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Mentally renouncing all actions and self-controlled, the embodied one rests happily in the nine-gated city, neither acting nor causing others (body and senses) to act.

Renouncing all actions with the mind, the self-controlled embodied one rests happily in the city of nine gates, neither acting nor causing action.

Krishna gives a vivid image of the body as a city with nine gates: the two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, the mouth and the two lower openings. The embodied self dwells in this city. One who has renounced all actions with the mind, not by stopping them but by letting go inwardly, lives there at ease, neither doing nor causing anything to be done. The image of the city, found also in the Upanishads, suggests that the self is a resident in the body, not identical with it, and can live there in freedom.