Sanskrit
एतैर्विमुक्तः कौन्तेय तमोद्वारैस्त्रिभिर्नरः । आचरत्यात्मनः श्रेयस्ततो याति परां गतिम् ॥
etair vimuktaḥ kaunteya tamodvārais tribhir naraḥ ācaraty ātmanaḥ śreyas tato yāti parāṃ gatim
Translation
A man liberated from these three gates of darkness, O son of Kunti, accomplisheth his own welfare, and thus reacheth the highest goal.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
This verse mirrors the previous one’s triad but flips its valence: liberated from these three gates of darkness, a person accomplishes their own welfare (śreyas) and reaches the highest goal. Notice the framing is subtractive rather than additive — liberation here is described as what remains once kāma, krodha, and lobha are removed, not as some further virtue that must be separately acquired. That’s a meaningfully different model of ethical progress than the positive cataloguing of verses 1–3, where the divine nature was described entirely in terms of qualities present rather than absent.