Learn from Me, mighty-armed one, these five causes, the bringers-about of action, which the next verses will state. This is said to settle the mind in what follows and to show how things really stand. He praises these causes as worth knowing: in the Sankhya, the system in which the things worth knowing are reckoned up, that is, in Vedanta, called also 'the conclusion of action' (krtanta), since 'krta' means action and its end, its completion, is reached there, in this scripture which is the conclusion of action, these five are declared for the accomplishment of all actions. When knowledge of the self arises, all action ceases, as is shown by 'as much use as a well' and 'all action without exception, Partha, finds its fulfilment in knowledge'. So in this Sankhya, this conclusion of action, this Vedanta whose purpose is knowledge of the self, the five causes are declared for the accomplishment of all action. What are they? The Lord says.

'Sankhya' is the understanding; in the determination dwelt on by the Vedic understanding whose object is the truth as it truly stands, the conclusion of action, these five causes, declared for the accomplishing, the bringing-about, of all actions, learn from Me, dwell on them from My presence. For the Vedic understanding determines that the supreme Self alone, having the body, the senses, the breaths, and the individual self for His instruments, is the doer, in such texts as 'he who, standing in the self, is within the self, whom the self does not know, whose body the self is, who governs the self from within, he is your self, the inner ruler, the immortal', and 'the inner-entered ruler of people, the self of all'. The Lord states this.

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

Again, to unfold renunciation, Krishna states the causes of action, with 'five' and so on. 'In the Sankhya, in the krtanta' means in the settled conclusion of knowledge.