Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 5, Verse 13
सर्वकर्माणि मनसा संन्यस्यास्ते सुखं वशी । नवद्वारे पुरे देही नैव कुर्वन्न कारयन्
sarvakarmāṇi manasā saṃnyasyāste sukhaṃ vaśī | navadvāre pure dehī naiva kurvanna kārayan
Translation
Renouncing all actions by thought, and self-controlled, the embodied one rests happily in the nine-gated city, neither at all acting nor causing to act.
— Alladi Mahadeva Sastri
Word meanings
- sarvakarmāṇi
- all actions
- manasā
- by the mind
- saṃnyasya
- having abandoned
- āste
- sits
- sukham
- happy
- vaśī
- the ruler (of himself)
- navadvāre
- (in) the nine-gated
- pure
- (in) the city
- dehī
- the embodied
- na
- not
- eva
- even
- kurvan
- acting
- na
- not
- kārayan
- causing action
Śaṅkarācārya's commentary
The man who has subdued the senses, renounces all actions in speech, thought, and deed, by discrimination, by seeing inaction in action, and rests happily. He rests happily because he has given up all action, because he is without worry, because his mind is calm, because, excepting the Self, all interests foreign to the Self have departed from his mind. The body has nine openings: seven in the head, being the organs of sensation; two nether ones for the passage of urine and dung. As having these nine openings, the body is said to be a nine-gated city. It is like a city, with the Self for its Monarch, inhabited by the citizens of the senses, mind, intellect, as well as their objects.