Sanskrit
तस्मात्त्वमुत्तिष्ठ यशो लभस्व जित्वा शत्रून्भुङ्क्ष्व राज्यं समृद्धम् । मयैवैते निहताः पूर्वमेव निमित्तमात्रं भव सव्यसाचिन् ॥
tasmāt tvam uttiṣṭha yaśo labhasva jitvā śatrūn bhuṅkṣva rājyaṃ samṛddham mayaivaite nihatāḥ pūrvam eva nimittamātraṃ bhava savyasācin
Translation
Therefore stand up! win for thyself renown, Conquer thy foes, enjoy the wealth filled realm, By Me they are already overcome, Be thou the outward cause, left-handed one.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
“Nimitta-mātraṃ bhava” — be merely the occasion — may be the single most compressed statement of karma yoga’s whole argument about agency anywhere in the poem. Arjuna is not being told his actions don’t matter or that he bears no responsibility; he’s being told his role in an outcome already settled by “kālo’smi” in the verse before is instrumental rather than causal, closer to a lit match than to an arsonist. Chapter 2 argued this same reassignment of agency through logic and the doctrine of the unkillable self; here it arrives as a plain command from someone who has just finished demonstrating, rather than arguing, why the outcome is fixed.