Sanskrit
यस्य नाहंकृतो भावो बुद्धिर्यस्य न लिप्यते । हत्वाऽपि स इमाँल्लोकान्न हन्ति न निबध्यते ॥ १७ ॥
yasya nāhaṅkṛto bhāvo buddhir yasya na lipyate hatvāpi sa imāḻ lokān na hanti na nibadhyate
Translation
He who is free from the egoistic notion, whose Reason is not affected, though he slay these peoples, he slayeth not, nor is bound.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The payoff is the famous line: one free from egoism, whose intellect isn’t stained, does not truly kill or become bound even in killing. This isn’t a license for violence so much as the logical endpoint of verse 16 — if the isolated Self was never the doer to begin with, acting from ego-free intellect can’t implicate that Self in bondage, which is exactly the argument Krishna used to justify Arjuna fighting at all back in chapter 2.
Concepts