Lord Krishna
Divine TeacherThe Supreme Lord, the charioteer and divine guide of Arjuna. Krishna delivers the eternal wisdom of the Gita, revealing the nature of the soul, duty, and the path to liberation.
Speaking: Chapter 13, Verse 21
Verse 21
Hard VerseThe Yoga of the Field and the Knower of the Field
Prakriti is said to be the cause in the production of effect and cause; Purusha is said to be the cause in the experience of pleasure and pain.
Context & Meaning
A precise division of causal roles: Prakriti is responsible for all agency — all doing, all cause-and-effect chains in the physical and mental world. Purusha is responsible for experience — it is the experiencer of pleasure and pain, but not their producer. This distinction has profound practical consequences: the suffering I experience is the result of Prakriti's operations; my awareness of that suffering is Purusha. The sufferer is not the pure witness; the pure witness merely knows the suffering without being constituted by it.
Scholar Commentaries
1 commentary · Public domainRamanujacharya
VishishtadvaitaThis verse establishes the practical importance of the Prakriti-Purusha distinction. If I am the pure witnessing consciousness (Purusha), then I am never actually the doer — Prakriti acts through the body-mind complex. And if I am only the experiencer and not the producer of pleasure and pain, I have a basis for equanimity: the experiences arise, but they do not touch my essential nature.