Concepts
गुणाः
guṇāḥ
guṇa 'strand, cord; quality' — the three strands of prakṛti (sattva, rajas, tamas) whose braiding is every action. 3.27 is the hinge: nature acts, the ego claims authorship.
Read alone, 3.27 sounds like an alibi — nature did it, not me. Read with its commentators, it indicts the alibi's author: the confusion is precisely the ego's claim over what the guṇas do, and no tradition takes the verse as canceling responsibility. Where they differ is on who, finally, the doer is.
prakṛti acts; the deluded self claims authorship
प्रकृतेः क्रियमाणानि
गुणैः कर्माणि सर्वशः
All actions are being performed by the; modes of Prakrti (Primordial Matter). The Y; fool, whose mind is deluded by egoism, thinks:: am the doer.”
the three guṇas bind the embodied one
सत्त्वं रजस्तम इति
गुणाः प्रकृतिसंभवाः
Rajas and Tamas—these three qualities y born of Nature tie down the impersihable soul to the body, Arjuna
the Lord turns all beings mounted on the machine
ईश्वरः सर्वभूतानां
हृद्देशेऽर्जुन तिष्ठति
Arjuna, God abides in the heart ofall creatures, 0 causing them to revolve according to their 5 karma by His illusive power, seated as those S beings are in the vehicle…
You're responsible — that is the point of the verse, not the loophole in it. 3.27 says nature's three strands do the acting while the ego claims the credit, and every commentator reads it as exposing that false claim, not excusing your conduct. Who the real doer is, they genuinely dispute: no one, says Śaṅkara — action belongs to prakṛti; the soul confusing itself with the body, says Rāmānuja; the Lord behind all of it, says Madhva. What none of them says is 'the guṇas did it' as a defense. Seeing the machinery clearly is where responsibility begins.
Ādi Śaṅkarācārya · Advaita
For Śaṅkara the verse describes ignorance at work: actions of the body-mind aggregate are laid on the Self through avidyā.
अविद्यया कर्माणि आत्मनि मन्यमानः तत्तत्कर्मणां अहं कर्ता इति मन्यते — through ignorance he lays nature's actions upon the Self and thinks, 'of each of these acts I am the doer.'
Śaṅkara Bhāṣya on 3.27 (Sanskrit, GitaDeep corpus; working rendering under review)
Śrī Rāmānuja · Viśiṣṭādvaita
Rāmānuja locates the error in misidentification — taking the body, where the guṇas churn, to be the soul.
It is the Gunas of Prakṛti —Sattva, Rajas & Tamas, that perform all their respective activities. That person who is blinded by false ego and bewildered by material nature believes they themselves are the root cause and sole determining factor of all actions they engage in.
Gītā-bhāṣya on 3.27 — English translation (GitaDeep corpus)
Śrī Madhvācārya · Dvaita
The Tātparya Nirṇaya presses further than nature: behind prakṛti's strands stands the Lord's own agency.
Jiva is not the doer but Sri Hari alone is the doer.
Gītā Tātparya Nirṇaya on 3.27 — English translation (GitaDeep corpus)
Śrī Jñāneśvar · Vārkarī
The Jñāneśvarī gives the confusion a body: a man bent under a load that was never his to carry.
Were you to take on your head, the load of another, tell me O Dhan-nurdhara, whether you would not be bent under it? In that way actions good or bad arising out of the primal nature's constituent properties are shifted on to himself through a delusion by the ignorant, who fancies himself to be their author.
Jñāneśvarī on 3.27, tr. R. K. Bhagwat (GitaDeep corpus)
Swami Ramsukhdas · Sādhak Sañjīvanī
The practice reading widens the frame until 'my action' looks as natural — and as unowned — as a river's flow.
All the functions of the world, such as birth and growth of bodies and plants, flow of the Ganges and changes in worldly things etc., as well actions, such as seeing, hearing, eating and drinking etc., are carried out by the modes of nature.
Sādhak Sañjīvanī on 3.27 — English translation (GitaDeep corpus)
Where the traditions differ, we show the difference.
