Plain EnglishDoing works here, let one wish to live a hundred years. For you, there is no other way than this — and so karma does not cling to a person.
Layer 2 — What it means
Verse 2 is addressed to the person who has not yet renounced the world — who will continue to act, to work, to live a full life. The instruction is not: stop acting. The instruction is: keep acting — but without the karma adhering to you. How? By understanding verse 1. If the Lord pervades all, if nothing is ultimately yours, then action performed with that understanding does not create the binding residue (karma) that perpetuates the cycle of birth and death.
This verse is the Upaniṣad's concession to the householder. Not everyone is ready to renounce. For that person: act — but act with the understanding of verse 1 always underneath the action.
Reading this page will give you the concept clearly. But the Upanishads were not written to be understood the way you understand chemistry or history. They were written to point toward something you can only recognise in yourself. That recognition is not on this page. This page only clears the way.
Plain EnglishDoing works here, let one wish to live a hundred years. For you, there is no other way than this — and so karma does not cling to a person.
Layer 2 — Philosophical meaning
Verse 2 is Śaṅkara's most contested passage. His reading: this verse is addressed to someone who has failed to qualify for renunciation — it is a lesser path, not the ideal. The ideal of the Upaniṣad (and all Advaita) is nivṛtti (withdrawal from action) combined with jñāna. Action without knowledge cannot produce liberation. Rāmānuja and the Karma-Yoga tradition read verse 2 differently: action itself, properly understood (as service to the Lord who pervades all), is the path. This reading was taken up by the Bhagavad Gītā tradition. The Īśā's two-verse opening encodes the same tension that the entire Gītā is built around.
Reading this page will give you the concept clearly. But the Upanishads were not written to be understood the way you understand chemistry or history. They were written to point toward something you can only recognise in yourself. That recognition is not on this page. This page only clears the way.
Plain EnglishDoing works here, let one wish to live a hundred years. For you, there is no other way than this — and so karma does not cling to a person.
Layer 2 — Scholarly and textual analysis
The phrase na karma lipyate nare — karma does not cling to a person — uses lipyate (to be smeared, to stick) from lip. The metaphor is physical: action, like wet clay, sticks to the agent and leaves a residue. The Upaniṣad's claim is that proper understanding of the Lord's pervasion — which removes the sense of being the agent — also removes the adhesion of karmic consequence. This connects directly to Bhagavad Gītā 3.9: action performed as sacrifice does not bind. The Īśā's verse 2 is the probable source of the Gītā's central ethical teaching.
Reading this page will give you the concept clearly. But the Upanishads were not written to be understood the way you understand chemistry or history. They were written to point toward something you can only recognise in yourself. That recognition is not on this page. This page only clears the way.