Those actions do not stain Me, since I have no sense of I as the producer of body and the rest, and I have no craving, no thirst, for the fruits of those actions. For those in transmigration, who have the conceit 'I am the doer' and a craving in actions and in their fruits, it is right that actions stain them; but since these are absent in Me, actions do not stain Me. Any other too who knows Me thus, as his own Self, knowing 'I am not a doer, I have no craving for the fruit of action', is not bound by actions; for him too the actions that produce body and the rest do not arise. Thus, knowing 'I am not a doer, I have no craving for the fruit of action'.

Since these actions, the varied creation and the rest, do not stain Me, do not bind Me. These varieties of god, man, and the rest are not set going by Me; they are set going by the particular actions, in the form of merit and demerit, of the beings to be created. So, by the discernment of what would and would not be the case, I am not the doer of the varied creation and the rest. And since the created field-knowers, gaining the instruments and the body that the creation gives, experience the brood of things to be enjoyed that the creation gives, in conformity with their own karma which is itself the cause of attachment to fruit and so on, the longing for the fruit of the action of creation and the rest belongs to them alone; so I have no longing for it. So the author of the aphorism says, 'inequality and cruelty are not, because of dependence'. And so the Blessed Parashara says: 'this Person is the mere occasioning cause in the works of creating the things to be created; the powers of the things to be created are themselves the chief cause. Apart from this mere occasioning cause, nothing else is needed; a thing is brought, O best of the glowing ones, to its thinghood by its own power'. Of the things to be created, the field-knowers who are gods and the rest, this supreme Person is the mere cause of their creation; but for the variety among gods and the rest, the chief cause is just the powers of the earlier karma of the field-knowers to be created. So, apart from the mere occasioning cause, that is, apart from the supreme Person the doer of creation, this thing the field-knower needs nothing else for its varied being as god and the rest; it is brought to the state of being a god and so on by the power of its own earlier karma. This is the meaning. In the manner described, whoever knows Me as, though the doer of creation and the rest, yet the non-doer, and as free of attachment to the fruit of the action of creation and the rest, he is not bound by, is freed from, the earlier karmas, the causes of attachment to fruit and so on, that obstruct the undertaking of the discipline of action. This is the meaning.

For this very reason actions do not stain Him; and Krishna says why they do not, with 'I have no longing for the fruit of action'. There is the mere wish, but no clinging to it; so it is said, 'though He longs, that God, the supreme One, does not desire as the world desires, for that Vishnu has no grasping, and His desire is itself knowledge'. Nor is it that only some become released while release is universal by stages, for the scripture says, 'knowing Him thus, with the mind and in the heart, the knower comes no more to death' (Mahanarayana Upanishad); and, when asked how, or whether they are endless, He answered, as if they were endless.