The Vedas have the three qualities for their object: the three-quality realm, transmigration, is what they make plain. You, however, become free of the three qualities, O Arjuna: become free of desire. Be free of the pairs of opposites, the pairs of opposed things that cause pleasure and pain; rise out of them. Be ever established in goodness (sattva), ever resting in the sāttvika quality. Be free of getting and keeping: the gaining of what is not yet had is 'yoga' and the guarding of what is had is 'kṣema', and since for one whose chief concern is getting and keeping engagement in the highest good is hard, be free of them. Be possessed of the Self, be heedful. This is My teaching to you, who follow your own duty. If the endless fruits stated for all the rites the Veda enjoins are not to be looked for, why are those rites performed at all, offered to the Lord? Hear.

The three qualities are sattva, rajas, and tamas; men in whom sattva, rajas, or tamas predominates are denoted by the word 'the threefold' (traigunya). The Vedas, bearing on them, make known, out of the very greatness of their tenderness, what is beneficial to those in whom tamas predominates, to those in whom rajas predominates, and to those in whom sattva predominates. If the Vedas did not, in accordance with each man's qualities, make known to them the means to heaven and the rest, then these men, full of rajas and tamas and so averse to the sattvic fruit of liberation, not knowing the means to the fruit they themselves seek, helpless in their bent toward desire, would, entering on non-means in the delusion that they were means, be lost. So the Vedas bear on the threefold. But you, Arjuna, become free of the threefold: being now one in whom sattva predominates, increase just that; do not become full of the three qualities mingled with one another, that is, do not increase that predominance of the three. Be free of the pairs of opposites, with every transmigratory nature gone from you. Stand ever in sattva, abiding in sattva ever-grown and free of the other two qualities. How? Be free of acquisition and preservation: giving up the acquisition of objects that lie outside the self's true nature and the means to it, and giving up the preservation of such objects once acquired, become possessed of the self, intent on the search for the self's true nature. The gaining of the unattained is 'acquisition' (yoga); the guarding of the attained is 'preservation' (kshema). For one who lives thus, the predominance of rajas and tamas perishes and sattva grows. And not all that the Veda teaches is to be taken up by everyone.

Krishna states that yoga-buddhi with the words 'the Vedas have the three gunas for their sphere' and the rest. Setting the other aside, since the Vedas have a hidden import, the meaning only appears to be the heaven and the rest that are bound up with the three gunas; it has been said, 'this Veda speaks indirectly'. Therefore the sense is, do not fall into delusion over a merely apparent meaning. As the definition runs, 'speaking of a thing as its object, and uttering it on the face of the text, is what is called vada'. The standing of the Veda itself is not denied. 'In the Veda, in the Ramayana, in the Purana and the Mahabharata, at the beginning, the end and the middle, Vishnu alone is sung everywhere'; 'all the Vedas proclaim that state' (Katha Upanishad 1.2.15); 'the whole Veda is the root of dharma, and then the tradition and conduct of those who know it, and the practice of the good, and one's own contentment' (Manu); 'dharma is what the Veda enjoins, and adharma its opposite' (Bhagavata 6.1.40). These declare that the Vedas have Vishnu for their entire object, and declare dharma to be what He enjoins and adharma what is opposed to Him.