Death under passion returns you to human striving; death under dullness opens a door the tradition itself is honest about not fully describing here.
Sattva at the last breath was already covered; this verse completes the law by naming where a death under rajas and a death under tamas each lead, even as its own commentarial record is candidly uneven from source to source.
Dying while rajas is dominant, one is reborn among people bound to action. Dying while tamas is dominant, one is reborn in deluded wombs.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
The teaching about how the quality ruling a person at death shapes the next birth finishes here. Where clarity at death lifts one upward, this verse names where the two lower qualities settle, and its own surviving commentary is unusually candid about the limits of what is preserved.
The teaching
The quality that rules a person at death decides the door the next life opens through. If passion, rajas, is dominant when someone dies, they return among human beings bound to action, and several readings sharpen this further: born into company already devoted to performing deeds for reward, fitted for that same pursuit of heaven and its like. If dullness, tamas, is dominant, the fall is into deluded wombs, named plainly as beasts and similar forms, births in which awareness itself lies most obscured and no worthwhile human aim can be taken up. One reading closes the whole passage with something like a formula: the threefold balance of the gunas decides not merely the coloring of a life but the very door through which the next birth begins. This is worth sitting with as a description of a mechanism, not as a threat, since the quality that rises at the final moment is, for most people, simply the quality that ruled across the years before it. But it is equally worth sitting with something else this verse shows about how a tradition is read honestly: not every voice in the record has left the same weight of comment here. One has left none at all. One has folded this verse into the one before it. One has left only a close restatement of the verse's own words. Naming that plainly is part of the teaching too.
The doubt that rises
If a single ruling quality at the last moment can decide the very door of the next birth, is a lifetime of sincere effort fragile, and could a good person really be dropped into an animal womb over what looks, from outside, like one final slip?
Where the paths divide
Read as a plain, unadorned correspondence.
Shankara treats death here as nothing more mysterious than the dissolution of a single body, and reads the guna ruling that dissolution as simply identical, stated twice, to the guna that will rule the next birth's company. He does not elaborate further, since the mechanism of guna-binding has already been laid out earlier in the chapter; this verse, for him, closes the account rather than opening a new one.
Read through concrete destinations rather than general categories.
Ramanuja is exact where others stay general: a rajasic death places a person in families given over to reward-seeking action, fit for the pursuit of heaven and its kin; a tamasic death places a person in wombs he names outright, dogs, pigs, and similar creatures, unfit for any human aim whatsoever. The birth itself, on his reading, is the very shape of what a life's disposition has earned.
Read honestly, as a genuine gap in the surviving record.
What remains of Madhva's own comment on this verse is nothing at all; the material states plainly that he offers no comment here. No developed Dvaita account of how a soul's guna at death fixes its next embodiment can honestly be drawn from this verse. At most, one can note, as a clearly labeled extension of his wider theology rather than a finding from his words, that such a mechanism would, on Dvaita principles, itself be ordered by the Lord's will according to each soul's fitness.
Read as joined to the previous verse, not independently developed here.
The surviving record states that Abhinavagupta treats 14.14 and 14.15 together, with his full comment sitting at the prior verse and no separate fragment for this one. A labeled extension of his broader framework might carry forward the idea that each guna's rise is a contraction of consciousness's own freedom, suggesting that the death-guna's contraction resurfaces as the very shape of the next embodiment, but this is a construction offered honestly as such, not his recorded words on 14.15 itself.
Read through a compressed formula for the whole passage.
Sridhara keeps both halves of the verse brief and parallel, the soul carrying its ruling guna's grip straight across the boundary of death into the next body. He closes with a line that functions almost as the passage's own summary: the threefold balance of the gunas decides not merely the coloring of a life but the very door through which the next birth begins.
Read as a reminder about the limits of the surviving record itself.
What is preserved of Madhusudana's comment here is a close restatement of the verse's own words, confirming its plain sense rather than developing an independent argument, unlike his more technical elaboration elsewhere in the chapter. Read for what it is, this is less a doctrinal position than evidence that not every acarya's record carries equal interpretive weight at every verse, a distinction worth keeping rather than smoothing over.
The schools agree that a death under tamas pulls downward and that a death under rajas returns one to human striving, continuous with the disposition a life actually built. They do not, on the record actually preserved for this verse, settle every question about mechanism in equal depth; two voices are honestly thin or silent here, and one gives only a restatement. That unevenness stays visible rather than smoothed over, and the deeper question of how much this teaching should be read as impersonal law versus something closer to a decisive final moment stays open as well.
A question to carry
If the quality that surfaces at death is mostly the one you have fed all your life, what are you feeding right now that you would want to rise in you at the very end?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Read this not as a verdict that crushes effort but as a reason to keep steady, and let even this page's honesty about what its sources do and do not say be part of what steadies you.
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.
The previous verse settled what a sattvic death brings; this one finishes the parallel Krishna began, naming the two remaining doors while the surviving commentary itself models what honest, uneven sourcing looks like.
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.
This verse completes the teaching begun in the last: where a sattvic death lifts one to pure worlds, the two lower strands send the soul their own ways, each a plain continuation of the guna that ruled the final moment.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
This verse completes the previous one's teaching about how the guna ruling a person at the moment of death shapes the birth that follows. Sattva's death was already covered; here Krishna names where a death under rajas and a death under tamas each lead, in strict parallel with what came before.
Die while rajas is dominant, and you return among people bound to action, born into company that itself performs deeds for the sake of reward, fitting you for that same pursuit.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Dying while rajas, the quality of restless drive and striving, is dominant returns a person to the human sphere, born among people bound to action. Several readings sharpen this into a specific kind of human birth: families or company given over to performing deeds for the sake of their fruits, so that the newly born person becomes fit to take up that same reward-seeking life.
Die while tamas is dominant, and you fall into deluded wombs, named without euphemism as beasts and similar dull forms, unfit for any human goal at all.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Dying while tamas, the quality of dullness and delusion, is dominant drops a person into deluded wombs, glossed plainly as the wombs of beasts and similar dull forms. This is read as a genuine descent, a birth in which awareness itself is most obscured and no worthwhile human aim can be taken up.
Sridhara's closing formula names the whole point: the threefold balance of the gunas decides not the color of a life but the very door through which it begins.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara and Śrīdhara’s words
Taken together with the previous verse, the teaching forms one law: three possible states at death, sattva, rajas, tamas, open three different doors of rebirth. The guna does not merely tint the color of the life that follows; on this reading it decides the very kind of birth through which that life begins.
Where the extant commentary itself is thin, absent, or joined to a neighboring verse, as with Madhusudana, Madhva, and Abhinavagupta here, the honest course is to say so rather than invent false certainty in their names.
Across Dvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, AdvaitaMadhva · Abhinavagupta · MadhusūdanaIn Madhva, Abhinavagupta, and 1 others’ words
The extant commentarial record on this particular verse is markedly uneven: rich and specific in some acaryas, reduced to bare restatement in one, and honestly silent or deferred to a neighboring verse in two others. Rather than smoothing over that unevenness, this file names it directly wherever it appears.
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 specifies the destinations concretely rather than leaving them general: a rajasic death places one in families devoted to reward-seeking action, fit for the pursuit of heaven and similar fruits; a tamasic death places one in confused wombs he names outright, dogs, pigs, and the like, unfit for any human goal whatsoever, whether duty, wealth, pleasure, or liberation. The birth itself, on his reading, forecloses or opens the very possibility of pursuing a human aim.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The extant record states plainly that Madhva offers no comment on this verse at all, a genuine silence rather than a thin fragment. No developed Dvaita reading of how a soul's guna at death fixes its next embodiment survives here. What can honestly be offered is only a labeled extrapolation from his wider theology: that the guna ruling death and the birth that follows would, on Dvaita principles of radical dependence, themselves be ordered by the Lord's will according to each soul's own fitness, not an independent finding drawn from words he is on record as having spoken about 14.15.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara keeps both clauses brief and parallel, the jiva carrying its guna's grip straight across the boundary of death into the next body, human company for a rajasic death, animal wombs for a tamasic one. He adds a compressed summarizing line that functions almost as a formula for the whole two-verse passage: the threefold balance of the gunas decides not merely the coloring of a life but the very door through which the next birth opens.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
What survives of Madhusudana's comment on this verse is a close restatement of its own words rather than an independently developed argument, unlike his more technical, grammar-attentive readings elsewhere in the chapter. Read honestly, this is a modern-facing reminder that not every acarya's surviving record carries equal interpretive weight at every verse, and a synthesis owes the reader that distinction rather than papering over it with invented elaboration.
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
Do not read this verse as a verdict that makes a lifetime of effort feel fragile. Read it instead as a reason to let the quality that steadies your days be settled long before any final moment arrives, since the quality that rises at death is, for most people, the quality fed all along. Keep good company, study what is true, and let steady, unselfish action become so habitual that it is simply what surfaces when the body is leaving. The teaching names a mechanism, not a trap, and a mechanism can be worked with.
Live so that the grain you have fed all your life is the one that rises when the body falls, and hold this teaching, and the honesty it asks of its own sources, with the same steadiness.
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 completes the previous one's teaching about how the guna ruling a person at the moment of death shapes the birth that follows. Sattva's death was already covered; here Krishna names where a death under rajas and a death under tamas each lead, in strict parallel with what came before.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Dying while rajas, the quality of restless drive and striving, is dominant returns a person to the human sphere, born among people bound to action. Several readings sharpen this into a specific kind of human birth: families or company given over to performing deeds for the sake of their fruits, so that the newly born person becomes fit to take up that same reward-seeking life.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Dying while tamas, the quality of dullness and delusion, is dominant drops a person into deluded wombs, glossed plainly as the wombs of beasts and similar dull forms. This is read as a genuine descent, a birth in which awareness itself is most obscured and no worthwhile human aim can be taken up.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Taken together with the previous verse, the teaching forms one law: three possible states at death, sattva, rajas, tamas, open three different doors of rebirth. The guna does not merely tint the color of the life that follows; on this reading it decides the very kind of birth through which that life begins.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The extant commentarial record on this particular verse is markedly uneven: rich and specific in some acaryas, reduced to bare restatement in one, and honestly silent or deferred to a neighboring verse in two others. Rather than smoothing over that unevenness, this file names it directly wherever it appears.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara treats pralaya and pralina here as plainly meaning death, nothing more elaborate, and reads the verse as a clean statement of correspondence: the guna ruling the last moment is the guna that determines the company and the womb of the next birth. He keeps his own comment brief, since the mechanism of guna-binding has already been laid out earlier in the chapter, and signals that a short restatement of the whole passage follows rather than treating 14.15 as needing further independent development.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja specifies the destinations concretely rather than leaving them general: a rajasic death places one in families devoted to reward-seeking action, fit for the pursuit of heaven and similar fruits; a tamasic death places one in confused wombs he names outright, dogs, pigs, and the like, unfit for any human goal whatsoever, whether duty, wealth, pleasure, or liberation. The birth itself, on his reading, forecloses or opens the very possibility of pursuing a human aim.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The extant record states plainly that Madhva offers no comment on this verse at all, a genuine silence rather than a thin fragment. No developed Dvaita reading of how a soul's guna at death fixes its next embodiment survives here. What can honestly be offered is only a labeled extrapolation from his wider theology: that the guna ruling death and the birth that follows would, on Dvaita principles of radical dependence, themselves be ordered by the Lord's will according to each soul's own fitness, not an independent finding drawn from words he is on record as having spoken about 14.15.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The material on file states that Abhinavagupta handles 14.14 and 14.15 as one continuous passage, with his full comment given at the prior verse and no independent fragment attaching to 14.15 alone. Any claim about how he specifically reads the rajas-clause or tamas-clause here would outrun the record. A labeled extension consistent with his broader framework would carry forward the reading given at 14.14, that each guna's rise is a contraction of consciousness's own freedom, into the further claim that the death-guna's contraction resurfaces as the shape of the very next embodiment, but this is offered as a construction, not as his recorded words on this verse.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara keeps both clauses brief and parallel, the jiva carrying its guna's grip straight across the boundary of death into the next body, human company for a rajasic death, animal wombs for a tamasic one. He adds a compressed summarizing line that functions almost as a formula for the whole two-verse passage: the threefold balance of the gunas decides not merely the coloring of a life but the very door through which the next birth opens.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
What survives of Madhusudana's comment on this verse is a close restatement of its own words rather than an independently developed argument, unlike his more technical, grammar-attentive readings elsewhere in the chapter. Read honestly, this is a modern-facing reminder that not every acarya's surviving record carries equal interpretive weight at every verse, and a synthesis owes the reader that distinction rather than papering over it with invented elaboration.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If the quality ruling a single moment at death can decide my next birth, is a lifetime of sincere effort fragile, and could a good person really be dropped into an animal womb over one slip at the end?
First, this is described as a working correspondence, not a hidden verdict waiting to ambush a good life: the guna dominant at death is read as matching the guna dominant across a life, not as an arbitrary lottery played out in the final second. Where the record is thin or silent for a given acarya on this exact point, that silence is worth naming rather than papering over with false certainty.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Second, the destinations named are specific rather than vague, which is itself informative: a rajasic death places one among people who already act for reward, and a tamasic death places one in wombs that are unfit for pursuing any human goal at all. Both outcomes are read as continuous with the disposition a person actually carried, not as random reassignments.
Rāmānujācārya
Third, where the extant commentary is silent, as with Madhva here, or deferred to a neighboring verse, as with Abhinavagupta, or reduced to plain restatement, as with Madhusudana, the honest response is not to invent confident reassurance in those voices but to let the fuller readings that are actually on record, above, carry the weight of the answer.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Do not read this verse as a verdict that makes a lifetime of effort feel fragile. Read it instead as a reason to let the quality that steadies your days be settled long before any final moment arrives, since the quality that rises at death is, for most people, the quality fed all along. Keep good company, study what is true, and let steady, unselfish action become so habitual that it is simply what surfaces when the body is leaving. The teaching names a mechanism, not a trap, and a mechanism can be worked with.
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.