Chapter 16 · 24 verses
दैवासुरसम्पद्विभागयोगः
Daivāsura-sampad-vibhāga-yoga
The divine and destructive dispositions
Which qualities make freedom possible?
A spiritual life is visible in conduct. Krishna turns from the highest person to the dispositions that open toward freedom or bind a life more tightly to fear, appetite, pride, and injury.
What happens here
A turn in the
conversation.
Krishna begins with a generous list of qualities associated with the divine endowment. Fearlessness stands beside purity, steadiness in knowledge, generosity, restraint, sacred study, and straightforwardness. The list continues through non-harming, truthfulness, compassion, gentleness, patience, and freedom from excessive pride. These are not impressive powers possessed by a few exceptional people. They describe the texture of a life and the way it meets other lives.
The contrasting disposition includes pretence, arrogance, anger, harshness, and ignorance. Krishna reassures Arjuna that he belongs to the divine endowment, then explains the demonic in more detail. The chapter's vocabulary is strong and should not be softened into mere lifestyle preference. Yet its distinctions concern the text's account of conduct and bondage. They are not a licence to label an ethnic, religious, political, or social group as inherently demonic.
A worldview without sustaining truth, moral foundation, or divine order is linked with unrestrained desire and destructive conduct. The text dramatizes the inner speech of acquisitiveness: what has been gained, what will be gained, who has been defeated, and who will be defeated next. Even sacrifice and generosity can enter this performance of self-importance. The outward act appears religious while its inward purpose remains domination or display.
The chapter describes grave consequences across rebirth and then identifies three gates to ruin: desire, anger, and greed. The practical direction is to relinquish them and act for one's genuine good. Its final verses appeal to scriptural teaching in discerning what should and should not be done. This ending prepares Arjuna's next question: what about people who worship with faith but do not follow that prescribed guidance?
Fearlessness, truth, compassion, and self-restraint belong to the divine endowment.
Watch the life organized around appetite, pride, and the defeat of others.
Relinquish desire, anger, and greed, and discern action through trustworthy teaching.
Chapter essence
Freedom and bondage are expressed through conduct. Desire, anger, and greed can make even religious action serve the ego; discernment requires a measure beyond appetite and self-approval.
Key movements
Follow the
argument.
16.1–5
The qualities of a freeing life
The opening list combines inward discipline with relations to others. Knowledge, study, and austerity do not stand apart from generosity, gentleness, and non-harming. The contrast with pretence and arrogance suggests that spiritual appearance is not enough. Krishna's reassurance to Arjuna also matters: the chapter is not delivered as a threat designed to keep the listener in permanent self-suspicion. It establishes a distinction and invites recognition of the dispositions that support freedom within a difficult human situation.
16.6–10
A view that releases appetite from restraint
The demonic disposition is described as unable to distinguish undertaking from restraint. Its account of the world denies truth, foundation, and lordship, reducing existence to desire. The passage links that view with harmful conduct, but it should not be treated as a complete description of every modern non-theistic philosophy. The immediate target is a conjunction of worldview, insatiable craving, arrogance, and destructive action. Reading those elements together prevents a label from replacing attention to actual behaviour.
16.11–16
The inner speech of acquisition
Anxiety stretches toward death while expectations multiply. Wealth is gathered unjustly for enjoyment, and the imagined self speaks through possession and conquest. The repeated 'I' and 'mine' make a closed world audible. Other people become competitors, enemies, or an audience for superiority. The chapter's psychological force lies in that narrowing. Each acquisition promises security while creating another demand, so a life apparently successful can remain driven by fear of insufficiency and the need to overcome someone else.
16.17–20
When sacred action becomes display
Sacrifices performed in name alone show that a religious setting does not protect an act from vanity. Wealth, pride, force, and hostility can inhabit the very forms associated with devotion. Krishna describes hatred of his presence in one's own body and in others, then speaks of repeated demonic births and a downward course. These are serious theological claims within the text. They should be explained without converting their severity into permission for a reader to punish people assigned to the category.
16.21–24
Three gates and a rule of discernment
Desire, anger, and greed gather the chapter's description into three forces to be relinquished. The instruction concerns action toward one's true good and the highest destination. Scripture is then named as an authority for distinguishing what ought to be done from what ought not. The alternative being rejected is action ruled solely by desire. The chapter closes with the need to understand and act, leaving open the next inquiry into faith, practice, and the relation between inward sincerity and prescribed forms.
Selected key verses
Stay with the words.
The Sanskrit, an original translation, and a way into the meaning.
Bhagavad Gita 16.2Krishna · in the dialogue
The texture of a divine life
non-harming, truthfulness, freedom from anger, relinquishment, peace, freedom from malicious talk, compassion toward beings, freedom from greed, gentleness, modesty, and absence of fickleness;
Original King of Dwarka translation · Complete verse
Why this verse matters
Non-harming, truthfulness, peace, compassion, gentleness, and freedom from greed appear within the opening list of divine qualities. Their ordinary relational character is striking. Spiritual orientation is expressed in how a person speaks and acts toward beings, not only in exceptional experiences or claims of knowledge.
Explore deeper
This verse continues the list begun in 16.1 and completed in 16.3. Reading the three together joins study, restraint, and austerity with patience, care, and freedom from excessive pride. A reader should therefore resist using the list merely to certify an admired identity or condemn another group. Its most searching application is to the gap between what one claims to value and what one's repeated conduct makes visible.
Bhagavad Gita 16.21Krishna · in the dialogue
Three gates to ruin
There are three gates to hell that bring ruin to the self: desire, anger, and greed. Therefore one should relinquish all three.
Original King of Dwarka translation · Complete verse
Why this verse matters
Desire, anger, and greed gather the chapter's portrait of bondage into three forces to be relinquished. The image of gates suggests entry into a destructive course rather than a harmless passing preference. The next verse directs the person released from them toward genuine good and the highest destination.
Explore deeper
The wider Gita distinguishes desire that accords with dharma from craving that overrules discernment. Here the sequence has described insatiable appetite, unjust acquisition, and the wish to defeat others. That setting gives the warning its specificity. The verse invites examination of how these forces govern conduct; it is not a tool for claiming certainty about another person's final destiny. Its practical force is in the relinquishment it asks of the reader.
Bhagavad Gita 16.24Krishna · in the dialogue
A measure beyond appetite
Therefore let scripture be your authority in determining what ought and ought not to be done. Understanding the action set forth by its teaching, you should act here.
Original King of Dwarka translation · Complete verse
Why this verse matters
Scripture is named as an authority for discerning what should and should not be done. The immediate contrast is with acting solely as desire dictates. The instruction includes understanding the teaching before acting, making discernment part of the undertaking rather than treating a detached phrase as an automatic answer to every circumstance.
Explore deeper
Arjuna's next question asks about faith outside prescribed observance. That continuation matters: the appeal to authority does not end inquiry. It leads to a closer examination of motive, form, and conduct. Reading the verse within that sequence prevents two distortions, dismissing the text's commitment to sacred guidance or using that commitment to make thoughtful interpretation unnecessary. The Gita's dialogue continues precisely because questions about application remain serious.
Read the full chapter
The whole conversation
matters.
All 24 verses, with Sanskrit, IAST transliteration and original King of Dwarka English.
Read Chapter 1624 verses · Sanskrit & English
Use the peacock feather above to mark your place. Sources & editions
16.1Krishna
Krishna said: Fearlessness, purity of inward being, steadiness in the yoga of knowledge, generosity, sense-restraint, sacrifice, sacred study, austerity, and straightforwardness;
16.2
non-harming, truthfulness, freedom from anger, relinquishment, peace, freedom from malicious talk, compassion toward beings, freedom from greed, gentleness, modesty, and absence of fickleness;
16.3
vigour, patience, constancy, purity, absence of hostility, and freedom from excessive pride belong to one born to the divine endowment, descendant of Bharata.
16.4
Pretence, arrogance, self-importance, anger, harshness, and ignorance belong to one born to the demonic endowment, Partha.
16.5
The divine endowment is held to lead to liberation, the demonic to bondage. Do not grieve, son of Pandu: you are born to the divine endowment.
16.6
In this world there are two kinds of created beings, the divine and the demonic. The divine has been described at length; now hear from me about the demonic, Partha.
16.7
People of demonic disposition do not understand what to undertake and what to refrain from. Neither purity, right conduct, nor truth is found in them.
16.8
They say the world has no truth, no foundation, and no lord; that it arises only through mutual union, with desire as its cause. What else could there be, they ask?
16.9
Holding to this view, having lost themselves and possessing little discernment, they arise as enemies of the world, doing terrible deeds that lead to its destruction.
16.10
Taking refuge in desire that cannot be filled, possessed by pretence, pride, and intoxication with self, they grasp false convictions through confusion and pursue impure observances.
16.11
They give themselves to immeasurable anxieties that end only with death, making the enjoyment of desires their highest aim and deciding that this is all there is.
16.12
Bound by a hundred cords of expectation, devoted to desire and anger, they seek to accumulate wealth unjustly for the enjoyment of their desires.
16.13
'Today I have obtained this; I will fulfil that wish next. This wealth is mine, and more will become mine.'
16.14
'I have killed that enemy, and I will kill others too. I am the lord; I am the enjoyer. I am accomplished, powerful, and happy.'
16.15
'I am wealthy and well-born. Who else is my equal? I will sacrifice, give, and enjoy myself.' So they are bewildered by ignorance.
16.16
Confused by many thoughts, enveloped in a net of delusion, and attached to gratifying desire, they fall into an impure hell.
16.17
Self-conceited and obstinate, intoxicated by wealth and pride, they perform sacrifices in name alone, for display and without proper observance.
16.18
Clinging to ego, force, arrogance, desire, and anger, these fault-finders hate me in their own bodies and in the bodies of others.
16.19
Those hateful, cruel, harmful people, lowest among human beings, I cast repeatedly into demonic wombs within the cycle of birth and death.
16.20
Entering demonic births and remaining deluded life after life, they do not reach me, son of Kunti, and go on to a still lower destination.
The text uses a moral and cosmological contrast between divine and destructive dispositions. Its language must not be used to designate an ethnic, religious, or social community as inherently demonic.
16.21
There are three gates to hell that bring ruin to the self: desire, anger, and greed. Therefore one should relinquish all three.
16.22
Freed from these three gates of darkness, a person acts for their own true good, son of Kunti, and then reaches the highest destination.
16.23
One who discards scriptural guidance and acts as desire dictates attains neither fulfilment, happiness, nor the highest destination.
16.24
Therefore let scripture be your authority in determining what ought and ought not to be done. Understanding the action set forth by its teaching, you should act here.
A deeper reading
Questions worth
remaining with.
16.1–10
The distinction begins with self-examination
The lists are easiest to misuse when read only as descriptions of other people. Their practical seriousness lies in the possibility of recognizing pretence, harshness, or acquisitiveness within one's own conduct, including conduct that appears respectable. The divine qualities similarly offer a demanding measure beyond public identity. A person may speak fluently about scripture while failing in truthfulness or compassion. The chapter gives no reason to treat the fluency as a substitute.
Its language should not become a way to deny anyone's humanity. The text's theological categories are forceful, but applying them to an entire contemporary community would bypass the attention to conduct that gives them meaning. Nor should every disagreement about metaphysics be collapsed into the destructive outlook described here. The passage joins several conditions in one portrait. Responsible interpretation keeps that specificity and resists the ease of condemning a person through a single label.
16.11–18
Why generosity can still serve pride
The voice of acquisition announces that it will sacrifice and give. This detail exposes a problem deeper than the absence of religious or charitable activity. A gift can become a means of securing admiration; a rite can become evidence in a private argument for superiority. The external form survives while the inward movement contradicts its claimed purpose. The next chapter will develop this distinction through different kinds of giving and austerity.
The remedy is not suspicion toward every visible act of generosity. It is careful attention to the relation between act, motive, recipient, and desired return. Does giving preserve the dignity of the person who receives? Can it occur without a demand for control or applause? The chapter's inner monologue makes the alternative clear: a world in which every action is finally recruited into the repeated assertion of 'I' and 'mine'.
16.19–24
Severity and the possibility of a different direction
The account of demonic births is severe, and an accurate translation should not replace it with a mild statement about bad habits. At the same time, the chapter does not end by inviting the reader to speculate about another person's destiny. It ends with a practical relinquishment of desire, anger, and greed, followed by discernment about action. That movement gives the reader a task rather than a position from which to pronounce final verdicts.
The appeal to scripture also requires understanding, not the mechanical use of a sentence detached from its setting. Arjuna's next question demonstrates that the conversation is not closed. He asks about sincere faith outside prescribed observance. The Gita allows that inquiry to follow its strong statement of authority, keeping interpretation active. The reader is asked to move beyond appetite as the sole measure while continuing the work of learning what a teaching actually requires.
Sources & editions
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