Upanishads · Bhāvanā p47
॥
Devanāgarī
चिन्तितकार्याण्ययत्नेन सिद्ध्यन्ति । स एव शिवयोगीति कथ्यते
Transliteration (IAST)
cintitakāryāṇyayatnena siddhyanti | sa eva śivayogīti kathyate
Word-by-word
SanskritIASTMeaning
चिन्तित-कार्याणि अ-यत्नेन सिद्ध्यन्तिcintita-kāryāṇi a-yatnena siddhyantiintended deeds succeed without effort
सः एव शिव-योगी इति कथ्यतेsaḥ eva śiva-yogī iti kathyatehe indeed is called a yogī of Śiva
Translation
Intended deeds succeed without effort; he indeed is called a yogī of Śiva.
Version
d9bd0550cb62 · published Aug 12, 2026, 5:00:00 AM UTC
Available inRUENPage between verses with
It is promised that what is intended will succeed ayatnena, "without effort." This promise is usual in books of this kind and has been examined more than once (Tripurā-tāpanī 22, 72); its measure was set there too: a fulfillable promise is small precisely because it is fulfilled. Let us add here, however, an observation relevant to this passage. It says not "you will get what you want," but "the intended will succeed without effort"; and this second is not the same as the first.
What succeeds without effort is what is done in time and in accord with the course of things. Anyone who has run a business knows the difference: the same undertaking runs by itself at one season and must be dragged along at another. And so this promise can be understood not as power over circumstances, but as a feel for the right moment — that is, as the ability to act when it is time.
Understood this way, it is plausible and even verifiable. A person who is focused and unhurried indeed hits the right moment more often than a hurried one; and his affairs go easier not because he directs them, but because he does not spoil them. The Vaiṣṇava side adds her usual qualification to promises of this kind. Success is a dangerous thing: one for whom everything succeeds soon stops understanding that it is not he who is succeeding; and hence in these books, failures are spoken of as grace no less often than successes.