He from whom expectations have departed is one free of expectation. He whose mind and self, both, are governed is one of governed mind and self: the mind is the inner instrument, the self the outer aggregate of effect and instrument, and one by whom both are restrained. One who has relinquished every possession, performing action that is merely bodily, having only the upkeep of the body for its purpose, and there too free of the conceit of doing it: he does not incur sin, the unwished-for thing, nor merit. For the seeker of liberation even merit is a kind of sin, since it brings on bondage. Freed from both, merit and demerit, he is liberated from transmigration. When 'action that is merely bodily' is said, is the action accomplished by the body meant, or the action whose only purpose is the upkeep of the body? What turns on this? If the action accomplished by the body is meant, then to say that one who does, with the body, an action of seen or unseen purpose, even a forbidden one, incurs no sin would be a contradictory statement; and to say that one who does, with the body, a scriptural action of seen or unseen purpose incurs no sin would forbid what was never in question. And by the qualification 'doing action that is merely bodily', and by the word 'merely', it would be implied that one who does action accomplished by speech and mind, the action falling under injunction and prohibition and named merit and demerit, does incur sin; and there too, in the carrying-out of what speech and mind enjoin, the statement that sin is incurred would be a contradiction, and in the doing of what is forbidden it would be a mere restatement of an existing fact, and so purposeless. But if the action whose only purpose is the upkeep of the body is meant by 'bodily action', then the sense is: not doing any other action, of seen or unseen purpose, falling under injunction and prohibition, accomplished by body, speech and mind, but with those very instruments doing the action whose only purpose is the upkeep of the body, and, by the word 'merely', free of the conceit 'I do', merely carrying out the activity of body and the rest as it appears to the eye of the world: such a one does not incur sin. For one of this kind the incurring of the thing named by the word 'sin' is not possible, so he does not incur sin, that is, transmigration; since all his actions have been burnt up by the fire of knowledge, he is, without obstruction, simply liberated. This, then, is a restatement of the fruit of the right vision stated before. With this sense of 'action that is merely bodily', the passage is faultless. For the ascetic who has relinquished all possessions, since he has no possession such as food that would maintain the body, when the upkeep of the body has to be managed by begging and the like, the Blessed Lord, with the words of the text 'unasked, unprepared, come of itself, by chance' (Bodhāyana Smṛti 21.8.12) and the like permitting it, makes known the door by which the ascetic comes by the food and the rest that maintain the body, and says the following.

Free of longing, with the eye to the fruit gone, his mind and self restrained, having given up all possession, free of the sense of mine toward the things of matter and what is made of matter since his single purpose is the self, doing, as long as he lives, only the bodily action, he does not incur the inauspicious, does not come to transmigration. By the discipline of action alone, of such a form, unbroken by any standing in knowledge, he beholds the self. This is the meaning.

Krishna states the means to giving up desire and the rest, with 'without hope'. The sense is that, having become one whose mind and self are controlled, he is without hope. 'Self' (atma) here means the mind. The giving up of possession is the absence of the sense of mine. Krishna states the intent of 'he does nothing at all' (4.20), with 'he incurs no stain'.