The self takes its seat over the senses; how completely it "enjoys" is exactly what the schools contest.
This is Krishna's narration, not his own command: he is describing what the migrating self does once settled into a body. The schools agree on the presiding; they part on how far the enjoying reaches, and on how much of the surviving commentary here can honestly speak in each master's own voice.
Taking its seat over the ear, the eye, the skin, the tongue, and the nose, with the mind as the sixth, the embodied self makes use of them to meet the objects of the senses.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
You have just watched the self leave one body and carry its instruments onward like fragrance on the wind. Now Krishna shows what it does once settled into a new one: it takes its seat over the senses and, through them, meets the sense-world.
The teaching
The verse names the equipment plainly: the ear that hears, the eye that sees, the skin that touches, the tongue that tastes, the nose that smells, and the mind counted as the sixth. These are the instruments; nothing here suggests the self is any one of them. What the self does with this equipment is described in two distinct steps. First it presides, taking the seat of the one in charge while each sense does its own separate work on its own kind of object. Only then, from that seat, does it meet and partake of what belongs to each: sound, touch, form, taste, smell. Presiding is the governing relation; enjoying is what happens through the instruments while that governing seat is held. Honesty about the sources matters here as much as the teaching itself. For several of the six acaryas, what survives on this particular verse is thin, close to a restatement of the line rather than an argued position, and this page will not dress that thinness up as a fuller commentary than it is. Abhinavagupta's material, by contrast, is rich: he reads the self's abiding, departing, and enjoying as three moments of one joint working with the senses, visible to the awakened and missed entirely by the deluded, who do not keep awareness in view while the contact happens.
The doubt that rises
If the self only presides and never becomes the senses, why does each sound, sight, and taste still feel entirely like mine, as though I were the one doing the enjoying rather than merely governing it?
Where the paths divide
Reading a thin fragment cautiously, extended along Shankara's witness-consciousness position.
What survives for Shankara here is close to a bare paraphrase, with one added gloss naming the presiding self as silent witness. Read no further than that gloss allows: the self presides as pure awareness, and even the enjoying named in the verse belongs only to the conditioned, embodied self, never touching awareness in its own untouched nature. A fuller three-part Advaita exposition is not attested here and should not be invented in his name.
Extrapolated candidly from Ramanuja's wider framework, since his own line is a bare restatement.
Ramanuja's preserved comment on this verse offers nothing beyond a restatement. What can honestly be extended, clearly marked as extrapolation, is that his Vishishtadvaita elsewhere holds the self to be a real, conscious agent and enjoyer, dependent at every moment on the Lord as inner ruler; on that extension, presiding over the senses would be genuine agency, sustained rather than self-originating.
Drawn from Jayatirtha's sub-commentary on Madhva, since Madhva's own preserved line is a bare paraphrase.
Taken together with Jayatirtha, the verse is read as speaking of the Lord as well as the bound soul. The Lord too enjoys through the senses, but strictly the pure quality within each object, never its impure aspect, since scripture holds that sin does not reach the gods; the joy of a song played on the lute is really the Lord's own hearing, present within the singer's.
Read from Abhinavagupta's fuller, well-preserved exposition of this verse.
The self never works alone, not even in simply abiding: sitting, reflecting, and grasping objects are all joint work with the senses and mind. Three moments follow, abiding, departing, and enjoying, and all three are missed by the deluded, who are simply unawakened, while the awakened keep awareness continuously in view and so do not lose their absorption. Yet effort alone is no guarantee: where the inner stain is not yet ripe, even a powerful means fails to come to fullness, the way seed sown in the wrong season fails however much water is brought to it.
Read from Sridhara's one compact, preserved paragraph.
Sridhara reads the verse as showing exactly why the self set out with its instruments in the verse just before: the outer senses and the mind are its resort, and so seated, the self enjoys the sense-objects proper to each. He keeps the whole migrating bundle deliberately simple, outer powers framed by a governing mind, standing ready at the service of enjoyment, and does not press the point further than this.
Read forward from Madhusudana's single preserved phrase.
The one line that survives for Madhusudana folds the individual self and the Lord together as "the Lord-as-jiva," consistent with treating the enjoyer named here as belonging to the self's conditioned, embodied aspect rather than to awareness in its final nature. Carried into a modern register, this becomes a caution against mistaking the felt experience of enjoying for a settled fact about what the self ultimately is.
All six readings agree the self presides rather than merges. They part, and honestly cannot always be pressed further given how thin some of the surviving material is, on how completely that presiding self is also the enjoyer: witness only, dependent agent, enjoyer of the pure alone, joint worker seen only by the awakened, or a self simply kept ready for the task. This page keeps that plurality open rather than manufacturing a false consensus.
A question to carry
The next time a sound or a taste arrives and immediately feels like 'mine,' can you find the half-second where presiding and enjoying were still two separate things, before the story of an owner closed back over them?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Let the ear hear, the eye see, the tongue taste, exactly as they were made to. Rest, underneath all of it, in the one who presides, and let the enjoying come and go without gathering into a story you must defend.
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 shown the self carrying its senses from body to body like fragrance on the wind, Krishna now describes what it does with them once it has arrived: it presides, and it meets the sense-world through them.
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 self presides over ear, eye, skin, tongue, nose, and mind as the instruments through which it meets the world, the same instruments it carries from body to body.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse lists the instruments through which the embodied self meets the world: ear, eye, skin, tongue, and nose, with the mind counted as the sixth. These are simply named as the equipment the self uses, the same equipment it was shown carrying from body to body in the verse just before.
Presiding and enjoying are named as two distinct moments: the self governs from its seat, and only then, through the instruments, does it meet sound, touch, form, taste, and smell.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The self does not dissolve into these senses or get reduced to them; it presides over them, taking the seat of the one in charge while each sense does its own separate work on its own kind of object, and from that seat it meets and partakes of sound, touch, form, taste, and smell.
For several of the six acaryas, the surviving material on this specific verse is thin, a near bare restatement rather than a developed argument, and this page says so rather than inventing confidence it does not have.
Across Advaita, Kashmir Śaiva, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Abhinavagupta · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Abhinavagupta, and 1 others’ words
Read together with the verse before, this shows what the subtle body does once it has settled into a body: it enters, it enjoys its objects through these instruments, and later it leaves, carrying the same instruments onward like fragrance carried by the wind.
Abhinavagupta's fuller reading holds that this joint working of self and instrument is missed by the deluded and seen continuously by the awakened, which is where practice actually bears on the verse.
Across Dvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, AdvaitaMadhva · Abhinavagupta · ŚaṅkaraIn Madhva, Abhinavagupta, and 1 others’ words
Whatever the school, the enjoying named here is never treated as a simple, untroubled fact. Each reading qualifies it: as belonging only to a conditioned self, only to the pure aspect of an object, only to one who has become awakened, or only when no sense of ownership has been added to it.
Whatever the school, no reading treats the enjoying named here as a simple, final fact about the self; each qualifies it, as witnessed, as dependent, as purely pure, or as merely conditioned.
Across Kashmir ŚaivaAbhinavaguptaIn Abhinavagupta’s words
Abhinavagupta's fuller reading, which the source preserves in real depth, insists that this presiding-and-enjoying is visible to the awakened and invisible to the deluded; the difference is never in the instruments themselves but in whether awareness is kept continuously in view while they are used.
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's own line here is a bare restatement with no independent argument preserved. What can be said, flagged as extrapolation from his wider position rather than verse-specific attestation, is that for Vishishtadvaita the self is a real, conscious enjoyer, and its presiding over the senses would be understood as genuine agency that remains, at every moment, sustained by the Lord as inner ruler.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Drawing on Jayatirtha's sub-commentary on Madhva, since Madhva's own line is a bare paraphrase, the verse is read as speaking of the Lord as well as the bound soul: the Lord enjoys through the senses too, but only the pure quality within each object, never the impure, since sin does not reach the gods, as when the song a singer plays on the lute is really heard by the Lord within.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara's single preserved paragraph reads the verse as showing exactly why the self set out with its instruments in the previous verse: the outer senses and the mind are its resort, and so seated, the self enjoys the sense-objects proper to each. The whole migrating bundle is kept deliberately simple, outer powers framed by a governing mind, standing ready at the service of enjoyment.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
The one phrase preserved for Madhusudana folds the individual self and the Lord together as "the Lord-as-jiva," consistent with an Advaita reading in which the enjoyer named here belongs only to the self's conditioned, embodied aspect. Read forward to a modern register, this becomes a caution against confusing the psychological experience of enjoying with anything final about who or what the self actually is.
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
As you notice a sound, a sight, a taste arising right now, try holding it this way: something is presiding over this contact, and something is meeting the object through the instrument proper to it. See if you can rest your attention on the presiding itself, the bare fact of being aware, rather than sliding immediately into the story of an 'I' who is enjoying or resisting what has arrived.
Notice, the next time a sound or sight or taste arrives, that something is presiding over the contact and something is meeting it through its proper instrument; rest, if only for a breath, in the presiding itself.
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 lists the instruments through which the embodied self meets the world: ear, eye, skin, tongue, and nose, with the mind counted as the sixth. These are simply named as the equipment the self uses, the same equipment it was shown carrying from body to body in the verse just before.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The self does not dissolve into these senses or get reduced to them; it presides over them, taking the seat of the one in charge while each sense does its own separate work on its own kind of object, and from that seat it meets and partakes of sound, touch, form, taste, and smell.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Read together with the verse before, this shows what the subtle body does once it has settled into a body: it enters, it enjoys its objects through these instruments, and later it leaves, carrying the same instruments onward like fragrance carried by the wind.
Śaṅkarācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Whatever the school, the enjoying named here is never treated as a simple, untroubled fact. Each reading qualifies it: as belonging only to a conditioned self, only to the pure aspect of an object, only to one who has become awakened, or only when no sense of ownership has been added to it.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śaṅkarācārya
Abhinavagupta's fuller reading, which the source preserves in real depth, insists that this presiding-and-enjoying is visible to the awakened and invisible to the deluded; the difference is never in the instruments themselves but in whether awareness is kept continuously in view while they are used.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The material for Shankara here is thin, a paraphrase plus one gloss naming the self as silent witness behind the senses. That gloss is read as consistent with the wider Advaita position: the self presides as pure awareness, and even the enjoyment named in the verse belongs to the self only as conditioned by the instruments, never touching the self's own untouched nature.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's own line here is a bare restatement with no independent argument preserved. What can be said, flagged as extrapolation from his wider position rather than verse-specific attestation, is that for Vishishtadvaita the self is a real, conscious enjoyer, and its presiding over the senses would be understood as genuine agency that remains, at every moment, sustained by the Lord as inner ruler.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Drawing on Jayatirtha's sub-commentary on Madhva, since Madhva's own line is a bare paraphrase, the verse is read as speaking of the Lord as well as the bound soul: the Lord enjoys through the senses too, but only the pure quality within each object, never the impure, since sin does not reach the gods, as when the song a singer plays on the lute is really heard by the Lord within.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta reads the verse as settling that the self never works alone, not even in simply abiding: sitting, reflecting, and grasping objects are all joint work with the senses and mind. The deluded miss this joint working entirely; the awakened keep awareness continuously in view and so do not lose their absorption even while enjoying objects, though effort alone bears no fruit where the inner stain is not yet ripe.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara's single preserved paragraph reads the verse as showing exactly why the self set out with its instruments in the previous verse: the outer senses and the mind are its resort, and so seated, the self enjoys the sense-objects proper to each. The whole migrating bundle is kept deliberately simple, outer powers framed by a governing mind, standing ready at the service of enjoyment.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
The one phrase preserved for Madhusudana folds the individual self and the Lord together as "the Lord-as-jiva," consistent with an Advaita reading in which the enjoyer named here belongs only to the self's conditioned, embodied aspect. Read forward to a modern register, this becomes a caution against confusing the psychological experience of enjoying with anything final about who or what the self actually is.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If the self only presides over the senses and does not become them, why does the enjoying feel so completely like mine, moment to moment?
The verse itself keeps 'presiding' and 'enjoying' as two distinct acts rather than one. Presiding names the self's governing seat; enjoying names what happens through the instruments while the self holds that seat. The felt sense of 'mine' arises at the second step, in the joining of self with subtle body, not in the bare presiding itself.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Abhinavagupta's reading suggests why the ownership feels so complete for most people: the deluded do not keep awareness in view while sensing, so the instrument's activity and the self's presence blur together unnoticed. The awakened keep noticing the presiding itself continuously, which is exactly what prevents the blur from taking over.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
The Dvaita extension through Jayatirtha adds a further check on how completely anything can be claimed as one's own enjoying: if even the Lord's enjoying through the senses is qualified, reaching only the pure aspect of an object, then the ordinary sense of total ownership a person feels over their own enjoying is already a simplification worth questioning.
Madhvācārya
Contemplation
As you notice a sound, a sight, a taste arising right now, try holding it this way: something is presiding over this contact, and something is meeting the object through the instrument proper to it. See if you can rest your attention on the presiding itself, the bare fact of being aware, rather than sliding immediately into the story of an 'I' who is enjoying or resisting what has arrived.
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.