Krishna is still speaking, and the sentence he has begun does not finish here.
A string of inner states, discernment and delusion, patience and truth, pleasure and pain, fear and its absence, is named one after another. The claim they are building toward waits one verse away.
Discernment, knowledge, freedom from delusion, patience, truth, mastery of the senses, calm of mind, pleasure and pain, coming-to-be and its ending, fear and fearlessness --
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just named himself the great Lord of all the worlds. Now he begins to show what that means, and he does it by naming, one after another, the whole visible range of what stirs inside a person. The sentence he opens here will not close until the next verse.
The teaching
Look at what gets named. Discernment, the power that decides and tells things apart. Knowledge, which separates the Self from what is not the Self. Freedom from delusion, which is simply acting with clear eyes in the moment a matter arises, not some permanent, achieved condition. Patience, a mind that holds steady under insult or blow. Truth, speech that reports exactly what was seen, heard, known, offered so another can follow it. Then two restraints, not one idea said twice: mastery of the outer senses, holding the eye and the hand back from their objects, and calm of the mind itself, a separate and inward quiet. And then the pairs that most lists would leave out: pleasure and pain, coming-to-be and its ending, fear and fearlessness. Nothing here suggests the darker half of each pair comes from somewhere else, some lesser or rival source. The commentators are largely agreed on what each word means, and just as agreed that the sentence itself is not yet finished. Its whole point, that all of this, without exception, arises from the Lord alone, only arrives in the next verse. Read in isolation, this list can look like a curriculum, virtues to cultivate, faults to overcome. Read as it is actually built, it is closer to an inventory, gathered so that its single origin can be named a moment later.
The doubt that rises
If pain and fear belong on the very same list as discernment and patience, what does it mean to call any of it mine to cultivate or overcome, and what work is actually left for me once the whole field is traced to one source?
Where the paths divide
Read as a precise vocabulary lesson, not yet a doctrine in itself.
Shankara moves through the list giving each term its plain, careful sense: intelligence grasps subtle things, knowledge is the grasp of Self and non-Self, truth is speech fitted to convey exactly what has been known. He does not press hidden meaning into any single word. The list, for him, is preparation, exact vocabulary offered so that the larger claim, still one verse away, can be understood precisely when it arrives.
Read so that every term, without exception, names an inner state.
Ramanuja holds the passage to its declared subject throughout: mental states, and nothing else. So even coming-to-be and its ending, which could easily be read as birth and death, become instead the mind's own rise under a welcome experience and its sinking under an unwelcome one. Counted with the next verse, twenty such states cover the inner field exhaustively, and the Lord dwelling within is named as their one source, with matter as mere instrument.
Read so that no word is permitted to duplicate another's meaning.
Madhva's concern is precision itself. Knowledge is cognition; intelligence is specifically the determination of what should and should not be done, and these are not collapsed into each other. Calm, he insists, is not generic inner quiet but the intellect's being settled on the Supreme Self, distinct from the mere curbing of the senses that self-restraint names. Any looser reading, for him, forces one word to do another's work.
Read honestly: the extant source is thin, and this reading marks that plainly.
What survives from Abhinavagupta here is a general remark that this stretch of five verses only unfolds in plain terms what the earlier chapters already implied, and a single word-note that asammoha carries the sense of eagerness. No term-by-term reading of the rest of the list survives in his own recorded words. A Kashmir Shaiva extension might read the paired states as contractions and expansions of one recognizing awareness, but that is offered here only as a flagged, conditional extrapolation, not as his settled teaching.
Read so that the weight falls on the sentence's shape, not on any single word.
Sridhara renders the list cleanly and refuses to load any one term with special doctrine. His real point is structural: the sentence begun here is not finished, and its doctrinal weight rests entirely on how it joins to what follows, where all these states are said to arise from the Lord alone. The list, on this reading, is one long approach toward a single destination.
Read with attention to the verse's own grammar as much as to its content.
Madhusudana stays close to ordinary usage while noting small grammatical signals: one 'and' gathers what has already been named, a second quietly includes further items left unstated, and the word 'indeed' marks all of this as common, recognizable experience. Pleasure and pain are given their traditional causes, merit and demerit, but the definitions themselves stay near the ground, close to what anyone would recognize in their own life.
All six readings agree on most of what each word names, and all six agree the sentence is unfinished. Where they part is on how much weight to place on inner versus outer meaning, on how exact each word's boundary must be against its neighbors, and on how much can honestly be said in a voice that, for at least one of these six sources, has left us only a fragment. That last gap is real and this page does not paper over it.
A question to carry
When you notice discernment and dread arising within you in the same hour, what changes if you stop asking which one is truly yours and start asking, instead, where both of them come from?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May you hold what moves in you today, the steady and the shaken alike, as one continuous field, and wait without forcing an answer for what the next word will say about its source.
Each school is voiced from the commentators named above. Their full words, every translation, and where the schools agree and differ wait in the reading desk just below. Open the commentary desk.
Having just called himself the great Lord of all the worlds, Krishna opens the sentence that will show what that means: naming, one by one, the whole inner field he is about to trace to himself.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
The sentence begun here is still open; its point lands only in the verse that follows.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
This verse is one long breath that does not finish inside itself. Krishna is midway through naming a string of inner states, and the sentence only lands in the next verse, where he says that all of it arises from him alone. Read in isolation, 10.4 is a list; read as intended, it is the first half of a single claim about the source of everything that stirs within a person.
Intelligence decides, knowledge discriminates Self from non-Self, and freedom from delusion is undisturbed discernment in the moment.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
The commentators broadly agree on what the paired terms name. Intelligence decides and determines; knowledge discriminates the Self from what is not the Self; freedom from delusion is undisturbed discernment in the moment; patience is a mind that does not move under insult; truth is speech that matches what was actually seen, heard, or known.
Two restraints are named as two distinct acts: one calms the senses outwardly, the other calms the mind itself.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 2 others’ words
The two restraints named here are read as distinct operations, not one idea said twice: one calms the outer senses, holding the eye and hand back from their objects, and the other calms the inner instrument, the mind's own restlessness. Madhva presses this distinction hardest, but the same two-part structure runs through every reading.
Pleasure and pain, arising and its ending, fear and fearlessness are named together, with no suggestion that the darker half stands apart from the source of the brighter.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The list deliberately holds opposites side by side rather than naming only the admirable states: pleasure with pain, coming-to-be with its ending, fear with fearlessness. Nothing here suggests the dark half of each pair belongs to some lesser or separate source than the bright half; the pairing itself is the teaching.
Read this list less as a checklist of virtues to acquire, more as a map of the whole inner field, gathered here so its single origin can be named next.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Because the sentence's verb arrives only in the next verse, none of these readings treats 10.4 as a closed unit of moral instruction, a checklist of virtues to acquire. It is read instead as an inventory, gathered here so that the following verse can trace the entire inventory back to a single origin.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja reads every single item, even words that could name outward events, as naming an inner, mental state, because the declared subject of the passage is mental states. Coming-to-be and its ending become the mind's own rising and sinking under favorable and unfavorable experience, and truth expands to include speech aimed at the welfare of beings. Counted with the next verse, the states run to twenty, an exhaustive map of the inner field, with the indwelling Lord as their one source.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's distinctive move is a refusal to let any two words in the list do the same work. Knowledge is cognition; intelligence is specifically the determination of what should and should not be done. Calm is not generic inner quiet but, on the authority of the Bhagavata, the intellect's being settled on the Supreme Self, while self-restraint remains the curbing of the outer senses. Any reading that blurs these distinctions, he holds, forces one word to duplicate another's labor.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's extant commentary treats 10.1 through 10.5 as one passage and offers, for this specific stretch, only a general remark that the chapter unfolds in plain terms what the first nine chapters already implied, plus a single word-note that asammoha carries the sense of eagerness. He does not leave a recorded, term-by-term reading of this verse's list. A Kashmir Shaiva extension might read the paired states as contractions and expansions of one recognizing awareness, but this is a flagged extrapolation, not his own words.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara renders the list cleanly and explicitly declines to load any single term with hidden doctrine. For him the weight of the passage rests entirely on the sentence's own unfinished construction, the anvaya, which only resolves in the next verse's claim that all of this arises from the Lord alone. The list, on his reading, is one long approach to that single landing point.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana reads with careful attention to grammar as much as to doctrine: one 'and' gathers the terms already named, a second 'and' silently includes further unstated ones, and the word 'indeed' marks all of these as states every person in the world already recognizes from their own experience. His definitions stay close to ordinary usage, pleasure as the merely pleasant, sorrow as the merely unpleasant, while noting their traditional causes in merit and demerit.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Try naming your own inner weather today the way this verse does, without editing it down to only the admirable half. Notice the moment of clear discernment and notice the moment of dread; notice patience holding and notice pleasure or pain arriving unbidden. Do not rank them yet. Simply see how much of your day is made of exactly these named pairs, arising and passing, long before you decide what any of it means.
Hold what stirs in you today, welcome and unwelcome alike, as one continuous field, and wait with it for what the next word will say about where it comes from.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
his verse is one long breath that does not finish inside itself. Krishna is midway through naming a string of inner states, and the sentence only lands in the next verse, where he says that all of it arises from him alone. Read in isolation, 10.4 is a list; read as intended, it is the first half of a single claim about the source of everything that stirs within a person.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The commentators broadly agree on what the paired terms name. Intelligence decides and determines; knowledge discriminates the Self from what is not the Self; freedom from delusion is undisturbed discernment in the moment; patience is a mind that does not move under insult; truth is speech that matches what was actually seen, heard, or known.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The two restraints named here are read as distinct operations, not one idea said twice: one calms the outer senses, holding the eye and hand back from their objects, and the other calms the inner instrument, the mind's own restlessness. Madhva presses this distinction hardest, but the same two-part structure runs through every reading.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The list deliberately holds opposites side by side rather than naming only the admirable states: pleasure with pain, coming-to-be with its ending, fear with fearlessness. Nothing here suggests the dark half of each pair belongs to some lesser or separate source than the bright half; the pairing itself is the teaching.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Because the sentence's verb arrives only in the next verse, none of these readings treats 10.4 as a closed unit of moral instruction, a checklist of virtues to acquire. It is read instead as an inventory, gathered here so that the following verse can trace the entire inventory back to a single origin.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara gives each term a clean, largely lexical definition and stays close to the plain sense of the words: intelligence apprehends subtle things, knowledge is the grasp of Self and non-Self, truth is speech fitted to convey exactly what one has known. The list is offered as a straightforward vocabulary lesson in service of the larger claim, still one verse away, that all these states trace to the Lord.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads every single item, even words that could name outward events, as naming an inner, mental state, because the declared subject of the passage is mental states. Coming-to-be and its ending become the mind's own rising and sinking under favorable and unfavorable experience, and truth expands to include speech aimed at the welfare of beings. Counted with the next verse, the states run to twenty, an exhaustive map of the inner field, with the indwelling Lord as their one source.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's distinctive move is a refusal to let any two words in the list do the same work. Knowledge is cognition; intelligence is specifically the determination of what should and should not be done. Calm is not generic inner quiet but, on the authority of the Bhagavata, the intellect's being settled on the Supreme Self, while self-restraint remains the curbing of the outer senses. Any reading that blurs these distinctions, he holds, forces one word to duplicate another's labor.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's extant commentary treats 10.1 through 10.5 as one passage and offers, for this specific stretch, only a general remark that the chapter unfolds in plain terms what the first nine chapters already implied, plus a single word-note that asammoha carries the sense of eagerness. He does not leave a recorded, term-by-term reading of this verse's list. A Kashmir Shaiva extension might read the paired states as contractions and expansions of one recognizing awareness, but this is a flagged extrapolation, not his own words.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara renders the list cleanly and explicitly declines to load any single term with hidden doctrine. For him the weight of the passage rests entirely on the sentence's own unfinished construction, the anvaya, which only resolves in the next verse's claim that all of this arises from the Lord alone. The list, on his reading, is one long approach to that single landing point.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana reads with careful attention to grammar as much as to doctrine: one 'and' gathers the terms already named, a second 'and' silently includes further unstated ones, and the word 'indeed' marks all of these as states every person in the world already recognizes from their own experience. His definitions stay close to ordinary usage, pleasure as the merely pleasant, sorrow as the merely unpleasant, while noting their traditional causes in merit and demerit.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
This verse lists both my best qualities and my worst moments, discernment alongside fear, patience alongside pain, in the very same breath. Why put them together instead of separating what I should cultivate from what I should overcome?
The verse is not yet finished making its point within itself; it is building an inventory whose purpose only becomes clear one verse later, where all of it is traced to a single source. Read that way, the pairing is not a moral filing system but a preparation for a much larger claim about origin.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Several of the readings take the pairing itself as instructive: the dark half of each pair, pain, fear, the ending of things, is not assigned a different or lesser status than the bright half. Nothing in the list suggests one half is worth cultivating and the other worth merely defeating; both are simply named as part of what moves within a person.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Madhva's insistence that no two words repeat each other's work applies here too: the list keeps its terms exact rather than collapsing them into a simple good-versus-bad ledger. Precision about what each word actually names comes before any question of what to do with it.
Madhvācārya
Contemplation
Try naming your own inner weather today the way this verse does, without editing it down to only the admirable half. Notice the moment of clear discernment and notice the moment of dread; notice patience holding and notice pleasure or pain arriving unbidden. Do not rank them yet. Simply see how much of your day is made of exactly these named pairs, arising and passing, long before you decide what any of it means.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, open a tradition in the doorways below, or add a voice by name above.
Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.