Chap­ter III of the Bha­gavad-Gita opens with Arju­na’s con­flict about the nature of duty and action ver­sus med­i­ta­tion. He seeks clar­i­fi­ca­tion from Krish­na on which path is supe­ri­or and how he should act to achieve the high­est good. Krish­na responds by elu­ci­dat­ing the com­plex­i­ty and neces­si­ty of action in life, empha­siz­ing that both paths of wisdom—the path of intel­lec­tu­al under­stand­ing (Sankhya) and the path of dis­ci­plined action (Yoga)—are essen­tial but ulti­mate­ly lead to the same divine goal.

Krish­na teach­es Arju­na that action is inevitable; every liv­ing being must engage in activ­i­ty accord­ing to their nature and the laws of the uni­verse. He explains that abstain­ing from action is impos­si­ble and that renun­ci­a­tion does not mean avoid­ing duty but per­form­ing it with­out attach­ment to the results. This con­cept of self­less action (Kar­ma Yoga) is pre­sent­ed as the ide­al, where the effort is made with a focus on duty and not on per­son­al gain.

Krish­na fur­ther stress­es the impor­tance of per­form­ing one’s pre­scribed duties, as neglect­ing these respon­si­bil­i­ties leads to the stag­na­tion of life and soci­ety. He intro­duces the con­cept of “Yaj­na” or sac­ri­fice, explain­ing how acts of self­less ser­vice sus­tain the cos­mic order and ben­e­fit soci­ety by fos­ter­ing inter­de­pen­dence and mutu­al pros­per­i­ty. Those who per­form their duties self­less­ly, offer­ing the results to the divine, attain spir­i­tu­al puri­ty and ulti­mate­ly reach the high­est bliss.

More­over, Krish­na advo­cates for action as a means of set­ting an exam­ple for oth­ers, high­light­ing his own engage­ment in the world despite being tran­scen­dent and with­out per­son­al needs. He mod­els self­less action to main­tain the bal­ance of the uni­verse and guide soci­ety towards right­eous­ness. Krish­na con­cludes by encour­ag­ing Arju­na to per­form his war­rior duty in the bat­tle, act­ing for the wel­fare of the world with­out attach­ment to per­son­al out­comes. This chap­ter cen­tral­izes the theme of self­less action as the path to spir­i­tu­al lib­er­a­tion and soci­etal har­mo­ny, chal­leng­ing Arju­na (and the read­er) to rec­on­cile the nat­ur­al impuls­es for action with a detached, spir­i­tu­al­ly ori­ent­ed approach.

This dia­logue estab­lish­es a foun­da­tion­al eth­ic of Hin­du phi­los­o­phy, empha­siz­ing duty, self­less­ness, and devo­tion to the divine will as guid­ing prin­ci­ples for human con­duct, aim­ing to inspire Arju­na to rise above his doubts and ful­fill his role as a war­rior in the impend­ing bat­tle.