Six qualities close the portrait: not achievements you assemble, but the shape of a nature already turning toward the good.
It is tempting to read this as a checklist you must complete. The commentators, where they speak plainly, read it instead as a description: this is what a heart already leaning toward the divine looks like from outside.
Vigor, forgiveness, steadiness, purity, freedom from malice, and freedom from vanity: these belong to one born toward the divine nature, Arjuna.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has been building this catalogue for two verses now, naming the traits of a life leaning toward the godly side. Here he adds the last six and closes the list. Twenty-six qualities in all, by the usual count, and now the accounting is done. What remains is what he does with the list next: in the very next verse he turns to name the opposite nature, so this line is also a hinge, the last word on one side before the other side is spoken.
The teaching
Take the six slowly. Vigor, tejas, is not a glow of complexion or the heat of a quick temper; it is boldness, a firmness in a person that will not be overborne. Forbearance, kshama, is not simply the freedom from anger named a verse earlier. Freedom from anger is the settling of a disturbance once it has already risen in you; forbearance is the finer thing, that no such disturbance rises at all when you are reviled or struck, even though you could strike back. Steadiness, dhriti, is what holds body and mind up against weariness, sorrow, or calamity, so that neither gives way and sinks. Purity, shaucha, runs in two directions at once, an outer cleanliness by earth and water and an inner cleanliness that clears the mind and intellect of the residue of delusion and craving; more than one reading takes the inner sense as the one that finally carries the weight. Freedom from malice, adroha, is simply no wish to harm another being. And freedom from over-pride, na-atimanita, is no swollen sense of your own worth of honor. The closing phrase says whose these are: one born to the divine endowment. Not born into a family or a caste, the commentators insist, but born with a nature already leaning toward the good, toward the Lord, of which these six are the plain overflow. It is worth being honest, too, about what the old commentaries do and do not preserve here. Some sources, at this exact verse, are thin: Madhva's surviving comment addresses only forbearance in any detail, and Abhinavagupta's treats this verse as folded into a longer passage beginning at 16.1, with no separate remarks recorded on the other five terms. That gap is worth naming rather than quietly filling in.
The doubt that rises
If these qualities are simply the overflow of a nature already turned toward the good, is there anything for someone who does not yet feel that turning to actually do? Or does the list only describe people who have, in some sense, already arrived?
Where the paths divide
Read through precise definitions, then bent toward Self-knowledge.
Shankara's comment is careful and technical, distinguishing forbearance from the freedom from anger named just before it, and glossing purity as both outer and inner. Madhusudana builds further: he maps these six, with the twenty preceding qualities, onto the four social classes as their special duties, and then reads the entire catalogue, common qualities and class-specific ones together, as a means bent toward one single aim, the desire to know the Self. On this reading, the virtues are not the destination. They are the ground that is cleared so a different kind of seeing becomes possible.
Read as the shape obedience to the Lord takes.
Ramanuja folds the definition of the divine endowment itself into relationship: the gods are simply those whose nature is to follow the command of the Blessed One, so the endowment just is that following. Each of the six qualities, on his reading, names how such a person stands toward others, not thwarting their free movement, holding steady even in calamity, keeping outer and inner organs fit by scripture's own measure for whatever must be done. The list, in his hands, describes the full inner equipment of a servant already turned toward obedience.
Read narrowly and precisely, only as far as the source goes.
What survives of Madhva's comment on this verse, in the source drawn on here, addresses only kshama, forbearance, and addresses it with real precision: it is feeling no anger toward one who has wronged you, distinguished by his sub-commentator Jayatirtha from the freedom from anger already named, because forbearance concerns the specific not-returning of the anger, the fault, and the injury actually suffered. No comparably detailed Dvaita reading of the other five terms survives here, and none is invented to fill that space.
Read where the source speaks, and flagged where it goes further.
Abhinavagupta's surviving commentary treats 16.1 through 16.5 as one continuous passage, with the substantive comment given at 16.1 and no separate remarks recorded here at 16.3. What is preserved there reads tejas as the dissolving of a felt sense of limitation, arising from a taking-up of eagerness in oneself, within an endowment that as a whole serves release by dispelling desire. To extend that same idiom to forbearance, purity, and the rest as further loosenings of a narrow, defended self is a plausible development of his outlook, offered here explicitly as an extension beyond the text rather than as his own recorded words.
Read as one continuous portrait, not a checklist.
Sridhara declines to treat 16.1 through 16.3 as separate rules and instead reads the whole stretch as a single portrait of a person whose nature is already turning toward the godly side. The verb throughout, he notes, is simply that these qualities come to be in one so born; practice refines what begins as the very character of such a person, not a program that assembles someone from nothing. The good fortune, on his reading, is already rising at the moment such a person enters the world.
Read as groundwork the seeker can still be building.
Carried forward, Madhusudana's own claim that the whole list serves the desire to know the Self suggests a use for these qualities even for someone who does not yet possess them fully: they are named as means, not as a finish line already crossed. A person still assembling forbearance or steadiness unevenly, one small refusal to strike back at a time, is already doing the very thing the list exists to prepare.
The schools agree closely on what each of the six words means and on reading the birth in question as an inner nature rather than a social fact. Where they part, and where this page leaves the question open, is on what to do when a tradition's own record runs thin: whether the honest response is simply to name the gap, as with Madhva's narrow focus on forbearance and Abhinavagupta's folding of this verse into 16.1, or to risk a labeled extension of that tradition's known idiom into the space the source leaves silent. Both are offered here, kept visibly distinct from each other.
A question to carry
Of these six, which one would you say is least alive in you right now, and can you let that simply be a starting point rather than a verdict?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May the turning that these qualities describe be already stirring in you, quietly, whether or not the list feels complete yet, and may you trust the stirring more than the scorecard.
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 long catalogue of the daivi sampad, begun two verses earlier, comes here to its close, naming the last of the twenty-six qualities before Krishna turns, in the very next verse, to describe the demonic nature by contrast.
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.
Vigor is boldness that cannot be cowed, not brightness of skin or heat of temper; steadiness holds body and mind up against weariness and calamity rather than letting them sink.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
This verse closes the long catalogue of the daivi sampad, the divine endowment, that Krishna began two verses earlier. Together the three verses are usually counted as naming twenty-six qualities in all, and this final six, vigor, forbearance, steadiness, purity, freedom from malice, and freedom from over-pride, brings the list to its end. The commentators agree the verb governing the whole sentence is simply that these qualities come to be, bhavanti, in a person of a certain kind.
Forbearance is not a repeat of the freedom from anger named a verse earlier: freedom from anger settles a disturbance already stirred, forbearance is that no disturbance stirs at all when you are wronged.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
There is close agreement on what each term actually names. Vigor is not a bright complexion or the heat of temper; it is boldness, a firmness that cannot be cowed or overborne. Steadiness is what holds body and senses up against weariness, sorrow, or calamity, keeping them from sinking. Purity has an outer sense, cleanliness by earth and water, and an inner sense, the clearing of mind and intellect from delusion; freedom from malice is simply no wish to harm; freedom from over-pride is no excessive sense of one's own worth of honor.
Purity runs two ways, an outer cleanliness by earth and water and an inner cleanliness that clears the mind and intellect of delusion, and more than one reading weighs the inner sense as the one that finally matters.
Across Advaita, DvaitaŚaṅkara · MadhvaIn Śaṅkara and Madhva’s words
Several commentators are careful to distinguish forbearance, kshama, from the freedom from anger already named a verse earlier, so that the two words are not simply saying the same thing twice. The distinction turns on timing: freedom from anger is the settling of a disturbance already arisen, while forbearance is that no such disturbance arises at all when the provocation, an insult or a blow, actually comes.
Freedom from malice and freedom from over-pride round out the six: no wish to harm another, and no swollen sense of your own worth of honor.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The closing phrase names whose qualities these are: one born to the divine endowment. The commentators converge in reading that birth as a matter of inner nature rather than family or caste, a disposition already leaning toward the good, toward the sattvic, toward the Lord, of which these six qualities are simply the natural overflow rather than a separately assembled achievement.
The birth this verse names is a matter of inner nature, not family or caste, and where the sources are thin, as with several terms in Madhva's and Abhinavagupta's surviving comments, that thinness is left honestly visible rather than papered over.
Across AdvaitaŚaṅkara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara and Madhusūdana’s words
The address Bharata, scion of the Bharata line, is read by more than one commentator as directed, gently, at Arjuna himself: sprung from a noble lineage, he is being told he is already fit to carry these very qualities, so the catalogue is not abstract instruction but a mirror held up to the listener.
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 defines the divine endowment relationally: the gods are those whose nature is to follow the command of the Blessed One, so the endowment just is that following, and each of the six qualities is glossed with an eye to how a person stands toward others and toward that command, purity as scriptural fitness for what must be done, freedom from malice as not obstructing another's free movement. The catalogue names the qualified servant by his full inner equipment.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The material available for Madhva on this verse addresses only kshama, forbearance, defined by lexicon as feeling no anger toward one who has wronged you, distinct from the freedom from anger already named because it concerns the not-returning of the anger, the fault, and the injury actually done to you. No comparably specific Dvaita gloss on the other five terms survives in the source used here, and none is invented in its place.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's surviving comment treats 16.1 through 16.5 as one passage and does not gloss this verse's six terms individually; what is preserved, at 16.1, reads tejas as the dissolving of any felt sense of limitation, born of a taking-up of eagerness, within the divine endowment as a whole that serves release by dispelling desire. Extending that idiom to forbearance, steadiness, purity, and the rest as loosened contractions of a narrower self is a plausible but clearly conditional reading beyond what the extant text states.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara declines to treat the list as separate rules and instead reads all three verses, 16.1 through 16.3, as a single continuous portrait of the person whose nature is already turned toward the godly side, a portrait that practice will refine rather than a program that assembles the person from scratch. The good fortune, on his reading, is already rising in such a person at the moment of birth.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read forward into a modern register, Madhusudana's insistence that the whole list serves the desire to know the Self reframes these six qualities as instrumental rather than final: they are not the goal of practice but its groundwork, cultivated because a mind stabilized by them becomes fit for the deeper inquiry the Gita will eventually turn to.
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
Take just one pairing today: forbearance and freedom from over-pride. Notice, the next time you are slighted, whether any heat rises in you at all, and notice too, the next time you are praised, whether any swelling rises in you at all. You are not trying to suppress either response. You are simply watching where your sense of self still needs defending, in injury or in honor, and letting that watching be the whole of the practice for now.
So do not read this list as a test you must pass before the divine nature will claim you. Let it be a mirror instead, and let whatever in you already leans toward the good keep leaning, quietly, without needing to prove itself complete.
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 closes the long catalogue of the daivi sampad, the divine endowment, that Krishna began two verses earlier. Together the three verses are usually counted as naming twenty-six qualities in all, and this final six, vigor, forbearance, steadiness, purity, freedom from malice, and freedom from over-pride, brings the list to its end. The commentators agree the verb governing the whole sentence is simply that these qualities come to be, bhavanti, in a person of a certain kind.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
There is close agreement on what each term actually names. Vigor is not a bright complexion or the heat of temper; it is boldness, a firmness that cannot be cowed or overborne. Steadiness is what holds body and senses up against weariness, sorrow, or calamity, keeping them from sinking. Purity has an outer sense, cleanliness by earth and water, and an inner sense, the clearing of mind and intellect from delusion; freedom from malice is simply no wish to harm; freedom from over-pride is no excessive sense of one's own worth of honor.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Several commentators are careful to distinguish forbearance, kshama, from the freedom from anger already named a verse earlier, so that the two words are not simply saying the same thing twice. The distinction turns on timing: freedom from anger is the settling of a disturbance already arisen, while forbearance is that no such disturbance arises at all when the provocation, an insult or a blow, actually comes.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya
The closing phrase names whose qualities these are: one born to the divine endowment. The commentators converge in reading that birth as a matter of inner nature rather than family or caste, a disposition already leaning toward the good, toward the sattvic, toward the Lord, of which these six qualities are simply the natural overflow rather than a separately assembled achievement.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The address Bharata, scion of the Bharata line, is read by more than one commentator as directed, gently, at Arjuna himself: sprung from a noble lineage, he is being told he is already fit to carry these very qualities, so the catalogue is not abstract instruction but a mirror held up to the listener.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the six terms as careful, technical definitions distinguishing near-synonyms, and treats the verse chiefly as marking the close of the divine catalogue before the demonic one begins. Madhusudana goes further and maps the six, along with the twenty preceding qualities, onto the four social classes as their special duties, tejas, kshama, and dhriti belonging to the warrior, purity and freedom from malice to the merchant, freedom from over-pride to the servant, and reads the whole list, common and class-specific alike, as a means bent toward the desire to know the Self.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja defines the divine endowment relationally: the gods are those whose nature is to follow the command of the Blessed One, so the endowment just is that following, and each of the six qualities is glossed with an eye to how a person stands toward others and toward that command, purity as scriptural fitness for what must be done, freedom from malice as not obstructing another's free movement. The catalogue names the qualified servant by his full inner equipment.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The material available for Madhva on this verse addresses only kshama, forbearance, defined by lexicon as feeling no anger toward one who has wronged you, distinct from the freedom from anger already named because it concerns the not-returning of the anger, the fault, and the injury actually done to you. No comparably specific Dvaita gloss on the other five terms survives in the source used here, and none is invented in its place.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving comment treats 16.1 through 16.5 as one passage and does not gloss this verse's six terms individually; what is preserved, at 16.1, reads tejas as the dissolving of any felt sense of limitation, born of a taking-up of eagerness, within the divine endowment as a whole that serves release by dispelling desire. Extending that idiom to forbearance, steadiness, purity, and the rest as loosened contractions of a narrower self is a plausible but clearly conditional reading beyond what the extant text states.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara declines to treat the list as separate rules and instead reads all three verses, 16.1 through 16.3, as a single continuous portrait of the person whose nature is already turned toward the godly side, a portrait that practice will refine rather than a program that assembles the person from scratch. The good fortune, on his reading, is already rising in such a person at the moment of birth.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read forward into a modern register, Madhusudana's insistence that the whole list serves the desire to know the Self reframes these six qualities as instrumental rather than final: they are not the goal of practice but its groundwork, cultivated because a mind stabilized by them becomes fit for the deeper inquiry the Gita will eventually turn to.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
This list of qualities feels like a standard I clearly do not meet. Am I simply not one of the people born to the divine nature, and if so, what is the use of hearing the list at all?
More than one reading insists this is not an examination you either pass or fail. Sridhara reads the whole catalogue as a portrait of a nature already turning, not a bar you must clear before the description applies to you; the qualities are what such a turning looks like from outside, not a gate barring you from it.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Where the source material for a given quality is thin or silent, as with several terms in Madhva's surviving comment and in Abhinavagupta's, the honest response is not to feel judged by a full weight of tradition that in fact never spoke to that particular point. Much of what feels like a complete verdict on you is actually a partial record, and it is worth not mistaking the gap in the sources for a gap in your own worth.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Madhusudana's own architecture points toward a use for the list even short of possessing it: these qualities are named as means toward knowing the Self, not as the finish line. A person still assembling them, unevenly and imperfectly, is already doing the thing the list is for.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Take just one pairing today: forbearance and freedom from over-pride. Notice, the next time you are slighted, whether any heat rises in you at all, and notice too, the next time you are praised, whether any swelling rises in you at all. You are not trying to suppress either response. You are simply watching where your sense of self still needs defending, in injury or in honor, and letting that watching be the whole of the practice for now.
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.