What does the Bhagavad Gita say about karma?

In the Bhagavad Gita, karma means action — and its central teaching is not that you should avoid action, but that you should act without being bound by the fruits of action. In 2.47 Krishna tells Arjuna he has a right to his work but never to its results. This is karma-yoga: doing your duty (svadharma) fully and skillfully while releasing attachment to reward. Krishna’s point is that action itself is unavoidable — even choosing to do nothing is a choice with consequences — so the path to freedom is not renunciation of action but renunciation of the craving that binds you to it. When work is offered without grasping at outcomes, it stops generating the karmic entanglement that keeps one cycling; the same act, done with attachment, binds, and done in surrender, frees. The Gita thus reframes karma from a ledger of reward and punishment into a discipline of the heart’s posture toward what it does.