The one dear to me expects nothing, and begins nothing for private gain.
Six marks, and every reading agrees they describe one settled person: clean, capable, unmoved by either side of a quarrel, unwounded by hostility, and finished with ventures launched for what they might yield.
The devotee I love wants nothing, is clean within and without, capable, impartial, and untouched by distress, and has given up every venture begun for personal gain.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has been naming, verse after verse, who is dear to him: unhostile, compassionate, free of the pull of mine and I, patient, content, steady. He does not stop; here he adds six more marks, closer to the texture of daily conduct than to any doctrine.
The teaching
You expect nothing. Not from the world at large, and not even from the small comforts that sometimes arrive unsought, an ease in circumstance, a kindness you did not ask for. You are clean, in body and in the quieter place behind it, the mind no longer pulled about by like and dislike. You are capable, seeing at once what needs doing and doing it, without the drag that hesitation or sloth would otherwise cause. You take no side in the world's quarrels, holding no closer regard for a friend's cause than an adversary's. And you are free of distress in a stronger sense than mere endurance: the hurt that another's hostility might cause simply does not arise in you, not because you have learned to bear it but because there is nothing left in you for it to catch on. And so you begin nothing for your own gain. An undertaking, in the sense this verse means, is a venture launched out of desire for what it will bring you: a new possession gathered, a new plan built up for private enjoyment. You have simply stopped originating such ventures. This is not the same as doing nothing at all; it is that nothing you now do is done because of what it might yield to you. Each commentator draws the line of this teaching somewhere a little different. What survives of Shankara's own note on this exact line is brief, a restatement more than a derivation, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than dressing it up as more than it is. Ramanuja keeps every mark bound to action scripture itself enjoins, so the renunciation reaches only as far as what lies outside that scope. Madhva is occupied mostly with showing that none of the six words merely repeats a neighbor. Sridhara reads the whole list as what love becomes when it matures, and Madhusudana as a ladder whose rungs must each be kept distinct. And what remains of Abhinavagupta's own remark for this stretch of verses is a general word about never fixing on the thought that one thing alone is yours to do, not a gloss of these six terms in particular; any fuller Kashmir Shaiva reading of them would have to be offered honestly as an extension of that idea, not as his stated word.
The doubt that rises
If you expect nothing and begin nothing for your own sake, what is left to move you at all? Is there still a person here who acts, or has something simply stopped?
Where the paths divide
Read narrowly, at the scale the surviving comment actually supports.
What remains of the commentary on this exact line stays close to the six terms themselves, restating each briefly and noting that further marks are still to come. It does not, in what survives here, press the fuller claim made more fully elsewhere in the tradition, that this figure is specifically the formal renunciant whose detachment knowledge alone completes. Read honestly, this is a plain description of a person settled beyond expectation and fruit-seeking, offered without the fuller technical architecture some readers might expect.
For the devotee whose whole practice is bound to sanctioned action.
Every mark here stays anchored to what scripture enjoins. Expecting nothing is expecting nothing from anything besides the self; purity is a body sustained by sanctioned substances; skill is capability within sanctioned acts, indifferent to all else; freedom from distress is enduring the hardship, the cold and heat and harsh touches, that such acts bring; and giving up undertakings means giving up every action outside the scriptural ones, never action as such.
Defending the passage as expansion, not repetition.
The chief work here is showing that nothing in this list is wasted. These marks stand to nearby qualities as the particular stands to the general, or as an explanation stands to what it explains, and the grammar's present tense signals unbroken continuity rather than a state that comes and goes. Read this way, the passage expands, rather than merely echoes, the earlier instruction to cast every action upon the Lord.
Source is thin here; read as flagged extrapolation, not settled doctrine.
What survives of Abhinavagupta's own comment for this stretch of verses speaks only in general terms, of never fixing on the thought that some one thing is uniquely yours to do, of tasting pleasure and pain just as they come, of resting the heart fully in the Lord who is the whole field of being. It does not itself gloss this verse's six specific words. Extended honestly, and marked as extension, one might read expectation's absence as consciousness no longer contracting around any single expected outcome, and the undertakings given up as the end of originating action from a bounded, anxious self. But that extension is offered as extrapolation, not as the master's stated word.
Read as what devotion becomes, matured, rather than a scheme reasoned out.
These six marks are less a doctrine to master than a description of where love arrives on its own. Freedom from expectation reaches even to gains that would come unsought; the giving-up of undertakings covers ventures aimed at ends both seen and unseen. What is described is a whole bearing, a nature that has simply stopped originating action for any end of its own, arrived at through devotion rather than argued into being.
Read as a ladder of distinct, increasingly demanding attainments.
Each mark here is kept carefully distinct from its neighbor, most pointedly in the separation between forbearance, named a few verses earlier, and freedom from distress named here: one bears a pain already arisen, the other lets no such pain arise at all. Read this way, the six marks are not one flat description but a sequence, each rung sharper than the one below it, and the devotee's dearness to the Lord is something earned across the whole climb.
All six readings agree on the plain content: nothing expected, nothing begun for private gain. They differ on how far the giving-up reaches, into all action for Ramanuja's sanctioned scope, into a maturing love for Sridhara, into a graded ladder for Madhusudana, and on how much can honestly be said in Shankara's and Abhinavagupta's names given how little of their own comment on this precise line survives. This page will not resolve that; it says plainly where the sources thin out rather than filling the gap with invented confidence.
A question to carry
What is the one thing you are still quietly expecting today, and what would it cost you to simply notice it, without either grasping it or refusing it?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May what you do today ask nothing of you in return, and may what arrives unasked be received the same way it came, lightly, without becoming the seed of some new undertaking.
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.
Krishna continues the portrait of the devotee dear to him, begun several verses back, adding here the marks of expectation, purity, skill, impartiality, ease, and the end of self-seeking undertaking.
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.
Freedom from expectation is the keynote: nothing is sought, not even the comforts that arrive unbidden.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
The verse opens with what nearly every reading treats as the keynote: anapeksha, free of expectation. The devotee asks nothing of the world, not even of the ordinary comforts, body, senses, and their objects, that arrive by chance rather than by seeking. This is not stated as an ideal held at arm's length but as the settled condition of the one Krishna calls dear.
Purity and skill together describe a person clean within and without, and capable without strain.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Purity, shuchi, and skill, daksha, are read together as the devotee's clean and capable way of moving through the world. Purity spans both an outer cleanliness of the body and an inner cleanliness of a mind no longer pulled by like and dislike; skill is alertness, the ability to see at once what needs doing and to do it without the drag of sloth.
Impartiality and freedom from distress mean no side is taken and no hostility can wound.
Across Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · RāmānujaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
Impartiality, udasina, is read as taking no side in the world's quarrels, holding no closer regard for a friend than for an adversary. Freedom from distress, gata-vyatha, goes further than mere endurance: several readers are explicit that this is not the forbearance named a few verses earlier, which bears a pain already arisen, but a state in which the pain does not arise at all.
The renunciation of undertakings ends ventures begun for private gain, not rightful duty itself.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The closing mark, sarvarambha-parityagi, the renouncer of every undertaking, is read as the natural completion of the first five. An undertaking is any venture launched out of desire for its fruit, gathering, building, accumulating for one's own enjoyment; the devotee has simply stopped originating such ventures, because nothing remains that he still expects to gain from them.
The six marks are read as one coherent settledness, not six unrelated virtues.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Across the readings, the six marks are treated as one coherent portrait rather than six unrelated virtues: a person who wants nothing, is clean and capable, takes no side, cannot be wounded by hostility, and begins nothing for private gain, all as expressions of a single underlying settledness in the Lord.
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 every mark tied to scripturally sanctioned action rather than to a general withdrawal from the world. Expecting nothing means expecting nothing from anything other than the self; purity is a body nourished by sanctioned substances; skill is ability within the acts scripture enjoins; freedom from distress is endurance of the hardship such acts bring; and renouncing undertakings means giving up every action outside the scriptural ones, not action as such.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's extant comment is chiefly a structural defense: these marks are not redundant repetitions of qualities named nearby, but stand in the relation of the general to the particular, of explanation to what is explained. The present-tense grammar conveys unbroken continuity of these qualities rather than their occasional appearance, and the whole passage expands the earlier instruction to cast all actions upon the Lord.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the six marks as what devotion itself becomes when it matures, rather than as a doctrine to be reasoned into. Freedom from expectation extends even to gains that would come unsought, and the renunciation of undertakings covers ventures aimed at both seen and unseen ends. The accent throughout falls on the devotee's whole bearing, a nature that has simply stopped originating action for any private end, not on a technical scheme.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana treats the six marks as a precise ladder in which no rung repeats another: distinguishing carefully, for instance, between forbearance, which bears a pain already arisen, and being free of distress, in which the pain does not arise at all. Read this way, the verse is less a single image than a sequence of increasingly demanding attainments, each one sharpened against its near neighbor so that the devotee's dearness is earned rung by rung.
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, today, one moment when something arrives that you did not seek, a kindness, a convenience, an ease in your circumstances, and see whether you can receive it without either grasping it tighter or feeling you must now begin some new venture because of it. Let the six marks be less a checklist than a single question returned to again and again: what, right now, am I still quietly expecting?
So notice, today, what you are still quietly expecting, and let one small undertaking begun for your own sake go unstarted.
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 with what nearly every reading treats as the keynote: anapeksha, free of expectation. The devotee asks nothing of the world, not even of the ordinary comforts, body, senses, and their objects, that arrive by chance rather than by seeking. This is not stated as an ideal held at arm's length but as the settled condition of the one Krishna calls dear.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Purity, shuchi, and skill, daksha, are read together as the devotee's clean and capable way of moving through the world. Purity spans both an outer cleanliness of the body and an inner cleanliness of a mind no longer pulled by like and dislike; skill is alertness, the ability to see at once what needs doing and to do it without the drag of sloth.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Impartiality, udasina, is read as taking no side in the world's quarrels, holding no closer regard for a friend than for an adversary. Freedom from distress, gata-vyatha, goes further than mere endurance: several readers are explicit that this is not the forbearance named a few verses earlier, which bears a pain already arisen, but a state in which the pain does not arise at all.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya
The closing mark, sarvarambha-parityagi, the renouncer of every undertaking, is read as the natural completion of the first five. An undertaking is any venture launched out of desire for its fruit, gathering, building, accumulating for one's own enjoyment; the devotee has simply stopped originating such ventures, because nothing remains that he still expects to gain from them.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Across the readings, the six marks are treated as one coherent portrait rather than six unrelated virtues: a person who wants nothing, is clean and capable, takes no side, cannot be wounded by hostility, and begins nothing for private gain, all as expressions of a single underlying settledness in the Lord.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
What survives of Shankara's own comment on this exact line is brief, close to a plain restatement of the six terms with a note that further marks follow, rather than an extended technical derivation of each. Read honestly at that scale, it presents the six marks as a description of a figure settled beyond expectation and free of every fruit-seeking venture, without itself pressing the fuller claim, made more explicitly elsewhere in the Advaita tradition, that this figure is specifically the formal renunciant crowned by knowledge.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja keeps every mark tied to scripturally sanctioned action rather than to a general withdrawal from the world. Expecting nothing means expecting nothing from anything other than the self; purity is a body nourished by sanctioned substances; skill is ability within the acts scripture enjoins; freedom from distress is endurance of the hardship such acts bring; and renouncing undertakings means giving up every action outside the scriptural ones, not action as such.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's extant comment is chiefly a structural defense: these marks are not redundant repetitions of qualities named nearby, but stand in the relation of the general to the particular, of explanation to what is explained. The present-tense grammar conveys unbroken continuity of these qualities rather than their occasional appearance, and the whole passage expands the earlier instruction to cast all actions upon the Lord.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving remark covers 12.15 through 12.20 as one passage and does not gloss this verse's six terms individually; it speaks only of never fixing on the thought that some one thing is uniquely his to do, taking pleasure and pain as they come, and resting the heart fully in the Lord who is the whole field of being. Any term-by-term Kashmir Shaiva reading of the six marks here, framed as recognition of the self's own freedom, would be a labeled extrapolation from that governing idea, not the master's own stated word.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the six marks as what devotion itself becomes when it matures, rather than as a doctrine to be reasoned into. Freedom from expectation extends even to gains that would come unsought, and the renunciation of undertakings covers ventures aimed at both seen and unseen ends. The accent throughout falls on the devotee's whole bearing, a nature that has simply stopped originating action for any private end, not on a technical scheme.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana treats the six marks as a precise ladder in which no rung repeats another: distinguishing carefully, for instance, between forbearance, which bears a pain already arisen, and being free of distress, in which the pain does not arise at all. Read this way, the verse is less a single image than a sequence of increasingly demanding attainments, each one sharpened against its near neighbor so that the devotee's dearness is earned rung by rung.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If I am meant to expect nothing and start no new undertakings, does that not just describe passivity, a life where nothing gets done?
Ramanuja's reading forecloses this worry directly: the giving-up of undertakings is the giving-up of action outside what is rightly enjoined, not the giving-up of action itself. The devotee remains fully engaged, only within the scope of what is genuinely his to do.
Rāmānujācārya
Sridhara's reading points the same way from a different angle: what ends is the habit of launching ventures for private gain, seen or unseen. What continues is whatever devotion itself calls for, which is not the same as doing nothing.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Madhusudana's careful separation of forbearance from freedom-from-distress suggests the same answer at the level of inner experience: this is not withdrawal from life's friction but a steadiness so complete that the friction no longer disturbs the one who keeps on acting.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Notice, today, one moment when something arrives that you did not seek, a kindness, a convenience, an ease in your circumstances, and see whether you can receive it without either grasping it tighter or feeling you must now begin some new venture because of it. Let the six marks be less a checklist than a single question returned to again and again: what, right now, am I still quietly expecting?
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
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Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.