Nishkama in the Bhagavad Gita

Action without craving for its fruit. Nishkama karma is the Gita's hardest teaching and its most freeing — the verses where Krishna shows the way.

• 2.47Action belongs to you; the result does not.
• 2.71Peace begins when wanting, owning, and self-importance fall away.
• 3.4Freedom is not found by escaping action, but by changing your relation to it.
• 3.9Work becomes bondage when it is done for yourself.
• 4.14Knowing the action is not yours to possess breaks its grip.
• 4.21Freedom from clinging keeps action untouched.
• 5.2Renunciation matures when action continues without grasping.
• 5.12Peace comes when action is no longer chained to reward.
• 17.11Right action becomes pure when reward stops being the reason.
• 17.17True discipline is clean only when reward is no longer the motive.
• 17.25Freedom deepens when action stops demanding a private return.
• 18.2Renunciation means releasing both craving and attachment to results.
• 18.9Renunciation means doing what must be done without gripping the result.
• 18.17Without egoic ownership, action leaves no stain.