Hope in the hundreds becomes a rope, and the one it drags mistakes the pulling for power.
It is tempting to read this as a simple warning against greed. It asks something more exact: notice when a wish you once held has quietly begun to hold you instead.
Tied down by hundreds of cords of hope, given wholly over to desire and anger, they strain to heap up wealth by unjust means, only to feed their cravings.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
This is the last line of a longer portrait Krishna has been building since verse 16.4: the demoniac nature laid out feature by feature. Here the portrait reaches its final image, and its sharpest one, hope itself pictured as a bundle of cords, and the person tangled in it mistaking the pull of those cords for his own free reach.
The teaching
Picture someone tied, not loosely but by hundreds of cords, and every cord is a hope he is still chasing. He is not merely tempted by these hopes; he is genuinely bound by them, dragged this way and then that, never quite steady. Desire and anger have stopped being occasional visitors in his life and have become his settled address, the ground he returns to as a matter of course. From that ground comes the outward act the verse names plainly: he strains to pile up wealth, and he does it by unjust means, seizing what belongs to others, and he does it purely to feed his own cravings, never for the sake of what is right. Watch closely what kind of fault is actually being named here. It is not wealth itself, and it is not wanting things as such. It is a specific failure of method, unjust means, joined to a specific failure of aim, enjoyment with no interest in dharma at all. And notice, too, the quiet mechanism underneath: this craving does not close when it is fed. It grows precisely as it is satisfied, so that each new gain confirms the thirst rather than ending it. The deepest irony sits in plain sight if you look for it. This person appears, from outside, to be the very picture of mastery: grasping, taking, accumulating without restraint. But look again. He is not the one doing the pulling. His own hopes have become the ropes, and they are pulling him.
The doubt that rises
If hope itself can harden into a rope, where exactly is the line between an ordinary wish and the noose this verse describes? Is it the object of the hope, the means used to reach it, or something quieter still, whether the hope has begun, without your noticing, to do the choosing for you?
Where the paths divide
Read as a precise diagnosis of a settled mind-state.
Shankara draws a sharp line between effort spent for dharma and effort spent purely for enjoyment, reading this verse as confirmation of a wrong-headed cast of mind held as settled fact, not stumbled into by accident. Madhusudana sharpens the diagnosis further: hope-as-snare is technically defined as craving fixed on ends that are unreachable or unknown, and the plural for heaps of wealth is read as proof that the thirst grows exactly as its objects are gained, so satisfaction never arrives.
Read at the scale the source itself actually gives.
Ramanuja's surviving comment on this verse is brief and clean: hope's cords bind, desire and anger are the resort, unlawful wealth-gathering is the resulting act. He does not extend, in what survives here, into his larger doctrine of surrendered agency or the Lord as inner ruler; that architecture belongs to other verses, and the honest reading respects the size of what he actually wrote on this one.
Read as an honest absence, not an invented doctrine.
The record states plainly that Madhva offers no comment on this verse. It would be easy to graft his general teaching of the self's total dependence on Hari onto this line, but doing so would dress an extrapolation up as his own settled word. On a conditional extension of his framework, the demoniac's frantic hoarding might be read as a soul exercising delegated competence in direct defiance of the dependence that competence rests on, but that reading is offered here only as a clearly labeled extension, not as anything he wrote.
Read as a fragment that does not reach this verse's own images.
What survives of Abhinavagupta's comment addresses verse 16.9's anxiety and the flare of anger when desire is thwarted, treating 16.9 through 16.12 as one continuous unit. Nothing in the fragment speaks, in its own terms, to this verse's specific pictures of hope-as-noose or unjust hoarding. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading, one might extend the fragment by saying the hope-noose is the mechanism by which unbounded awareness contracts into a small, anxious self measuring gain against loss, but that extension is flagged plainly as a reading built on a thin, shared fragment, not his settled word on this line.
Read as the deliberate close of a longer portrait.
Sridhara reads this verse as the calculated end of the twelve-verse demonic portrait that began several verses earlier, tying it to the anxious mood of the line just before. His real contribution is the irony that gives the whole portrait its final weight: the demon is not free even within his own demonic power. What looks like unchecked mastery, grasping and hoarding at will, is in fact bondage wearing the mask of command; the hopes he thought he held have turned, instead, into the ropes that move him.
Read as a functional account of acquisitive craving.
Set apart from any single doctrinal frame, Madhusudana's observation about the plural heaps of wealth offers something durable on its own: satisfying a want does not close it but strengthens its grip. This is not a special property of ancient greed; it is a mechanism anyone can recognize in the pursuit of money, status, approval, or any object that keeps growing in appeal precisely as it is obtained.
Every reading agrees that hope in the hundreds is a real bondage and that unjust wealth-gathering is its outward sign. What is left open, and what this page does not resolve, is where exactly the line runs between an ordinary wish, held and set down freely, and the hope that has hardened into a noose. Nor does it resolve what becomes of the person once that noose is recognized: does naming it loosen the grip, or does the recognition itself require something more, a redirection of what one takes as one's true refuge, as the wider tradition beyond this verse's own commentary suggests.
A question to carry
Take one hope you are currently pursuing. Are you still the one holding it and free to set it down, or has it, quietly and without your notice, begun to hold and move you instead?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May you learn to tell the difference between a hope you carry and a hope that carries you, and may you find, in that noticing, the freedom to set down whichever cords no longer serve the life you actually want to live.
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.
Closing the twelve-verse portrait of the demoniac that began at verse 16.4, this line follows the anxious grasping of the verse before and shows the final shape that grasping takes: bondage dressed up as mastery.
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.
Hope in the hundreds is not mild temptation but a genuine rope; the one bound by it is dragged, not lightly tempted.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Every reading with material to draw on agrees on the central image: hope itself, named in the hundreds, functions as a rope, and the person so bound is not lightly tempted but genuinely dragged. Shankara, Ramanuja, Sridhara, and Madhusudana all converge on this reading of aasha-paasha as bondage rather than mere longing.
Desire and anger are this person's supreme resort, the settled ground he returns to, not an occasional lapse from some better footing.
Across Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
Desire and anger are read, across every source, as this person's settled resort rather than his occasional lapse. The Sanskrit paraayana, supreme refuge, is taken literally: this is the ground such a person stands on, the place he returns to as a matter of course, not a place he stumbles into now and again.
The fault named is specific: unjust means and enjoyment as the sole aim, never dharma, and never accumulation as such.
Across Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
The wealth-gathering that follows is uniformly read as morally specific rather than merely excessive: the fault named is not accumulation as such but accumulation by unjust means, seizing what belongs to another, undertaken solely for the enjoyment of cravings rather than for dharma. This distinction between the aim and the method is what every surviving comment is careful to preserve.
Where the source is thin or silent, as with Madhva and Abhinavagupta on this particular line, the honest reading says so plainly rather than inventing a confident voice.
Across Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaMadhva · AbhinavaguptaIn Madhva and Abhinavagupta’s words
Where the commentary is thin or absent, as with Madhva and Abhinavagupta on this particular verse, the honest reading is that the surviving record does not extend to this line in its own terms, and no confident, verse-specific position should be manufactured to fill that gap.
The portrait closes on an irony: the figure who looks like unchecked power is, in fact, dragged by his own hopes rather than wielding them.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · ŚaṅkaraIn Śrīdhara and Śaṅkara’s words
Sridhara's framing adds an irony that the other readings imply without stating outright: this figure who appears to be seizing the world by force is, in fact, not free at all. His own hopes have become the cords that move him, so the portrait of mastery the verse paints is, on inspection, a portrait of bondage.
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 surviving comment on this verse is brief and structural: hope's cords bind, desire and anger are the resort, unlawful wealth-gathering is the resulting act. He does not, in what survives on this line, extend into his larger doctrine of surrendered agency or the Lord as inner ruler; that material belongs to other verses, and the honest reading keeps this comment at the scale the source actually gives it.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The source states plainly that Madhva offers no comment on this verse. Any wider claim about delegated agency or dependence on Hari would be an extrapolation from his general doctrine, not a reading he actually wrote here, and it is flagged as such rather than presented as his own word.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads this verse as the deliberate close of the whole twelve-verse demonic portrait, tying it to the anxiety of the line before and adding the irony that gives the passage its final weight: this person who looks like unchecked mastery is, in truth, not free at all. His own hopes have turned to ropes, and it is they that do the pulling.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for its functional psychology rather than its doctrinal frame, Madhusudana's account of a thirst that grows precisely as it is fed offers a durable, verse-grounded description of acquisitive craving: satisfaction of a want does not close it but strengthens its grip, an observation the verse itself makes through nothing more exotic than a plural noun.
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, without judgment, one hope you are currently holding onto, and ask honestly whether you are still holding it or whether it has begun to hold you. A hope you hold can be set down when it no longer serves you. A hope that holds you decides, on its own schedule, when you may rest, and that is the difference this verse is naming.
So take one hope you are holding, and ask it plainly whether you still hold it, or whether, without your noticing, it has begun to hold you.
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
very reading with material to draw on agrees on the central image: hope itself, named in the hundreds, functions as a rope, and the person so bound is not lightly tempted but genuinely dragged. Shankara, Ramanuja, Sridhara, and Madhusudana all converge on this reading of aasha-paasha as bondage rather than mere longing.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Desire and anger are read, across every source, as this person's settled resort rather than his occasional lapse. The Sanskrit paraayana, supreme refuge, is taken literally: this is the ground such a person stands on, the place he returns to as a matter of course, not a place he stumbles into now and again.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The wealth-gathering that follows is uniformly read as morally specific rather than merely excessive: the fault named is not accumulation as such but accumulation by unjust means, seizing what belongs to another, undertaken solely for the enjoyment of cravings rather than for dharma. This distinction between the aim and the method is what every surviving comment is careful to preserve.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the commentary is thin or absent, as with Madhva and Abhinavagupta on this particular verse, the honest reading is that the surviving record does not extend to this line in its own terms, and no confident, verse-specific position should be manufactured to fill that gap.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Sridhara's framing adds an irony that the other readings imply without stating outright: this figure who appears to be seizing the world by force is, in fact, not free at all. His own hopes have become the cords that move him, so the portrait of mastery the verse paints is, on inspection, a portrait of bondage.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śaṅkarācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara draws the sharpest line between effort spent for dharma and effort spent purely for enjoyment, treating this verse as confirmation of a settled, wrong-headed cast of mind rather than a stumble. Madhusudana sharpens the diagnosis further, defining hope-as-snare technically as craving fixed on ends that are unreachable or unknown, and reading the plural heaps of wealth as proof that this thirst grows precisely as its objects are gained, never closing on satisfaction.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's surviving comment on this verse is brief and structural: hope's cords bind, desire and anger are the resort, unlawful wealth-gathering is the resulting act. He does not, in what survives on this line, extend into his larger doctrine of surrendered agency or the Lord as inner ruler; that material belongs to other verses, and the honest reading keeps this comment at the scale the source actually gives it.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The source states plainly that Madhva offers no comment on this verse. Any wider claim about delegated agency or dependence on Hari would be an extrapolation from his general doctrine, not a reading he actually wrote here, and it is flagged as such rather than presented as his own word.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
What survives of Abhinavagupta's comment here belongs properly to verse 16.9, treating 16.9 through 16.12 as one block and addressing only the demoniac's unceasing anxiety and the flare of anger when desire is thwarted. Nothing in the fragment addresses this verse's own images of hope-as-noose or unjust hoarding in their own terms; any Kashmir Shaiva reading of those specific images is offered here as a clearly labeled extrapolation, not as his settled word.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads this verse as the deliberate close of the whole twelve-verse demonic portrait, tying it to the anxiety of the line before and adding the irony that gives the passage its final weight: this person who looks like unchecked mastery is, in truth, not free at all. His own hopes have turned to ropes, and it is they that do the pulling.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for its functional psychology rather than its doctrinal frame, Madhusudana's account of a thirst that grows precisely as it is fed offers a durable, verse-grounded description of acquisitive craving: satisfaction of a want does not close it but strengthens its grip, an observation the verse itself makes through nothing more exotic than a plural noun.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
Is every hope a trap, or does this verse condemn something narrower than hoping itself?
Every surviving comment locates the fault in the method and the aim, not in wanting as such. What is named is unjust means, seizing what belongs to another, joined to a purpose wholly turned toward enjoying one's own cravings rather than toward dharma. The failure is specific, not a blanket verdict against all desire.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The deeper mark of the trap, on Madhusudana's reading, is a hope that keeps growing precisely as it is fed, so that no amount gained ever closes it. A hope you can set down when it has served its purpose is not yet the noose the verse describes; a hope that only strengthens its grip on being satisfied is.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Sridhara's framing supplies the practical test: ask whether you are still the one choosing, or whether the hope has begun to choose for you, pulling you toward acts you would otherwise refuse. The verse's portrait of a grasping figure who is secretly not free at all is the warning against letting that line be crossed unnoticed.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
Notice, without judgment, one hope you are currently holding onto, and ask honestly whether you are still holding it or whether it has begun to hold you. A hope you hold can be set down when it no longer serves you. A hope that holds you decides, on its own schedule, when you may rest, and that is the difference this verse is naming.
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.