Sanskrit
श्रेयान् स्वधर्मो विगुणः परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात् । स्वभावनियतं कर्म कुर्वन्नाप्नोति किल्बिषम् ॥ ४७ ॥
śreyān sva-dharmo viguṇaḥ para-dharmāt sv-anuṣṭhitāt svabhāva-niyataṃ karma kurvan nāpnoti kilbiṣam
Translation
Better is one's own duty though destitute of merits than the well-executed duty of another. He who doeth the duty laid down by his own nature incurreth not sin.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
This line is a near-verbatim repeat of 3.35 (“śreyān svadharmo viguṇaḥ paradharmāt svanuṣṭhitāt”) — better one’s own duty done imperfectly than another’s discharged well — and the repetition is deliberate, not lazy. Chapter 3 planted the claim as a working premise for Arjuna’s crisis; chapter 18 returns to it as a settled conclusion, now backed by fifteen additional chapters of guna theory, meditation, and devotion. Svadharma here isn’t a claim that one’s assigned duty is easy or comfortable, only that it is authentically one’s own, and chasing a better-performed duty that belongs to someone else is treated as the greater risk.
Lessons
Personal
- If you keep returning to the same piece of advice for yourself across years, that repetition is itself informative — it's probably pointing at something load-bearing, not something you've already fully learned.
Professional
- A principle your team keeps re-deriving independently — about scope, ownership, or role clarity — is worth writing down explicitly rather than re-learning it from scratch each time.
Family & Social
- A boundary or value you find yourself repeating to the same family member across years isn't a sign you're failing to communicate — some things need restating, not rewording.
Concepts