9.22

Sanskrit

अनन्याश्चिन्तयन्तो मां ये जनाः पर्युपासते । तेषां नित्याभियुक्तानां योगक्षेमं वहाम्यहम् ॥

ananyāś cintayanto māṃ ye janāḥ paryupāsate teṣāṃ nityābhiyuktānāṃ yogakṣemaṃ vahāmy aham

Translation

To those men who worship Me alone thinking of no other, to those ever harmonious, I bring full security.

Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain

Explanation

One of the most quoted verses in the whole text, and it earns the attention: exclusive devotion (ananyāḥ … paryupāsate) is answered not with a promise of liberation but with a startlingly practical guarantee — yoga-kṣema, literally “acquisition and preservation,” the getting of what one lacks and the safeguarding of what one has. It’s worth noticing what kind of claim this is: not that devotees never face hardship, but that Krishna personally assumes the logistics so the devotee doesn’t have to split attention between worship and self-provision. The term itself is deliberately unglamorous — a householder’s word repurposed for grace — which is part of why it lands as intimate rather than abstract.