---
type: Concept
bundle: dharmic-ethics
bundle_version: "0.5.0"
id: nishkama-karma
title: "Niṣkāma-Karma — Desireless Action (Karma-Yoga)"
iast: "niṣkāma-karma"
devanagari: "निष्काम कर्म"
description: "Action performed with full engagement but without attachment to its fruit, offered as discipline and duty; the method of karma-yoga. Not inaction, not indifference to outcomes, not careless work, and not identical with bhakti's sevā."
darshana:
  - pan-dharmic (sādhāraṇa-dharma)
  - Bhakti (Vaiṣṇava Vedānta)
school_scope: "The method of karma-yoga as taught in the Bhagavad Gītā (2.47-48, 3.19). The karma-yoga angle reserved out of the bhakti-marga bundle's seva.md, which handles the same selflessness as loving service to a Beloved."
text_source: "Bhagavad Gītā 2.47-48, 3.19, 5.10"
tags:
  - nishkama-karma
  - karma-yoga
  - action
  - tier-3
not:
  - term: "inaction"
    why: "niṣkāma-karma is not the renunciation of action but of attachment to its fruit; the Gītā insists one cannot avoid acting (3.5) and that desireless action is superior to inaction (3.8), so it is a way of acting fully, not of withdrawing"
    instead: "Render niṣkāma-karma as desireless action, full engagement without attachment to the fruit; not as inaction."
  - term: "indifference to outcomes"
    why: "the doer of niṣkāma-karma acts with skill and care (yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam, 2.50) and wants the work done well; what is released is the egoic clinging to the personal reward, not the quality of the work or concern for its rightness"
  - term: "careless / detached work"
    why: "detachment from fruit is not detachment from excellence; non-attachment frees attention from anxiety so that action can be more skillful, not less, which is the opposite of carelessness"
  - term: "sevā (bhakti service)"
    why: "sevā (bhakti-marga) is the same selflessness offered TO a Beloved as an act of love and relationship; niṣkāma-karma is action offered as discipline and duty, the fruit renounced; kindred and overlapping, but karma-yoga's posture is duty-without-craving where bhakti's is love-in-service"
related:
  - /concepts/ishvara-pranidhana.md
  - /concepts/svadharma.md
  - /concepts/santosha.md
  - /concepts/dana.md
timestamp: "2026-06-25"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Niṣkāma-Karma — निष्काम कर्म

**Not:** inaction, indifference to outcomes, careless / detached work, sevā (bhakti service)

Niṣkāma-karma is desireless action: doing one's work with full skill and engagement while releasing attachment to its fruit. It is the method of karma-yoga, the Gītā's answer to the question of how one can act in the world without being bound by action, and it is the karma-yoga treatment held over from the bhakti bundle's account of sevā.

## Etymology

A compound of *niṣkāma* (free of desire; *niḥ*, without, + *kāma*, desire) + *karma* (action; from √*kṛ*, to do). Literally "action without desire," more precisely action without craving for its personal fruit. The kāma negated is not the wish to act well but the egoic appetite for the reward.

## What It Actually Means

The Gītā's pivotal teaching: you have a right to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruit be your motive, nor let attachment draw you to inaction (2.47). One acts because action is unavoidable and because one's svadharma calls for it, but one offers up the result rather than clinging to it. Far from licensing carelessness, this is the condition of excellence: yoga is skill in action (2.50), because attention freed from the anxiety of outcomes can give itself wholly to the doing. The fruit is twofold: the work is done better, and the doer is not bound by it, acting without accumulating the bondage that selfish action breeds (3.9, 5.10, the lotus-leaf untouched by water).

## The Reserved Thread (a Distinction to Keep)

The bhakti-marga bundle's `seva.md` deliberately held this treatment over to here, because sevā and niṣkāma-karma are close but not identical. Both renounce attachment to fruit. The difference is relational. Niṣkāma-karma offers action as discipline and duty, the fruit released; bhakti's sevā offers action TO a Beloved as love, delighting in the serving itself. The karma-yogī acts rightly and lets the fruit go; the devotee serves the Lord and savors the service. When desireless action is further offered to the Lord, it shades into īśvara-praṇidhāna and toward sevā; the concepts are kin, and naming the relation is the point.

## Why the Substitutes Fail

"Inaction" and "indifference" both miss that niṣkāma-karma is full, skillful, caring action with only the egoic clinging removed. "Careless work" inverts it, since non-attachment heightens skill rather than lowering it. And sevā (in `okf/bhakti-marga/`) is the devotional cousin: the same selflessness in the key of love-toward-a-Beloved rather than duty-without-craving.

## Cross-References
- [Īśvara-Praṇidhāna](ishvara-pranidhana.md) — desireless action offered to the Lord becomes the kriyā-yoga surrender of the fruit
- [Svadharma](svadharma.md) — one's own duty is precisely what is to be performed desirelessly
- [Santoṣa](santosha.md) — contentment is what makes acting without clinging to fruit livable rather than grim
- [Dāna](dana.md) — giving without expectation of return is niṣkāma applied to the act of giving

## Audience Metaphor

Think of a nurse on a long night shift who has learned not to ride the outcome of every case. She works with total skill and real care, she wants each patient to live, and yet she does not stake her inner steadiness on results she cannot finally control, because a nurse who is wrecked by every loss cannot work the next bed. The skill is undiminished, the caring is real, and the clinging is gone. That is niṣkāma-karma: not caring less, but holding the fruit loosely enough that you can give the work everything and still walk out whole. A surgeon who needs each operation to validate them is more dangerous, not more devoted.

## Citations

1. [Bhagavad Gītā](/references/bhagavad-gita.md) 2.47-48, 2.50, 3.19, 5.10 — the right to action but not its fruits; yoga as skill in action; the lotus-leaf untouched
2. [Mahābhārata](/references/mahabharata.md) — the karma-yoga teaching set within the epic's account of duty under pressure
3. [Yoga Sūtra](/references/yoga-sutra.md) 2.1 — kriyā-yoga, where offered action (īśvara-praṇidhāna) meets desireless discipline
