No alarm given, none received: the fourfold freedom of the devotee at peace with the world.
This portrait names a peace that runs both ways: no harm intended toward the world, and no wound taken from it. Inside, four specific movements, elation, intolerance, fear, and restlessness, have nowhere left to attach.
The one who gives the world no cause for alarm, and is not alarmed by the world in turn, who is free of elation, impatience, fear, and anxiety, that person is dear to me.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna continues the portrait of the devotee he holds dear, begun in the verses just before this one. Here he names a peace that runs in both directions, between this person and the world, and a fourfold freedom that runs inside him.
The teaching
You give the world no cause for alarm. This is not the result of careful tact or of avoiding people; it follows from intending harm to no creature at all, so nothing in what you do gives anyone real cause to shrink from you. And the world gives you no cause for alarm either, even when it turns against you, because Ramanuja reads this as resting on a settled conviction: you hold no aggression and no quarrel toward anyone, and so there is, at bottom, no real contention for the world's hostility to catch hold of. Alongside this two-way peace, four specific inner movements are named as ones you are free from. Sridhara and Madhusudana, whose readings survive here in some detail, define each with care. Elation, harsha, is the swelling excitement at gaining your own desired end. Intolerance, amarsha, is the inability to bear another's gain or excellence. Fear, bhaya, is fright at what threatens you. Anxiety, udvega, is the mind's restless disturbance on the occasion of fear and the like. Madhusudana adds a distinctive claim: these are not forced out by effort. Seeing non-duality, they leave you as one unfit for them to remain in, the way an uninvited guest departs on his own.
The doubt that rises
Does this fourfold freedom ask you to stop feeling glad when something good happens, or only to stop being gripped by that gladness the moment it turns into its opposite?
Where the paths divide
Read through the passage's non-dual emphasis; the surviving Shankara fragment here is brief.
The little that survives restates the verse's own two clauses closely. Read alongside the wider non-dual emphasis of this passage, the two-way peace and the fourfold freedom would follow from seeing one Self in all beings: there is no truly separate other to harm or be harmed by, and the four agitations, each rooted in treating some gain or danger as belonging to a separate self, would have nothing left to fasten onto once that separateness is seen through.
Read as a settled conviction of contending with no one.
You do no action at all that makes the world shrink from you, and it does none that makes you shrink from it, because you are utterly sure you are at odds with no one. For that very reason, you are freed of gladness toward anyone in particular, of impatience toward anyone, of fear of anyone, and of agitation over anyone. Each of the four is named as something this total non-contention specifically removes.
An honest gap, not a filled one.
The available record states directly that Madhva does not comment on this verse. Rather than construct a plausible-sounding Dvaita reading and present it as his, this space stays open. If a reader wants a conditional bridge, one consistent with his broader teaching on the self's dependence might guess that this freedom, too, would be read as a mark of surrendered agency rather than self-won calm. But that is offered only as a flagged extrapolation, not as a report of Madhva's actual words, because none exist here to report.
Extended from a fragment on holding no fixed resolve; the extension is clearly labeled.
What survives here addresses this quarter-verse only as part of a wider passage on aniketa, without a fixed home: holding no resolve that only this must be done by you, taking pleasure and pain exactly as they come, your heart resting in the Lord who is the whole field of being. On a labeled extension beyond what the fragment itself states, since nothing here is insisted upon in one direction, the four agitations named in the fuller verse, each depending on insisting things go a particular way, would have nothing left to grip.
Read through careful naming of each agitation.
You on whose account no creature is set into agitation through fear, who are not yourself agitated by the world, and who are free of the natural movements of elation and the rest: harsha, the excitement at gaining your own desired end; amarsha, the inability to bear another's gain; bhaya, plain fright; udvega, the mind's disturbance on the occasion of fear and the like. Freed from these, you are dear to the Lord.
Read as what naturally falls away rather than what is forced down.
The world does not shrink from you, and you do not shrink from wicked people whose one aim is to distress the innocent, because you see non-duality and remain supremely compassionate and forbearing. Joy, impatience, fear, and agitation are each named as movements of mind, but they do not need to be wrestled out of you. Seeing rightly, they leave you as one unfit for them to remain in, the way beasts and birds flee a forest on fire, and it is by this that you are drawn in as the Lord's own devotee, dear to him.
The sources that survive in useful detail agree that a two-way peace and a fourfold inner freedom are named here, and that Sridhara's and Madhusudana's definitions of the four largely match. They differ on what produces the freedom: a settled conviction of contending with no one, a non-dual seeing that removes the separateness the four depend on, or simply what a mind unfit for these movements no longer holds onto. And for two of the six voices this file draws on, Madhva and, in its full particular form, Abhinavagupta, no reading of this specific verse survives to adjudicate between such positions at all; that absence is left open rather than quietly filled.
A question to carry
The next time gladness swells in you at some gain, or a grudging pinch rises at someone else's, can you notice the shared root before choosing which one to feed?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May you give the world no cause for alarm, and take none from it, and may elation, intolerance, fear, and restless anxiety find, in you, nothing left to hold 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.
This continues the closing sequence of this passage on the devotee dear to Krishna, adding the mark of a two-way peace with the world to the qualities already named.
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 peace runs both ways: he causes the world no alarm, and the world causes him none, because his acts aim at no one's harm.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse describes a two-way harmlessness. The world has no cause to be alarmed by this person, and this person has no cause to be alarmed by the world. The first half rests on the fact that he intends harm to no creature; the second, on the fact that even when the world turns against him, its hostility finds nothing in him to catch hold of.
Four specific movements are named, not a vague calm: elation at one's own gain, intolerance of another's, fear, and restless anxiety.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
Four specific agitations are named, not a vague serenity: harsha, the swelling elation at gaining something desired; amarsha, the inability to bear another's gain or excellence; bhaya, fear, above all the fear of what threatens the body or the self; and udvega, a restless anxiety that cannot settle.
Sridhara and Madhusudana define each of the four with unusual precision, letting a practitioner recognize each by name.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
Sridhara and Madhusudana, the two sources with the fullest surviving definitions, converge closely on what each of the four actually names, down to matching details like the swelling of joy causing tears and standing hair. Where the record is this precise, the commentators are effectively reading the same technical vocabulary, not offering competing glosses.
Where fuller reasoning survives, this freedom follows from a settled, non-contentious way of seeing rather than from forcing each feeling down by will.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Advaita, Kashmir ŚaivaRāmānuja · Madhusūdana · AbhinavaguptaIn Rāmānuja, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
Where fuller reasoning survives, the freedom described is not something clamped down upon by effort but a consequence of how this person already sees. Ramanuja roots it in the settled conviction of being at odds with no one; Madhusudana and, on a labeled extension, Abhinavagupta root it in a seeing that has stopped insisting things must go one way, so the four agitations have nothing left to attach to.
Where the record for a given acarya is thin or silent, as with Madhva here, that silence is reported honestly rather than filled with invented words.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse closes, as the surrounding verses in this passage do, by naming this person dear to the Lord. For the sources this pass can draw on, that closing word gathers the two-way peace and the fourfold freedom into a single mark of the devotee Krishna holds dear, rather than a separate, additional qualification.
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 gives the fullest surviving reasoning: the two-way peace rests specifically on the devotee's settled conviction that he is at odds with no one, holding no aggression and no contentiousness toward any being. Because that conviction is total, each of the four agitations is named as an object explicitly negated in him, one at a time: no gladness toward anyone in particular, no impatience toward anyone, no fear of anyone, no agitation over anyone.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
No Dvaita position can be honestly reported here: the available record states plainly that Madhva does not comment on this verse. Rather than invent a reading in his voice, this space is left as an acknowledged gap. On a conditional, clearly-labeled extension of his broader teaching on dependence, one might guess that this freedom would be read as itself a mark of surrendered agency rather than self-achieved calm, but this is speculation offered as speculation, not as Madhva's word.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara's contribution is its careful naming: harsha as excitement at gaining one's own desired end, amarsha as the inability to bear another's gain, bhaya as fright, and udvega as the mind's disturbance on the occasion of fear and the like. He treats this precision itself as the teaching, letting the practitioner recognize each agitation by name and closes simply that one freed of these is dear to the Lord.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana's distinctive claim is that these four need not be forcibly removed. Because the devotee sees non-duality, the agitations themselves leave him as one unfit for them, the way an unwelcome guest departs rather than being evicted; nothing here is described as a discipline of suppression, only as what naturally has nowhere left to stand once the seeing that fed it is gone.
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
Notice, the next time you feel that swelling lift at good news or that grudging pinch at someone else's gain, that both are the same mechanism wearing different faces: a mind measuring itself against a separate gain or loss. You do not need to fight the feeling directly. Ask instead what conviction is feeding it, the sense that this one thing must go a certain way, and let your attention rest there instead.
May you meet the world without giving it cause for alarm, and without taking alarm from it in turn, and may elation, intolerance, fear, and restlessness find nothing left in you to hold 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 describes a two-way harmlessness. The world has no cause to be alarmed by this person, and this person has no cause to be alarmed by the world. The first half rests on the fact that he intends harm to no creature; the second, on the fact that even when the world turns against him, its hostility finds nothing in him to catch hold of.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Four specific agitations are named, not a vague serenity: harsha, the swelling elation at gaining something desired; amarsha, the inability to bear another's gain or excellence; bhaya, fear, above all the fear of what threatens the body or the self; and udvega, a restless anxiety that cannot settle.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Sridhara and Madhusudana, the two sources with the fullest surviving definitions, converge closely on what each of the four actually names, down to matching details like the swelling of joy causing tears and standing hair. Where the record is this precise, the commentators are effectively reading the same technical vocabulary, not offering competing glosses.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where fuller reasoning survives, the freedom described is not something clamped down upon by effort but a consequence of how this person already sees. Ramanuja roots it in the settled conviction of being at odds with no one; Madhusudana and, on a labeled extension, Abhinavagupta root it in a seeing that has stopped insisting things must go one way, so the four agitations have nothing left to attach to.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
The verse closes, as the surrounding verses in this passage do, by naming this person dear to the Lord. For the sources this pass can draw on, that closing word gathers the two-way peace and the fourfold freedom into a single mark of the devotee Krishna holds dear, rather than a separate, additional qualification.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The surviving Shankara material for this verse is brief and stays close to restating its two clauses. Read alongside the wider passage's non-dual emphasis, the two-way peace follows from seeing the one Self in every being, so there is no real other to either harm or be harmed by; the four agitations, sharing one root in the swelling and contracting of a mind that takes its objects as separate from itself, fall away together once that seeing is settled.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja gives the fullest surviving reasoning: the two-way peace rests specifically on the devotee's settled conviction that he is at odds with no one, holding no aggression and no contentiousness toward any being. Because that conviction is total, each of the four agitations is named as an object explicitly negated in him, one at a time: no gladness toward anyone in particular, no impatience toward anyone, no fear of anyone, no agitation over anyone.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
No Dvaita position can be honestly reported here: the available record states plainly that Madhva does not comment on this verse. Rather than invent a reading in his voice, this space is left as an acknowledged gap. On a conditional, clearly-labeled extension of his broader teaching on dependence, one might guess that this freedom would be read as itself a mark of surrendered agency rather than self-achieved calm, but this is speculation offered as speculation, not as Madhva's word.
Kashmir Śaiva
What survives from Abhinavagupta addresses this quarter-verse only as part of a wider passage on aniketa, having no fixed home: holding no resolve that only this must be done by him, taking pleasure and pain exactly as they come, his heart resting in the Lord who is the whole field of being. On a labeled extension, since nothing here is insisted upon in one direction, the four named agitations, which each depend on insisting things go a particular way, would have nothing to attach to, but this extension goes beyond what the surviving fragment itself states.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara's contribution is its careful naming: harsha as excitement at gaining one's own desired end, amarsha as the inability to bear another's gain, bhaya as fright, and udvega as the mind's disturbance on the occasion of fear and the like. He treats this precision itself as the teaching, letting the practitioner recognize each agitation by name and closes simply that one freed of these is dear to the Lord.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana's distinctive claim is that these four need not be forcibly removed. Because the devotee sees non-duality, the agitations themselves leave him as one unfit for them, the way an unwelcome guest departs rather than being evicted; nothing here is described as a discipline of suppression, only as what naturally has nowhere left to stand once the seeing that fed it is gone.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If I am meant to be free of joy, impatience, fear, and anxiety, am I being asked to stop feeling anything at all?
What is named here is not feeling as such but four specific movements: the swelling of elation at gaining something desired, the grudging pinch at another's gain, the dread of danger, and a restless unrest that cannot settle. Sridhara and Madhusudana are careful to define each one precisely rather than treat the verse as a blanket call to feel nothing.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Ramanuja's reading suggests the freedom follows from a settled conviction, being at odds with no one, rather than from suppressing a reaction after it arises. The four agitations are named as things this conviction removes, not as things a separate act of will must fight down each time they appear.
Rāmānujācārya
Madhusudana adds that these need not be forced out at all; seeing rightly, they leave of their own accord, unfit to remain. That is a different picture from numbness. It is closer to a mind no longer giving these particular movements anything to hold onto, which is why the record treats this person as fully alive and dear to the Lord, not withdrawn from life.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Notice, the next time you feel that swelling lift at good news or that grudging pinch at someone else's gain, that both are the same mechanism wearing different faces: a mind measuring itself against a separate gain or loss. You do not need to fight the feeling directly. Ask instead what conviction is feeding it, the sense that this one thing must go a certain way, and let your attention rest there instead.
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.