Before the sorting comes, Krishna names exactly what will be sorted, and closes the count at three.
It is tempting to skim past an announcement to reach the content. Read closely, the announcement already does real work: it fixes the subjects, knowledge, action, and the doer, and fixes their limit, three kinds only, before a single kind is named.
Knowledge, action, and the one who acts are each of exactly three kinds, sorted by the difference of the gunas, just as the philosophy that counts the gunas teaches. Hear these three kinds too, Arjuna, exactly as they are.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just corrected a specific error, seeing the Self alone as the doer of an action. Now he pauses at the threshold of a longer teaching. Before laying out any of the actual kinds, he tells Arjuna exactly what is coming: three things, sorted three ways, and asks him to listen accurately.
The teaching
Three things are named here as the coming subjects: knowledge, the act that gets done, and the doer who carries it out. Each of these, Krishna says, is of exactly three kinds, and the word only closes that count firmly. There is no fourth class waiting beyond the three, because knowledge, action, and the doer are, in their very make-up, woven of the gunas and nothing besides. The dividing principle is named too: the difference of sattva, rajas, and tamas, the calm, the restless, and the dull strands running through everything that acts or is known or is done. For where this classification comes from, Krishna points to the reckoning of the gunas, the system associated with Kapila, drawn upon here as a working authority on how the gunas divide their effects, even though, on more than one reading, that same system disagrees with these commentators on the highest question of all, whether Brahman alone is real. There is no contradiction in this, since a system can be trusted on a narrower, practical question while parting ways on the deepest one. And Krishna closes with an instruction about how to receive what follows: hear these too, he says, exactly as they are. This is a call to settle the mind and listen in due order, not to filter the coming teaching through old habits of self-understanding. A few of the extant remarks on this exact verse are themselves brief, plain receptions of this announcement, and that, too, is worth noticing: not every verse needs to yield a sprawling argument. Some verses simply set the table for what is coming.
The doubt that rises
If the whole point of this verse is only to announce a classification that has not yet been given, what does the announcement itself already teach, and why does Krishna think Arjuna needs to be told the shape of the answer before he hears the answer?
Where the paths divide
Read as a precise hinge, brief and pointed at what follows.
The verse states its limits exactly and moves on: knowledge, action, and the doer are threefold, and only threefold, by the gunas. One source treats this comment mainly as a functional turn, signaling that knowledge's own threefold nature will be shown next; a fuller companion reading goes further, reading the three named terms as compressing two triads, knowledge-knowable-knower and instrument-action-doer, and explaining that the doer is named on its own to block the specific error of mistaking the doer for the Self. Both place the verse in the arc running from the gunas as binding, in chapter fourteen, to their threefold hold on disposition, in chapter seventeen, here turned toward showing the Self has no real tie to any of the three.
Read as a plain, careful naming, without further elaboration on record.
What survives here stays close to the letter: the knowledge whose object is the deed to be done, the deed being carried out, and its doer, each declared threefold by the gunas. The instruction to hear them as they are is taken at face value. Nothing in the extant comment moves toward a larger claim about dependent agency, prominent in readings of nearby verses; this page reports only what this specific remark actually supports.
Read honestly, as a single surviving line rather than a developed argument.
The comment on record here is terse: Krishna states the differences of the gunas, beginning with knowledge, in order to set out the means, and the reckoning of the gunas names the section that counts them. Nothing further survives for this verse specifically, and rather than building out a fuller Dvaita reading of dependence that belongs elsewhere in the tradition, this page keeps that limit visible.
Read for its distinctive act of compression.
The three named terms are read here as folded pairs: knowledge covers the instrument at work in both knowing and acting, action covers both the knowable and the deed to be done, and doer covers both the knower and the agent, so three words carry six factors named just before. Any further move toward a doctrine of consciousness's free, self-luminous nature is offered only as a clearly labeled extension of the wider school, not as this commentator's stated word on the verse itself.
Read for where it sits in the larger sequence of teaching.
The word only is read as stripping doership away from the Self once the boundary of three gunas is fixed, and the comment is careful about sequence: chapter fourteen showed how the gunas bind, chapter seventeen mapped the dispositions they produce so a seeker could grow the calm quality through disciplined practice, and here the aim shifts again, this time toward showing that action and its fruit have no real connection to the Self at all.
Read for the verse's methodological work, not only its doctrine.
The fullest comment on record here treats the verse as doing real, deliberate work: the doer is named on its own specifically to block a philosophical error, mistaking the agent for the Self, and a borrowed framework, competent on a narrow technical question but not on the highest one, is used for exactly that narrow purpose. Read this way, the verse is less a doctrine to accept and more a careful piece of intellectual housekeeping before the teaching proceeds.
All the readings agree on the announcement's shape: knowledge, action, and the doer, each exactly threefold by the gunas, with a borrowed but reliable framework behind the claim. They differ on how much weight to place on this single verse. For some, it is chiefly a hinge, pointing past itself to what follows. For others, especially where the compression of six factors into three or the placement within chapters fourteen through eighteen is drawn out, the verse already carries real teaching in its own right. And for two of the six voices gathered here, the honest record is simply thin: a plain, careful naming with nothing more to report. This page leaves that unevenness standing rather than smoothing it into six matching arguments.
A question to carry
Before you know any of the three kinds by name, can you sit for a moment with the plain fact that your own knowing, your own acting, and your own sense of being the one who acts are already, right now, some mixture of the clear, the restless, and the dull?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So let this verse do its quiet work first: settle your mind, set aside your habitual picture of yourself, and wait to hear what comes next exactly as it will be given.
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 has just corrected the error of seeing the Self alone as the doer; now, before unfolding the details, he tells Arjuna exactly what is coming and how to listen.
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.
Three things are named as the subjects of the coming sort: knowledge, action, and the one who acts.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse is an announcement before it is an argument. Krishna tells Arjuna that three things, knowledge, action, and the doer, are each about to be sorted into exactly three kinds by the difference of the gunas: sattva, rajas, and tamas. Nine items in all are coming, one sattvic, one rajasic, one tamasic in each of the three sets, and the commentators converge on reading the verse chiefly as this table of contents.
The word only closes the count at three; nothing lies outside sattva, rajas, and tamas.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
The little word only, in threefold only, is read as doing real work across the sources that address it. It closes the count at three: there is no fourth class waiting beyond sattva, rajas, and tamas, because knowledge, action, and the doer are, in their very constitution, woven of the gunas and nothing else.
The reckoning of the gunas leans on the Sankhya system, competent here though it parts ways with these commentators on the highest truth.
Across Advaita, DvaitaŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · MadhvaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
The phrase in the reckoning of the gunas is read as pointing to the Sankhya system, the philosophy of Kapila, which is cited here as a working authority on how the gunas divide their effects. More than one source is careful to note that this system disagrees with these commentators on the highest question, the sole reality of Brahman, yet is still competently drawn upon for this narrower, practical purpose without contradiction.
Where the record for a given voice is honestly thin, as it is here for Ramanuja and Madhva, that limit is reported plainly rather than papered over.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
Krishna's closing instruction, hear these too as they truly are, is read as a call to accurate listening, not to filtering the coming teaching through habitual self-conception. Arjuna is asked to settle his mind and receive the classification exactly as it will be given.
Krishna's closing instruction asks for accurate, settled listening, not a debate, before the details of the sort begin to unfold.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, DvaitaRāmānuja · MadhvaIn Rāmānuja and Madhva’s words
Where the record is honestly thin, as it is for Ramanuja and for Madhva on this exact verse, this page reports that limit plainly rather than filling it with invented fullness. A short, faithfully rendered fragment is worth more here than a manufactured symmetry across all six voices.
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 extant comment stays close and functional: he specifies the action-related knowledge, the action being carried out, and its doer, each declared threefold by the difference of the gunas, and instructs Arjuna to hear them as they are. The source does not develop further, so no fuller doctrine of dependent agency should be read into this particular remark; what survives is a careful, plain reception of Krishna's announcement.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The surviving line from Madhva is terse: Krishna states the differences of the gunas, beginning with knowledge, in order to set out the means, and the reckoning of the gunas names the section that counts them. Nothing further is recorded for this verse, and this page keeps that limit visible rather than building out a fuller Dvaita reading of dependent agency that belongs to his wider system but not to his stated word here.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's distinctive surviving move is compression: he reads knowledge, action, and doer as each a pair folded into one word, knowledge covering the instrument that works in both knowing and acting, action covering both the knowable and the deed, doer covering both the knower and the agent, so that three terms carry six factors between them. Any further extension toward his broader teaching of consciousness's self-luminous freedom is offered only as a clearly labeled extrapolation, not as his recorded word on this verse.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the word only as stripping doership and the rest away from the Self once the limit of three gunas is set, and he is attentive to where this sits in the text: chapter fourteen showed the gunas as binding, chapter seventeen showed the dispositions they breed so a seeker could cultivate the sattvic, and here the aim shifts to showing that action, its factors, and its fruit have no real tie to the Self at all.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for a contemporary ear, Madhusudana's fullest-on-record treatment offers a structural payoff: the doer is named on its own precisely to block a specific philosophical error, mistaking the doer for the Self, and the borrowed Sankhya framework is used deliberately for a narrow, practical purpose even though it is judged unreliable on the highest metaphysical question. The verse's real work, on this reading, is methodological before it is doctrinal.
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
Before the list unfolds, pause on the announcement itself. Krishna is about to hold up a mirror with nine facets: three ways of knowing, three ways of acting, three ways of being the one who acts. Do not rush past this verse to reach the details. Sit for a moment with the plain fact that everything you call your knowledge, your action, and your sense of being the doer is already, right now, some mixture of the clear, the restless, and the dull, and let that recognition arrive before you look for which is which.
So settle your mind as Arjuna is asked to, and let the coming sort, when it arrives, be heard exactly as it is, not as habit would have you expect it.
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 is an announcement before it is an argument. Krishna tells Arjuna that three things, knowledge, action, and the doer, are each about to be sorted into exactly three kinds by the difference of the gunas: sattva, rajas, and tamas. Nine items in all are coming, one sattvic, one rajasic, one tamasic in each of the three sets, and the commentators converge on reading the verse chiefly as this table of contents.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The little word only, in threefold only, is read as doing real work across the sources that address it. It closes the count at three: there is no fourth class waiting beyond sattva, rajas, and tamas, because knowledge, action, and the doer are, in their very constitution, woven of the gunas and nothing else.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The phrase in the reckoning of the gunas is read as pointing to the Sankhya system, the philosophy of Kapila, which is cited here as a working authority on how the gunas divide their effects. More than one source is careful to note that this system disagrees with these commentators on the highest question, the sole reality of Brahman, yet is still competently drawn upon for this narrower, practical purpose without contradiction.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Madhvācārya
Krishna's closing instruction, hear these too as they truly are, is read as a call to accurate listening, not to filtering the coming teaching through habitual self-conception. Arjuna is asked to settle his mind and receive the classification exactly as it will be given.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Where the record is honestly thin, as it is for Ramanuja and for Madhva on this exact verse, this page reports that limit plainly rather than filling it with invented fullness. A short, faithfully rendered fragment is worth more here than a manufactured symmetry across all six voices.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara treats the verse mainly as a hinge, precise about its limits and its borrowed authority, but brief, and signals that the real content follows immediately in the verses ahead. Madhusudana goes considerably further: he reads the three named terms as compressing two triads, knowledge-knowable-knower and instrument-action-doer, and explains that the doer is named separately to block the error of those who would mistake the doer for the Self. Both place this verse in the arc running from chapter fourteen's teaching on bondage through chapter seventeen's threefold dispositions, here turned toward showing that the Self, beyond the gunas, has no real connection to action, factor, or fruit.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's extant comment stays close and functional: he specifies the action-related knowledge, the action being carried out, and its doer, each declared threefold by the difference of the gunas, and instructs Arjuna to hear them as they are. The source does not develop further, so no fuller doctrine of dependent agency should be read into this particular remark; what survives is a careful, plain reception of Krishna's announcement.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The surviving line from Madhva is terse: Krishna states the differences of the gunas, beginning with knowledge, in order to set out the means, and the reckoning of the gunas names the section that counts them. Nothing further is recorded for this verse, and this page keeps that limit visible rather than building out a fuller Dvaita reading of dependent agency that belongs to his wider system but not to his stated word here.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's distinctive surviving move is compression: he reads knowledge, action, and doer as each a pair folded into one word, knowledge covering the instrument that works in both knowing and acting, action covering both the knowable and the deed, doer covering both the knower and the agent, so that three terms carry six factors between them. Any further extension toward his broader teaching of consciousness's self-luminous freedom is offered only as a clearly labeled extrapolation, not as his recorded word on this verse.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the word only as stripping doership and the rest away from the Self once the limit of three gunas is set, and he is attentive to where this sits in the text: chapter fourteen showed the gunas as binding, chapter seventeen showed the dispositions they breed so a seeker could cultivate the sattvic, and here the aim shifts to showing that action, its factors, and its fruit have no real tie to the Self at all.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for a contemporary ear, Madhusudana's fullest-on-record treatment offers a structural payoff: the doer is named on its own precisely to block a specific philosophical error, mistaking the doer for the Self, and the borrowed Sankhya framework is used deliberately for a narrow, practical purpose even though it is judged unreliable on the highest metaphysical question. The verse's real work, on this reading, is methodological before it is doctrinal.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
Why does Krishna pause to announce a classification before actually giving it, and what am I supposed to do with just this much?
The pause is itself instructive. Krishna wants Arjuna to settle his mind and listen in due order, according to reasoning and scripture, before the details arrive, so that he receives the coming teaching accurately rather than through habitual assumptions about himself.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
It also sets the boundary the whole teaching will respect: whatever comes next, it will be exactly threefold, no more. Fixing that limit in advance is not decoration; it tells you that once you have located the sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic version of a thing, the analysis of that thing is complete.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
For now, before the specific kinds are named, the honest answer is to hold the frame lightly and wait. Two of the extant comments on this exact verse are themselves brief, plain receptions of the announcement rather than full arguments, which is itself a useful reminder that not every verse needs to yield a large doctrine; some verses simply prepare the ground.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya
Contemplation
Before the list unfolds, pause on the announcement itself. Krishna is about to hold up a mirror with nine facets: three ways of knowing, three ways of acting, three ways of being the one who acts. Do not rush past this verse to reach the details. Sit for a moment with the plain fact that everything you call your knowledge, your action, and your sense of being the doer is already, right now, some mixture of the clear, the restless, and the dull, and let that recognition arrive before you look for which is which.
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.