He hates no being at all, not even the one who has actually harmed him.
Krishna opens the long portrait of the devotee dear to him, and the first three marks turn outward: no hatred, real friendliness, and compassion that reaches even to an enemy.
He hates no being anywhere, not even the one who does him harm. He carries the warmth of a friend toward all, and compassion toward all, with no sense of 'mine' and no sense of 'I' left in him, meeting pleasure and pain alike, and enduring wrong without retaliation.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just named the mark of the devotee absorbed in him with faith. Now he begins to unfold what that absorption actually looks like from the outside, in a long portrait that runs across eight verses. It starts, deliberately, with the hardest test there is: how does such a person stand toward the one who has actually caused him harm?
The teaching
He hates no being. This holds even toward the one who wrongs him; hatred simply does not reach that far. But hating no one, by itself, could describe someone merely cold, someone who has simply stopped reacting. So the next word insists on more: he is friendly, carrying real warmth toward others, the affection of a friend rather than the flatness of neutrality. And a further question follows naturally: how can that warmth possibly reach an actual enemy? The third mark answers it. He is compassionate, wishing not to punish the one who harmed him but to see his suffering relieved. These three marks are not a loose list of virtues. They answer each other, closing off, one after another, the easier, lesser things freedom from hatred could have meant instead. Why is this hatred even possible to remove? Because two things that ordinarily feed it are gone: the sense of mine, and the sense of I lodged in the body. Hatred needs something to defend, some mine under threat, some I that feels wounded. Where neither is present, an injury has nothing left in him to strike, and forbearance follows as the visible, outward sign of that inner emptying: reviled, struck, or insulted, he sits unaltered, with no wish to strike back. None of these marks, the sources agree, stands by itself. They are the linked aspects of one disposition, each flowing from the one before, so that a person grows into the whole of it rather than acquiring hatred's absence as one isolated skill among others.
The doubt that rises
Is this the portrait of a saint already finished, someone whose mine-ness and ego are simply gone, so that all a struggling person can do is admire it from outside? Or is there something here that can actually be practiced today, before the sense of mine and I have fully fallen away?
Where the paths divide
Read as the seeing of non-difference, walked to its end by the easier path of attributes.
Your freedom from hatred rests, on this reading, on the vision of non-difference itself: you see every being as the one Self, so there is, strictly, no second being left for hatred to reach. What delusion, what grief, remains for one who sees this oneness? The verse is placed inside a larger design, in which the harder, formless worship praised earlier is gently set aside for the student not yet ready for it, who is given instead this gentler worship of the Lord with attributes, walked all the way to the very same freedom from hostile feeling.
Read as the injurer kept genuinely other, resentment dissolved by how he is seen.
Your freedom from hatred does not require dissolving the one who harms you into a single undivided Self. He remains genuinely other. What removes the resentment is a specific way of seeing him: he acts in keeping with your own past wrongdoing, and the Lord himself has prompted it, so there is no one left to blame. Mine-ness drops away toward the body and the senses, since the self is in truth distinct from matter, and pleasure and pain, understood as imagined disturbances, no longer stir gladness or agitation. Forbearance is named as its own steadiness, held apart from this evenness, since it answers the pain that bodily contact with the world unavoidably brings.
Honest silence where the source itself gives none, with only a labeled, conditional bridge offered.
The record available for this verse is direct: Madhva does not comment here. No fragment survives to draw a developed reading from, and none should be invented in his voice. What can be offered, clearly marked as extrapolation only, is a bridge consistent with his usual axis of radical dependence: even this freedom from hatred would likely be read as sustained, moment to moment, by the Lord's will, never something the self could claim as fully its own achievement. That bridge is a possibility, not a report of Madhva's actual words.
Read through compact definition: friendliness and compassion as simply the absence of envy.
Take the surviving comment at its own precise scale. To be friendly, and likewise to be compassionate, is simply to be free of envy, nothing more elaborate than that. The sense of mine has one exact shape, these things are mine; the sense of I has another, I am noble, I am full of fire, I am forbearing. Both are absent in you. Patience, on this reading, is a mind that holds no hatred even toward an enemy who has actually done harm, which is the only place patience is ever truly tested. And such a one is always a yogi, since the inner organ stays at peace even in the middle of ordinary worldly dealings, not only when withdrawn from them.
Read as the opening of eight verses on how a devotee swiftly draws the Lord's grace, marks sorted by rank.
These marks open an account of how you swiftly draw the supreme Lord's grace to yourself. Your bearing toward others is sorted by rank: no hatred toward those above you, friendliness toward your equals, and pity toward those below you. This is not favoritism; it is one regard, meeting three situations in the shape each one calls for. Having no sense of mine and no sense of I, this same pity makes pleasure and pain weigh the same to you whether you meet them in another's life or your own, and your patience is simply this pity turned toward whoever wrongs you.
Read as an accommodation within one teaching strategy, the gentler path reaching the very same freedom.
Placed inside Krishna's larger strategy, this verse is not a lesser consolation prize for those who cannot manage the harder path praised earlier. That harder path is never condemned; it is simply set aside for the student not yet fit for it, and this gentler path of visible marks, friendliness, compassion, freedom from mine and I, is walked all the way to the very same freedom from hostile feeling, even when a real cause for sorrow is genuinely present.
All six readings agree on what hatred's absence looks like from outside, friendly, compassionate, forbearing, and on what removes its fuel, no mine, no I. They part on why this becomes possible at all. Is it because there is, in truth, no other left to hate, as Advaita holds? Or because the other remains real but is seen differently, as one acting from your own past wrong at the Lord's prompting, as Ramanuja holds? Is it grounded in dependence on the Lord's will so completely that the question barely gets a foothold, as a Dvaita extension might suggest? Is it simply freedom from envy, plain and compact, as Abhinavagupta's fragment gives it? Or is it, as Sridhara and the more applied readings suggest, a practice sorted by rank and grown into gradually? The verse itself does not choose among these, and this page will not choose for you.
A question to carry
Think of the one whose harm to you still has a grip on you. Is that grip, right now, defending a mine, or an I, that you could actually set down?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May you find, the next time an old wrong rises in you, that there is less there to defend than you thought, and may the looking itself be enough to loosen what the grievance was holding onto.
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 named the qualities of one absorbed in him, Krishna now unfolds them into a full, eight-verse portrait, beginning with how such a person meets other beings.
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.
Hating no one could sound like indifference; friendly insists on real warmth, and compassionate insists that warmth reaches even an actual enemy.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse opens the long catalogue of the marks of the devotee dear to God, and the first three turn outward, toward how he stands with other beings: he hates no one, he is friendly, and he is compassionate. The decisive test built into the words is the hardest case of all, the being who has actually harmed him. Read together, the three marks answer each other in sequence: hating no one might sound like mere cold neutrality, so friendly insists on real warmth; being friendly might sound impossible toward an actual enemy, so compassionate insists that even there, he wishes only to relieve the suffering, never to add to it.
Hatred needs fuel: a mine that feels threatened, or an I lodged in the body that feels wounded. Remove both, and an injury finds nothing left to strike.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Abhinavagupta · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
This freedom from hatred is not willpower holding a grievance down. It rests on two further marks, no sense of mine and no sense of I, that remove hatred's fuel at the root. Hatred needs something called mine to be threatened, or an I lodged in the body to be wounded; where neither is present, an injury simply finds nothing left in him to strike.
Forbearance is not gritted endurance. It is the simple, visible absence of any wish to retaliate, insult or blow met unaltered.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Because mine-ness and ego have fallen away, he meets pleasure and pain with an even mind, neither lifted by one nor cast down by the other, and this evenness shows itself outwardly as forbearance: reviled, struck, or insulted, he holds no wish to strike back and undergoes no visible change.
None of the seven marks named here stands alone; they are the linked aspects of one disposition, each following from the one before.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
None of the seven marks named across this verse stands alone as a separate discipline to be mastered one at a time. They are read as the linked aspects of a single disposition, each following naturally from the one before, so that a person does not acquire them piece by piece but grows, as a whole, into this way of meeting the world.
Where the sources themselves fall silent, as with Madhva on this verse, the honest course is to say so, not to manufacture a reading in his name.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The verse is read as both a portrait and an invitation: it describes an attainment already reached, and at the same time these very qualities are named as the means by which such a devotee draws the Lord's regard to himself, so the picture is never offered purely for admiration from a distance.
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 keeps the injurer genuinely other rather than dissolving him into a single Self, and grounds the freedom from hatred instead in how the devotee regards him: this person acts in keeping with my own past wrongdoing, and the Lord himself has prompted it, so there is no one left to resent. Pleasure and pain here are named as imagined disturbances, and forbearance is treated as its own, separate steadiness under the pain that bodily contact unavoidably brings.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The published record available for this verse states plainly that Madhva does not comment here, so no developed Dvaita reading can be reported in his own words. A conditional bridge, clearly labeled as such and not as Madhva's position, might extend his usual axis of radical dependence: even this freedom from hatred would be read as sustained moment to moment by the Lord's will, never an achievement the self can claim as fully its own.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta reduces friendliness and compassion to a single compact root, freedom from envy, and treats mine-ness and ego as two specific, nameable feelings, these things are mine and I am noble, I am forbearing, that are simply absent in this person. He adds that such a one is always a yogi, since the inner organ stays at peace even in the middle of ordinary worldly transactions, not only in withdrawal from them.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the verse as opening the account of how a devotee swiftly draws the Lord's grace to himself, and sorts the social marks by rank: no hatred toward those above him, friendliness toward equals, and pity toward those below. The same pity that removes hatred also equalizes pleasure and pain, since he meets both in others' lives with the identical regard he meets them in his own.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read forward into a more applied register, Madhusudana's placing of the verse inside Krishna's larger teaching strategy suggests a usable principle: the harder path is never condemned, only set aside for those not yet fit for it, and the gentler path of these marks is walked to the very same freedom from hostile feeling, even when a real cause for sorrow is present.
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
Bring to mind, right now, the one person whose harm to you still has a grip on you. Notice what the grip is actually made of: a mine that felt threatened, or an I that felt wounded. Now try, only for a moment, setting both down, not forcing forgiveness, simply asking whether there is, right now, a mine or an I still standing there to be hurt. See what is left of the grievance once you look for its fuel and cannot quite find it.
So when the old grievance rises again, look for what mine or what I it is defending, and let the looking itself begin to loosen what hatred was holding onto.
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
he verse opens the long catalogue of the marks of the devotee dear to God, and the first three turn outward, toward how he stands with other beings: he hates no one, he is friendly, and he is compassionate. The decisive test built into the words is the hardest case of all, the being who has actually harmed him. Read together, the three marks answer each other in sequence: hating no one might sound like mere cold neutrality, so friendly insists on real warmth; being friendly might sound impossible toward an actual enemy, so compassionate insists that even there, he wishes only to relieve the suffering, never to add to it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
This freedom from hatred is not willpower holding a grievance down. It rests on two further marks, no sense of mine and no sense of I, that remove hatred's fuel at the root. Hatred needs something called mine to be threatened, or an I lodged in the body to be wounded; where neither is present, an injury simply finds nothing left in him to strike.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Because mine-ness and ego have fallen away, he meets pleasure and pain with an even mind, neither lifted by one nor cast down by the other, and this evenness shows itself outwardly as forbearance: reviled, struck, or insulted, he holds no wish to strike back and undergoes no visible change.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
None of the seven marks named across this verse stands alone as a separate discipline to be mastered one at a time. They are read as the linked aspects of a single disposition, each following naturally from the one before, so that a person does not acquire them piece by piece but grows, as a whole, into this way of meeting the world.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The verse is read as both a portrait and an invitation: it describes an attainment already reached, and at the same time these very qualities are named as the means by which such a devotee draws the Lord's regard to himself, so the picture is never offered purely for admiration from a distance.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The freedom from hatred is grounded in the vision of non-difference itself: he sees all beings as the one Self, so there is, strictly, no second being left to hate. Madhusudana places the verse in a wider teaching strategy, in which the harder, formless worship of Brahman praised earlier is not rejected but set aside for the slower student, who is given instead this easier worship of Brahman with attributes, walked all the way to the same seeing of oneness.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja keeps the injurer genuinely other rather than dissolving him into a single Self, and grounds the freedom from hatred instead in how the devotee regards him: this person acts in keeping with my own past wrongdoing, and the Lord himself has prompted it, so there is no one left to resent. Pleasure and pain here are named as imagined disturbances, and forbearance is treated as its own, separate steadiness under the pain that bodily contact unavoidably brings.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The published record available for this verse states plainly that Madhva does not comment here, so no developed Dvaita reading can be reported in his own words. A conditional bridge, clearly labeled as such and not as Madhva's position, might extend his usual axis of radical dependence: even this freedom from hatred would be read as sustained moment to moment by the Lord's will, never an achievement the self can claim as fully its own.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta reduces friendliness and compassion to a single compact root, freedom from envy, and treats mine-ness and ego as two specific, nameable feelings, these things are mine and I am noble, I am forbearing, that are simply absent in this person. He adds that such a one is always a yogi, since the inner organ stays at peace even in the middle of ordinary worldly transactions, not only in withdrawal from them.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as opening the account of how a devotee swiftly draws the Lord's grace to himself, and sorts the social marks by rank: no hatred toward those above him, friendliness toward equals, and pity toward those below. The same pity that removes hatred also equalizes pleasure and pain, since he meets both in others' lives with the identical regard he meets them in his own.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read forward into a more applied register, Madhusudana's placing of the verse inside Krishna's larger teaching strategy suggests a usable principle: the harder path is never condemned, only set aside for those not yet fit for it, and the gentler path of these marks is walked to the very same freedom from hostile feeling, even when a real cause for sorrow is present.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
Is this verse describing a saint already finished, so all I can do is admire it from a distance, or is it something I can actually begin to practice today?
Both readings are genuinely present in the sources. The verse does describe a real attainment, a devotee whose mine-ness and ego have already fallen away, and that is not achieved by an afternoon's effort. Read this way, it is honest to say the full portrait lies ahead of most of us.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
At the very same time, these qualities are named as the means by which the devotee draws the Lord's grace, not only its finished result, and Sridhara frames the whole list as instruction in exactly this practical spirit, something to be grown into rather than merely observed.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya
The most workable entry point is the mechanism itself: notice, the next time a grievance rises, what mine or what I it is actually defending, and let that noticing loosen its grip a little. That is a practice available today, even before mine-ness and ego are gone for good.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Rāmānujācārya
Contemplation
Bring to mind, right now, the one person whose harm to you still has a grip on you. Notice what the grip is actually made of: a mine that felt threatened, or an I that felt wounded. Now try, only for a moment, setting both down, not forcing forgiveness, simply asking whether there is, right now, a mine or an I still standing there to be hurt. See what is left of the grievance once you look for its fuel and cannot quite find it.
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.