When an enjoined and obligatory action is done simply with the thought 'it is to be done', Arjuna, giving up attachment and giving up the fruit as well, that relinquishment, the giving up of attachment and fruit in the obligatory actions, is held to be of sattva, born of sattva. We have cited the Lord's own words as the authority for the obligatory actions having a fruit. Or else, even granting that no fruit is heard of for an obligatory action, the ignorant man still imagines that the obligatory action, once done, produces for him some fruit, whether the refining of himself or the warding off of harm. The words 'giving up the fruit' bar even that imagining. So it is well said, 'giving up attachment and the fruit'. This relinquishment, the giving up of attachment and fruit in the obligatory actions, is held to be of sattva. It may be asked: the topic was the giving up of action, the threefold renunciation; under that head the tamasic and rajasic relinquishment have been stated. How is the giving up of attachment and fruit now spoken of as a third kind? It is as if one said 'three brahmins have come', and then 'two of them know the six auxiliaries, the third is a kshatriya.' This is no fault, for it is praise by way of the common notion of relinquishment. The renunciation of action and the giving up of the craving for fruit do share in common the character of being relinquishment. So, by censuring the giving up of action as rajasic and tamasic, the giving up of the craving for the fruit of action is praised as sattvic in the words 'that relinquishment is held to be of sattva'. But for the qualified man who does the obligatory action while giving up attachment and the craving for fruit, the inner organ, no longer fouled by longing for fruit and the rest, and refined by the obligatory actions, becomes pure. Being pure and clear, it grows fit to look upon the self. For him alone, whose inner organ is purified by the performance of the obligatory actions and who is turned toward knowledge of the self, there comes, by stages, the standing in that knowledge. How this happens is what the Lord goes on to say.

The relinquishment that is made, having held that the obligatory and occasional action, the great sacrifices and the rest enjoined for caste and stage of life, is to be done, in the form of the worship of Me, with itself for its purpose, and having given up attachment, the sense of mine toward the action, and the fruit, that relinquishment is held to be sattvic; it is rooted in sattva; that is, it is rooted in the knowledge of the meaning of scripture as it truly stands. For sattva begets the knowledge of a thing as it truly stands, as was said, 'from sattva is born knowledge'. And it will be said, 'the understanding that knows engagement and withdrawal, what is to be done and what is not, fear and fearlessness, bondage and release, that, Partha, is sattvic'.

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

Madhvacharya does not comment on this verse.