सङ्कल्प

Saṅkalpa is the mind’s act of forming a plan, an intention, an imagined picture of how things should be. In everyday speech it is a resolve, as in a New Year’s sankalp. In the Gita it is also the place where desire starts.

Verse 4.19 speaks of those whose undertakings are free from kāma-saṅkalpa, desire and its imagined plans, and whose actions are burnt in the fire of knowledge. Verse 6.24 asks the practitioner of meditation to give up entirely the desires born of saṅkalpa, and to restrain the senses on every side with the mind.

Both verses point to the same root: much of our desire is made of imagined pictures, and when those pictures stop running, the pull of the desire fades.

Common misreading: assuming the Gita is against all intention and resolve.

Better sense: the target is the desire-feeding imagination, the endless “if only”. A clear purpose for the work can remain.

To read further, see the topic Karma and Akarma.