Lokasaṅgraha (लोकसंग्रह)

Lokasaṅgraha — literally “gathering” or “holding together” the world (loka) — is the motive chapter 3 supplies for someone who has genuinely no personal stake left in what they do. Arjuna’s objection is that a realized person has nothing to gain or lose by acting (BG 3.17–BG 3.18), so why act at all. Krishna’s answer at BG 3.20–BG 3.25 is that conduct is contagious: “whatever the best person does, others follow; the standard they set, the world goes by.”

Example as an obligation

He cites King Janaka, who attained perfection through action and did not then stop, and points at himself — there is nothing in the three worlds he needs, “yet I engage in action,” because if he did not, people would imitate the withdrawal and “these worlds would fall into ruin” (BG 3.24). Lokasaṅgraha reframes work that is personally pointless as socially load-bearing: you keep doing your part not because you need the result but because your visible abandonment of it would give everyone else permission to abandon theirs.

Related

• Karma (कर्म) — lokasaṅgraha is a motive for acting without a personal motive; it slots into the karma-yoga structure where “desire for the fruit” used to be
• Svadharma (स्वधर्म) — the action held to is one’s own proper work, done in view of others who take their cue from it