One who does not lean on the fruit of action, who is free of craving for the fruit of action: for one who craves the fruit of action leans upon it, but this man is the opposite, and so leans on no fruit of action. Being such, whoever does the action to be done, the constant action, the fire-oblation and the like, the opposite of desire-prompted action, that doer of action is distinguished above other doers of action. To say this He calls him 'a renouncer and a yogin'. Renunciation is the relinquishing, and one who has it is a renouncer; yoga is the gathering of the mind, and one who has it is a yogin. He is to be held to be possessed of these qualities; one is not to think that only the man without sacred fires, the man free of rites, is a renouncer and a yogin. He whose sacred fires, the fires that are limbs of the rites, have gone is fireless; and he in whom even the rites that have no fire for their means, austerity, gift and the like, are absent is free of rites. But surely it is the man without fires and without rites who is well known in scripture, in remembered text and in the yoga treatises as the renouncer and the yogin; how is it that here the man with fires and with rites is called, unheard-of, a renouncer and a yogin? There is no fault, for it is by a figurative usage that He wishes to bring both about for him. How? Renounce-hood comes by the renunciation of the resolve aimed at the fruit of action; and yoga-hood comes from carrying out action as a limb of yoga, and from the relinquishing of the resolve aimed at the fruit of action, which is a cause of the mind's distraction. Both are figurative; it is not renounce-hood and yoga-hood in the principal sense that are meant. To show this He says.

The Blessed Lord spoke. Not resorting to the fruit of action, heaven and the rest; holding that the doing of action is itself the task, since action, being the worship of the supreme Person who is our friend, is itself My purpose and not anything accomplished by it; he who does action thus is both a renouncer, settled in the discipline of knowledge, and a yogin, settled in the discipline of action. He is settled in both, which are the means to the discipline that has the form of the beholding of the self. This is the meaning. He is so, not the man without sacred fire and without rites, the man settled in knowledge alone, not engaged in the enjoined actions of sacrifice and the rest; for that man has only the standing in knowledge, while the man settled in the discipline of action has both. The Lord says that in the discipline of action of the character described there is knowledge too.

Om. In this chapter Krishna speaks of the yoga of samadhi, the inner aid to knowledge. He states the renunciation that is meant, along with yoga, with 'not resting on the fruit of action'. Even for one in the fourth order there are a fire and an action, as is told in 'the divine' (4.25) and the rest, and as it is said, 'the fire is Brahman, and the worship of Him is the action prescribed in the renunciate order'. Therefore one who has no fire and does no action is no renunciate and no yogin at all.