Bhagavad Gita 5.10
ब्रह्मण्याधाय कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा करोति यः । लिप्यते न स पापेन पद्मपत्रमिवाम्भसा ॥
brahmaṇy ādhāya karmāṇi saṅgaṃ tyaktvā karoti yaḥ | lipyate na sa pāpena padma-patram ivāmbhasā ||
Translation
He who, having placed his actions in the Brahman and abandoned attachment, performs them, is not stained by sin, just as the lotus leaf is not stained by water.
Reflection
What action are you in right now whose water you would like not to carry home?
Read this verse in its chapter: Chapter Five
Padma-patram iva ambhasā. Like the lotus leaf by water. The chapter's most famous image. The leaf sits in the pond. The water touches it everywhere. None of the water sticks. The leaf is unwet. The image works because it does not pretend the contact is avoided. Action happens fully; nothing adheres. Shankara reads this as the chapter's central simile, holding two things on one image: the work is fully present, the operator is fully untouched. The reader who lives in a city and never sees a pond has still seen oil bead on a clean pan. Same physics.