The vocabulary · प्रकृति
Prakriti
Nature — everything that changes.
What is prakriti in the Gita?
Nature: everything that changes. The Gita puts more on that side of the line than most readers expect. Earth, water, fire, air and space, and then mind, intellect and the sense of being someone — all eight are listed as prakriti. Prakriti is also what acts. Actions are carried out in every case by the gunas of nature, and the man who thinks he himself is the doer is described as one whose mind is clouded. Set against prakriti is purusha, the one who is present and watches.
Hansi Gita Bhawan Trust · 20 verses use प्रकृति
In the text
प्रकृति
prakṛti
A verse is counted when its Sanskrit contains the word, compounds included. That is a checkable fact and a floor, not a total — the Gita teaches the idea in verses that never say it.
Chapter thirteen sets prakriti and purusha side by side and says both are without beginning, while everything that changes, and the gunas themselves, arise from prakriti alone. It then divides the work: prakriti is the cause where the body, its instruments and the doing of action are concerned; purusha is the cause where pleasure and pain are experienced. The difficulty comes next. Purusha, seated in prakriti, tastes the gunas that prakriti produces, and its attachment to that tasting is what carries it into one birth or another. The pair is not a tidy separation. It is an entanglement the chapter is trying to describe.
The consequences are not comfortable and the Gita does not soften them. Even a man of knowledge acts in keeping with his own nature; all beings follow their nature; what, Krishna asks, will forcing accomplish. Near the end he applies this directly to Arjuna: if you decide, leaning on ego, that you will not fight, the resolve is empty, because your own nature will set you to it. The Gita is not saying a person has no responsibility. It is saying that the leverage is not where the person assumes it is.
The line is also less clean than the scheme suggests. In chapter seven Krishna divides prakriti into a lower nature — the eight elements, mind and intellect included — and a higher one, the living principle by which the world is held together, and calls both of them his. In chapter nine nature brings forth everything that moves and does not move, under his oversight. So prakriti is not simply the opposite of the divine in this text. It is what the divine works through, and what a person is made of.
What it does not mean
If prakriti does everything, then nothing is my fault and there is no point trying.
3.27 removes the sense of being the sole author of your actions. It does not remove the obligation, and the same book goes on to tell Arjuna to control his senses, to fight, and finally to weigh the teaching and decide for himself. 18.60 is the sharpest reply to this misreading: your nature will carry you into the work whether you consent or not. That is a warning about self-deception, not a permit.
In the Gita’s own words
The verses this rests on.
The Sanskrit and both translations are the text. The note under each verse is the Trust’s reason for pointing at it — you may disagree with the note and still trust the verse.
Bhagavad Gita 7.4–7.5Shri Bhagavan
भूमिरापोऽनलो वायुः खं मनो बुद्धिरेव च ।
अहङ्कार इतीयं मे भिन्ना प्रकृतिरष्टधा ॥अपरेयमितस्त्वन्यां प्रकृतिं विद्धि मे पराम् ।
जीवभूतां महाबाहो ययेदं धार्यते जगत् ॥Earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intellect and the sense of I — this is my prakriti, divided into eight parts. That prakriti is the lower one. Know that I have another, a higher prakriti, Mahabaho — the living principle by which this whole world is held together.
The eightfold lower nature — including mind, intellect and the sense of I — and the higher nature that holds the world together. Krishna calls both of them his own.
Bhagavad Gita 13.19–13.21Shri Bhagavan
प्रकृतिं पुरुषं चैव विद्ध्यनादी उभावपि ।
विकारांश्च गुणांश्चैव विद्धि प्रकृतिसम्भवान् ॥कार्यकारणकर्तृत्वे हेतुः प्रकृतिरुच्यते ।
पुरुषः सुखदुःखानां भोक्तृत्वे हेतुरुच्यते ॥पुरुषः प्रकृतिस्थो हि भुङ्क्ते प्रकृतिजान्गुणान् ।
कारणं गुणसङ्गोऽस्य सदसद्योनिजन्मसु ॥Know that prakriti and purusha are both without beginning. Know also that the changes things undergo, and the gunas themselves, all arise out of prakriti. Prakriti is said to be the cause where the body, its instruments and the doing of action are concerned. Purusha is said to be the cause where pleasure and pain are experienced. Purusha, seated in prakriti, experiences the gunas that are born of prakriti. Its attachment to those gunas is the cause of its birth in good and bad wombs.
The pair, and its trouble. Both are beginningless; prakriti is the cause of doing and purusha of experiencing; and it is purusha’s attachment to the gunas that carries it into one birth or another.
Bhagavad Gita 3.27Shri Bhagavan
प्रकृतेः क्रियमाणानि गुणैः कर्माणि सर्वशः ।
अहङ्कारविमूढात्मा कर्ताहमिति मन्यते ॥Actions are carried out, in every case, by the gunas of nature. But a man whose mind is clouded by ego thinks that he himself is the one doing them.
Actions are carried out in every case by the gunas of nature. The one who takes himself to be the doer is described as clouded by ego, which is a diagnosis rather than an insult.
Bhagavad Gita 13.29Shri Bhagavan
प्रकृत्यैव च कर्माणि क्रियमाणानि सर्वशः ।
यः पश्यति तथात्मानमकर्तारं स पश्यति ॥Whoever sees that actions are in every way being carried out by prakriti alone, and sees that the self is not the doer, is the one who really sees.
Stated as a test of sight: whoever sees that actions are being carried out by prakriti alone, and that the self is not the doer, is the one who really sees.
Bhagavad Gita 3.33Shri Bhagavan
सदृशं चेष्टते स्वस्याः प्रकृतेर्ज्ञानवानपि ।
प्रकृतिं यान्ति भूतानि निग्रहः किं करिष्यति ॥Even a man of knowledge acts in keeping with his own nature. All beings follow their nature. What will forcing them accomplish?
Even a man of knowledge acts in keeping with his own nature, and all beings follow theirs. The question at the end — what will forcing accomplish — is the Gita being realistic about willpower.
Bhagavad Gita 18.60Shri Bhagavan
स्वभावजेन कौन्तेय निबद्धः स्वेन कर्मणा ।
कर्तुं नेच्छसि यन्मोहात्करिष्यस्यवशोऽपि तत् ॥Bound by your own work born of your nature, O son of Kunti, the very thing you do not wish to do out of delusion, that you will do, helpless.
Applied to Arjuna by name: bound by work born of your nature, the very thing you do not wish to do out of delusion, that you will do, helpless.
Bhagavad Gita 9.10Shri Bhagavan
मयाध्यक्षेण प्रकृतिः सूयते सचराचरम् ।
हेतुनानेन कौन्तेय जगद्विपरिवर्तते ॥Under my oversight nature gives birth to everything that moves and everything that does not. This is the cause, Kaunteya, by which the world turns through its cycles.
Nature gives birth to everything that moves and does not move, under oversight. Prakriti is not an opponent of the divine here; it is how the world keeps turning.
In practice
What it looks like when someone does it.
A man with a short temper reads 3.33 and hears a reprieve, which is not quite what it says. His temper is part of his nature and will not be abolished by a resolution taken on a Tuesday. What is available to him is the two seconds after it rises, and what he does with those. The Gita is realistic about how much of a person is fixed, and it puts the work in a narrower place than self-improvement usually does.
A woman who runs a small workshop believes it stands or falls on her personally. 3.27 does not tell her to work less. It tells her that she has miscounted the causes: the material, the hands, the market, the season and her own trained skill were all doing something. The correction is to ownership rather than to effort, and people who make it often report working the same hours with less of a load on them.
What 13.29 asks for can be tried in a small way. For one hour at a desk, watch the work being done rather than doing it under commentary. The hand writes, the phone rings, the decision gets made. Nothing about the output changes. What can change, slightly, is the running sense that all of it is being personally held up.
Words that travel with it
Common questions
About prakriti.
Is prakriti the same as maya?
They overlap and the Gita does not define one against the other. 7.14 calls maya divine, made of the gunas, and hard to cross. 7.4 calls prakriti the eightfold material nature. Maya carries a sense of what deceives; prakriti a sense of what constitutes. Anyone who tells you the two are simply identical, or simply different, is going past what the text supplies.
Does prakriti mean my personality?
Partly. 3.33 and 18.60 use nature in a personal sense — your temperament, what you will find yourself doing. But prakriti in chapters seven and thirteen is far larger than a person: the elements, the mind and intellect as such, and everything that changes anywhere. The word is doing both jobs, and the smaller sense sits inside the larger one.
If nature is doing everything, why does the Gita keep giving instructions?
Because the seeing is the instruction. 13.29 does not say stop acting; it says see that the self is not the doer while the acting goes on. And 18.60 warns that refusing to act is itself something nature will overrule. The Gita treats the sense of being the author as the thing to be corrected, not the activity.
What is purusha, then?
The other half of the pair. 13.20 makes purusha the one in whom pleasure and pain are experienced, while prakriti is the cause of the body and of doing. 13.22 describes a higher purusha in the body as the one who watches, permits, supports and experiences. Purusha is the presence to which things happen; prakriti is everything that is happening.