As the ignorant, attached to action, thinking 'the fruit of this action will be mine', do action, O Bhārata, so the knower, the knower of the Self, should do action, but unattached. Why does he act so? Hear: wishing, desiring, to hold the world together. For one who thus wishes to hold the world together, who is a knower of the Self, there is nothing to be done, and for any other too there is nothing apart from the holding-together of the world. Therefore the knower of the Self is given this teaching.

Just as the unlearned, those of incomplete knowledge regarding the self, attached to action and unavoidably bound to action, not qualified through their incomplete knowledge of the self for the discipline of knowledge which is the practice of dwelling on it, those qualified for the discipline of action, do the discipline of action for the sake of beholding the self, so the man unattached to action, who has complete knowledge of the self and is fit even to be qualified for the discipline of knowledge, should, being one to be pointed to as exemplary, for the protection of the world, wishing by his own conduct to settle the determination of law for exemplary men, do the discipline of action itself.

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.