the fruit of heaven and the like. Even the obligatory and occasional actions are enjoined as connected with a fruit, as in 'the rite to Prajapati is for householders'. So, the actions being apprehended as having the nature of being the means to that fruit, in the performance of them, as in the sowing of seed and the like, even for one who has no aim to the fruit, the connection with a wished or unwished fruit cannot be avoided; therefore, since they have a fruit that obstructs liberation, action is not to be performed by the seeker of liberation. To this the Lord gives the answer.

This is a brief sub-gloss. For a fuller reading of this verse, see Madhusūdana, Śaṅkara, or Rāmānuja above.

Any other sense of 'relinquishment' is not fitting, Krishna says, with 'for no embodied one can'.