Release the fondness, and further, release the fusion that makes another's fortune feel like your own.
This line names two grades of the same knot, in the very bonds where it is tightest, and asks for a mind that stays level whether the field brings what is wanted or what is not.
Non-attachment, no clinging to son, wife, home, and the rest, and a steady evenness of mind whatever comes, welcome or unwelcome.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
You are still moving through the long list of qualities Krishna is calling knowledge. Now the discipline turns inward, toward the closest circle of your life, the people whose joys and griefs you have long since stopped experiencing as separate from your own.
The teaching
This verse names two things to release together, and they are not quite the same fault. The first is ordinary attachment, the plain fondness or sense of mine directed at a person or a place. The second, non-clinging, is sharper and more dangerous: a fusion in which the boundary between you and another quietly gives way, so that their happiness becomes, without your noticing the substitution, your own happiness, and their suffering becomes your suffering, as though your two lives had become one fate rather than two. Both are to be released, and both are to be released exactly where they are thickest: toward son, wife, home, and, by the verse's own wide word for 'and the rest,' every other dearly held person, servants included. There is no instruction here to feel less toward strangers; that would cost nothing. The instruction is aimed at the bonds that actually hold you, and it is honest about how hard that makes it. Alongside these two releases sits a third quality, constant evenness of mind: no rejoicing when the wished-for arrives, no anger or dejection when the unwished-for arrives, and this is asked for at every turn the field takes, not only in the hour when it is most sorely tested. Two of the sources gathered for this page have very little to say at this exact line. Ramanuja's surviving fragment here, on an alternate way of dividing the verse, speaks instead of devotion to the Lord and a chosen distance from crowds. Madhva's surviving comment is a single precise point about how the two Sanskrit terms relate as one fondness at two stages of intensity. Abhinavagupta has no separately preserved comment at all for this verse, folding it into a longer passage whose full text sits at an earlier line. This page says so plainly rather than dressing up a guess as any of their settled words.
The doubt that rises
If I am not supposed to feel my own child's suffering as though it were my own, am I being asked to love them less, or only to love them differently?
Where the paths divide
Read on the plain sense of the verse's own words.
Shankara names two grades of one fault: ordinary fondness, and its ripened, more dangerous form, an over-fondness in which another's happiness or grief is felt as your very own. Both are to be dropped precisely toward son, wife, home, and every other dearly held person, since the closest bonds are exactly where the false identification is easiest to fall into. Evenness of mind is defined with equal precision: no rejoicing at the wished-for, no anger at the unwished-for. These qualities are called knowledge because a mind cleared of both forms of fondness is the ground on which the Self can finally be seen.
Honest to a short, genuinely thin surviving fragment.
The extant words attributed to Ramanuja here are only a few sentences, and on the alternate division of the verse they follow, they do not describe family-detachment at all. They name steady, undivided devotion to the Lord of all, together with dwelling apart from people and having no fondness for crowds. Nothing more developed on family, on the fusion this verse elsewhere warns against, survives in his own words at this exact line, and this page does not invent what is missing.
Offered honestly as a narrow, precise fragment, not a developed reading.
What survives from Madhva here is a single lexical point: attachment is fondness, and that very fondness, once it has fully ripened, is what the verse calls clinging, one thing at two stages of intensity rather than two separate things. Nothing more elaborate on the verse as a whole is recorded in his name at this line. Extended cautiously, this ripening might be tied to the soul's forgetting of its dependent standing, but that extension is flagged as such, not presented as his own settled word.
Extended from an earlier verse, where his genuine comment is actually preserved.
No separate comment of Abhinavagupta's survives at this line. His surviving text treats a run of five verses, from 13.8 to 13.12, as one continuous passage, with the full comment recorded only at the first of them. What is genuinely his there concerns undeviating devotion: a firm conviction that nothing stands beyond the one Self, out of which devotion arises so completely that it cannot waver, since even the desires that might unsettle it are recognized as ripples of that same single reality. Extended, though not separately attested here, the fusion this verse names might be read as the very contraction that such undeviating awareness leaves no room to perform.
Read close to the plain, surface sense of each term.
Sridhara stays economical and precise. Non-attachment is laying aside fondness toward a son and the other things a person clings to. Non-clinging is the absence of the further overlay by which someone feels another's joy or grief strictly as his own. Evenness of mind is a level mind held at all times, both when the wanted and unwanted occur and when they are actually gained, not only at one of those moments. Nothing here is complicated by technical apparatus, and nothing in it is left vague.
Read as a sharp, near-clinical distinction between two mechanisms.
Madhusudana draws the finest line between the two terms on record. Ordinary attachment arises from the mere thought 'this is mine.' Clinging arises from something stronger, an actual thought of non-difference toward another, 'I myself am this,' so that another's happiness or grief is lived as one's own. He locates the whole discipline precisely in the closest bonds the verse names, and defines evenness of mind as freedom from both elation and dejection, guarded in both directions rather than only against one.
Every developed source agrees that two things are being released together here, plain fondness and a deeper fusion with another's fortune, and that the release is asked for exactly where it is hardest. What this page leaves open is how much further a fuller record from Ramanuja, Madhva, and Abhinavagupta might have said at this precise line, had more of it survived. Their extant words here are thin, or in Abhinavagupta's case, entirely folded into an earlier verse, and any extension offered in their names beyond that record is marked plainly as extension, not as their own settled teaching on this exact verse.
A question to carry
Can you bring to mind, right now, someone whose joy or grief you no longer experience as separate from your own, and simply notice that fusion, without yet deciding what, if anything, to do about it?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Let your love for the ones closest to you stay whole, and let the borrowed weather of their fortunes settle back into being theirs. May your own mind hold level, welcome or unwelcome, in the very rooms where it is hardest to keep it so.
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 long roll of qualities he is calling knowledge, and turns now to the closest circle of life, where fondness is thickest and the deeper fusion, over-identification with another's fortune, is easiest to fall into unnoticed.
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.
Two grades of one fault are named together: plain fondness, and a deeper clinging in which the boundary between yourself and another quietly collapses.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
Wherever the sources speak with real material, they distinguish two grades of the same underlying fault. Ordinary attachment is the simple fondness or sense of mine directed at things and people. A deeper clinging goes further: the collapse of the line between yourself and another, so that another's joy becomes your joy and another's grief becomes your grief, as though you shared one fate rather than two lives.
This release is asked for precisely where it is hardest, son, wife, home, and every other dearly held person, not toward bonds that would cost nothing to drop.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
This release is asked for exactly where it is hardest, not toward strangers but toward son, wife, home, and, by the words 'and the rest,' every other dearly held person, including those who serve the household. Detachment from what you do not love costs nothing; the verse names the bonds where the cost is real.
Constant evenness of mind means no elation at the welcome and no anger or dejection at the unwelcome, held at every turn, not only in a difficult hour.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The evenness of mind named alongside these two releases is defined with real precision: no rejoicing when the wished-for arrives, no anger or dejection when the unwished-for arrives, and this holds at every moment the field turns over its results, not only at some especially trying hour.
Two of the six masters gathered here leave little at this exact line, and one leaves nothing separate at all; the honest page says so rather than inventing their certainty.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaRāmānuja · Madhva · AbhinavaguptaIn Rāmānuja, Madhva, and 1 others’ words
Two of the six sources gathered here, Ramanuja and Madhva, are genuinely thin at this exact verse: a few sentences pointing toward an alternate reading of the line as devotion and solitude, or a single lexical note on how the two Sanskrit terms relate. Abhinavagupta's surviving comment does not address this verse separately at all, folding it into a passage that runs from 13.8 to 13.12 with its full text recorded only at 13.8.
What is released is the fused over-identification, not the underlying care; love can remain steady once the borrowed weather of another's fortune stops being mistaken for your own.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Even across this divide between richly developed and thin sources, nothing here denies the underlying claim that a real inner discipline is being asked of the seeker in the very place emotional life is thickest. Whether the discipline is named directly as family-detachment or read, on an alternate division, as devotion paired with solitude, every source treats the closest bonds and the most habitual reactions as the actual field of practice.
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
The extant fragment here is honestly thin, only a few sentences, and on the alternate division of the verse that this fragment follows, it does not read the line as family-detachment at all. It names steady, undivided devotion to the Lord of all together with dwelling apart from crowds and having no fondness for the gathering of people. Nothing further of a developed family-detachment argument survives in his own words at this specific line, and none is manufactured here to fill that gap.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's surviving comment at this verse is a single precise lexical point, not a developed argument: attachment is fondness, and that very fondness, once fully ripened, becomes what the verse calls clinging, one thing named at two stages of intensity rather than two different things. No confident reading of his broader views on family or devotion can honestly be drawn from this alone; what can be offered is a clearly flagged extension tying the ripening of fondness to the soul's forgetting of its own dependent standing.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
No separate comment of Abhinavagupta's survives for this verse; his extant text folds 13.8 through 13.12 into one passage, with the full comment recorded at 13.8. What is genuinely his there concerns undeviating devotion, the firm conviction that nothing stands beyond the one Self, out of which unwavering devotion arises because the very desires that could unsettle it are recognized as ripples of that same reality. Extended, but explicitly flagged as extension rather than his recorded word here, this would read the clinging named in 13.10 as a contraction of awareness that undeviating conviction leaves no room for.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads all three terms with unusual economy and stays close to the surface sense throughout. Non-attachment is laying aside fondness toward a son and the other things one clings to; non-clinging is the absence of the further overlay by which a person feels another's joy or grief as strictly his own; evenness of mind is a level mind held at all times, both when the wanted and unwanted occur and when they are actually gained. Nothing in his reading is complicated by technical machinery, and nothing in it is vague.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana draws the sharpest technical distinction on record between the two terms: attachment arises from the mere thought 'this is mine,' while clinging arises from an actual thought of non-difference, 'I myself am this,' so that another's joy or grief is felt as one's own. He locates the discipline precisely in the closest bonds named by the verse, and defines evenness of mind operationally as freedom from both elation at the wished-for and dejection at the unwished-for, a mind held level in both directions rather than only guarded against one.
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 someone in your closest circle, and notice, honestly, where your mood already tracks theirs before you have decided anything. Let that noticing be enough for now. You are not being asked to feel less for them. You are being asked to find the thin line where their weather stopped being only theirs and quietly became yours too, and to let that line come back into view.
Carry someone you love to mind, notice where their weather has quietly become yours, and let that noticing, gently, be enough to bring the line back into view.
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
herever the sources speak with real material, they distinguish two grades of the same underlying fault. Ordinary attachment is the simple fondness or sense of mine directed at things and people. A deeper clinging goes further: the collapse of the line between yourself and another, so that another's joy becomes your joy and another's grief becomes your grief, as though you shared one fate rather than two lives.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
This release is asked for exactly where it is hardest, not toward strangers but toward son, wife, home, and, by the words 'and the rest,' every other dearly held person, including those who serve the household. Detachment from what you do not love costs nothing; the verse names the bonds where the cost is real.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The evenness of mind named alongside these two releases is defined with real precision: no rejoicing when the wished-for arrives, no anger or dejection when the unwished-for arrives, and this holds at every moment the field turns over its results, not only at some especially trying hour.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Two of the six sources gathered here, Ramanuja and Madhva, are genuinely thin at this exact verse: a few sentences pointing toward an alternate reading of the line as devotion and solitude, or a single lexical note on how the two Sanskrit terms relate. Abhinavagupta's surviving comment does not address this verse separately at all, folding it into a passage that runs from 13.8 to 13.12 with its full text recorded only at 13.8.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Even across this divide between richly developed and thin sources, nothing here denies the underlying claim that a real inner discipline is being asked of the seeker in the very place emotional life is thickest. Whether the discipline is named directly as family-detachment or read, on an alternate division, as devotion paired with solitude, every source treats the closest bonds and the most habitual reactions as the actual field of practice.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the verse strictly on its plain sense as naming two grades of one fault, ordinary fondness and its ripened form, an over-fondness in which another's fortune is felt as your own. Both are to be dropped precisely toward the closest bonds, son, wife, home, and the rest, and evenness of mind is defined as the absence of joy or anger at the wished-for and unwished-for alike. These qualities are called knowledge because they clear the mind that will come to see the Self, a claim developed more fully elsewhere in his running commentary on this whole passage.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
The extant fragment here is honestly thin, only a few sentences, and on the alternate division of the verse that this fragment follows, it does not read the line as family-detachment at all. It names steady, undivided devotion to the Lord of all together with dwelling apart from crowds and having no fondness for the gathering of people. Nothing further of a developed family-detachment argument survives in his own words at this specific line, and none is manufactured here to fill that gap.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's surviving comment at this verse is a single precise lexical point, not a developed argument: attachment is fondness, and that very fondness, once fully ripened, becomes what the verse calls clinging, one thing named at two stages of intensity rather than two different things. No confident reading of his broader views on family or devotion can honestly be drawn from this alone; what can be offered is a clearly flagged extension tying the ripening of fondness to the soul's forgetting of its own dependent standing.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
No separate comment of Abhinavagupta's survives for this verse; his extant text folds 13.8 through 13.12 into one passage, with the full comment recorded at 13.8. What is genuinely his there concerns undeviating devotion, the firm conviction that nothing stands beyond the one Self, out of which unwavering devotion arises because the very desires that could unsettle it are recognized as ripples of that same reality. Extended, but explicitly flagged as extension rather than his recorded word here, this would read the clinging named in 13.10 as a contraction of awareness that undeviating conviction leaves no room for.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads all three terms with unusual economy and stays close to the surface sense throughout. Non-attachment is laying aside fondness toward a son and the other things one clings to; non-clinging is the absence of the further overlay by which a person feels another's joy or grief as strictly his own; evenness of mind is a level mind held at all times, both when the wanted and unwanted occur and when they are actually gained. Nothing in his reading is complicated by technical machinery, and nothing in it is vague.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana draws the sharpest technical distinction on record between the two terms: attachment arises from the mere thought 'this is mine,' while clinging arises from an actual thought of non-difference, 'I myself am this,' so that another's joy or grief is felt as one's own. He locates the discipline precisely in the closest bonds named by the verse, and defines evenness of mind operationally as freedom from both elation at the wished-for and dejection at the unwished-for, a mind held level in both directions rather than only guarded against one.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If I am not supposed to feel my child's suffering as my own, am I being asked to love them less?
Nothing in the developed readings asks you to love less. Shankara and Madhusudana both name two distinct faults, ordinary fondness and a further, fused over-identification, and it is only the second, the collapse of the line between two lives, that the verse targets as the deeper danger.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Sridhara keeps this even simpler: non-clinging is the absence of the false overlay by which you feel yourself happy or unhappy strictly because your child is. What is released is the overlay, the borrowed identity, not the underlying care that led you to notice their joy or grief in the first place.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Where the sources are thin, as with Ramanuja and Madhva at this exact verse, it would be dishonest to manufacture a confident answer in their names. What can be said is that their wider concerns, undivided devotion for Ramanuja's fragment here, the soul's dependent standing for Madhva, would each frame the answer differently, and neither is recorded here as their own settled word on this particular question.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya
Contemplation
Bring to mind someone in your closest circle, and notice, honestly, where your mood already tracks theirs before you have decided anything. Let that noticing be enough for now. You are not being asked to feel less for them. You are being asked to find the thin line where their weather stopped being only theirs and quietly became yours too, and to let that line come back into view.
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.