Before naming the kinds, Krishna names exactly what will be sorted: the deciding mind and the power that holds it steady.
A short announcement, easy to read past quickly. It fixes two words with care, buddhi and dhrti, and promises the coming teaching will be whole, nothing left out, each kind told apart from the rest.
Now hear from me, Arjuna, the threefold division of the intellect and of firmness as well, sorted by the gunas, and told to you fully, each kind set apart on its own.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
You have just watched knowledge, action, and the doer each sorted into three. Now, before naming a single kind, Krishna pauses to say what is coming next: the intellect that discerns, and the firmness that holds a course once discerned. This is the threshold verse, not yet the teaching itself.
The teaching
Two words are being fixed here with care. Buddhi is your determinative intellect, the faculty by which you weigh things and arrive at certainty about what is to be done and what is not. Dhrti is your firmness, the power that keeps you on that discerned course even when an obstacle falls across an act you have already begun. Together they form a pair: the intellect decides, and firmness sustains the deciding under pressure. Both, Krishna says, will be shown threefold, colored by the same three gunas already used to sort knowledge, action, and the one who acts, sattva, rajas, and tamas. And the promise is thoroughness: the teaching will come whole, with nothing left out, each kind set apart on its own so you can tell one from another when the detail finally arrives. Notice, too, what the honest record itself teaches here. Not every commentator has left an equally full word on this exact verse; for one voice nothing survives at all, and for another only a single dismissive line remains, the meaning is plain, so he passes on. That unevenness is not a flaw to paper over. It is simply what survives, and one voice that does linger here, reading firmness not as steadiness in action but as the contentment that finally lets any deed come to rest, already opens a real question before the detailed kinds arrive.
The doubt that rises
If the announcement itself says the meaning is plain and the real content is still to come, what is actually being asked of you in this verse, and is firmness the strength that holds you to a course, or the peace that lets you finally let it go?
Where the paths divide
Read as a functional hinge, with one voice pressing further into a technical distinction.
Understanding and constancy are declared threefold by the gunas, told fully and one at a time; one source treats this mainly as a brief, transitional remark, pausing only to recall why Arjuna is called Dhananjaya. A fuller companion reading settles a real question: does buddhi name the bare mental movement, or the inner organ that holds it? It is settled as the instrument alone, kept separate from the doer already classified two verses before, since the doer is, in this system, the reflection of consciousness as conditioned by that very instrument.
Read as a precise working definition, without further elaboration on record.
What survives here defines both terms exactly: understanding is certainty-bearing knowledge preceded by discernment, and constancy is the power to hold firm when an obstacle meets an act already begun. Arjuna is asked simply to hear their threefold difference by the gunas, told separately. The comment does not extend, on this verse, into the wider teaching on the self's dependence that appears elsewhere in this commentator's readings; only the plain definition is reported here.
Read honestly, as an acknowledged absence rather than an invented position.
No comment on this verse survives from this commentator. Rather than filling that silence with a confident reading built from his positions elsewhere, that absence is stated directly. A conditional extension might expect the buddhi and dhrti classified here to be read as further gifts sustained by the Lord's sanction; but this would only be a flagged extrapolation from his wider system, never his recorded word on 18.29 itself, because no such word exists.
Read for its distinctive turn: firmness as contentment, not steadiness.
Here dhrti is read not as steadfastness in ongoing action but as contentment, the settled sense of completion. After any deed, good or bad, a person finally arrives at the same thought, what was to be done has been done, what need is there of more; without that thought, nothing could ever bring a person to stop acting at all. So this kind of firmness, on this reading, belongs to everyone, not only the disciplined or the sattvic. The commentator is careful to note that the plain word-meaning is not yet clear from this alone and will be taken up further as the verses proceed.
Read at the true, brief scope of what survives.
The comment on record is a single line: Krishna now declares the threefoldness of buddhi and dhrti, the meaning is plain, and the commentator passes on quickly since the detailed sorting is about to be carried out. Nothing further is recorded, and no fuller devotional elaboration should be borrowed from elsewhere in this stream and presented as this particular voice's own words on this verse.
Read for the verse's structural work, ahead of the classification itself.
The fullest comment on record here treats the separate naming of intellect and steadiness, apart from the wider catalogue of inner-organ states named elsewhere in scripture, as no mere counting exercise. It is read as isolating two distinct powers, the power of knowing and the power of acting, so that each can be examined on its own terms before either is colored by the gunas. Read this way, the verse's chief interest is in what each faculty actually does, prior to how it divides.
All the readings agree on the surface shape: buddhi and dhrti, each about to be shown threefold by the gunas, told fully and separately. They differ on how much weight this brief verse itself can bear. For some, it is chiefly a hinge, and the honest record for two of the six voices gathered here is thin or entirely absent, a limit this page reports rather than smooths over. For one voice, though, the verse already opens real content: is dhrti the steadiness that holds you to a course, or the contentment that lets you finally rest from having walked it? The verse does not settle that question, and neither does this page.
A question to carry
Before any of the detailed kinds are named, can you feel, tonight, the difference in yourself between the power that decides what should be done and the power that holds you to it once something pushes back?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So let this brief verse do its quiet work first. Settle your mind, notice your own deciding and your own holding, and wait to hear, in what follows, exactly how each of the three strands colors both.
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 sorted knowledge, action, and the doer, Krishna turns the same threefold lens inward, to the two faculties by which a person decides what to do and holds to having decided it.
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.
Two faculties are named as what comes next: buddhi, the intellect that decides, and dhrti, the firmness that holds that decision under pressure.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
This verse is an announcement, not yet the analysis itself. Krishna tells Arjuna to listen, because he is about to lay out two more threefold classifications, of buddhi, the intellect that discerns and decides, and of dhrti, the firmness or steadiness that holds a course. Both will be sorted by the same three gunas already used to classify knowledge, action, and the doer. The commentators who address this verse directly and briefly all treat it chiefly as a hinge, pointing to the detailed sorting that the following verses will actually carry out.
Both will be sorted, like knowledge, action, and the doer before them, by the same three gunas, sattva, rajas, and tamas.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, AdvaitaRāmānuja · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja and Madhusūdana’s words
Where sources define the two terms, they converge closely. Buddhi is the determinative faculty, arriving at certainty about what is to be done after discernment; dhrti is the power that holds a person to that discerned course, especially when an obstacle falls across an act already begun. Read together, the intellect decides and firmness sustains the deciding under pressure.
The teaching is promised complete and clearly separated, each kind told apart so it can be recognized and, later, either taken up or let go.
Across AdvaitaŚaṅkara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara and Madhusūdana’s words
The promise of the verse is thoroughness: the teaching will be given fully, with nothing left out, and each kind set apart on its own so it can be recognized and told from the others. This mirrors the same promise Krishna made two verses earlier for knowledge, action, and the doer, extending the same rigor to the inner instruments of the one who acts.
Where the record for a commentator is genuinely thin, as it is here for more than one voice, this page reports that limit honestly rather than inventing a fuller reading in his name.
Across Dvaita, BhaktiMadhva · ŚrīdharaIn Madhva and Śrīdhara’s words
Where the record for a given voice is honestly thin, as it plainly is here for Madhva, who left nothing at all, and for Sridhara, whose surviving remark is a single dismissive line, this page reports that limit directly rather than manufacturing a fuller reading in either voice. A short, faithfully rendered fragment, or an honest blank, is worth more than an invented symmetry across all six commentators.
One voice already opens a live question before the detailed kinds arrive: is firmness the steadiness that holds you to a course, or the contentment that finally lets you rest from it?
Across Advaita, Kashmir ŚaivaMadhusūdana · AbhinavaguptaIn Madhusūdana and Abhinavagupta’s words
Even within this narrow verse, the commentators who do have something distinctive to say turn the analysis inward, toward the doer's own inner instruments rather than the outward shape of any single deed. Whether that turn is read as a plain technical classification or, as with the contentment-reading, as something closer to what finally lets any action come to rest, the movement is the same: from the deed done to the faculties that decided it and held it.
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 remark defines both terms with precision and stays there: understanding is certainty-bearing knowledge preceded by discernment, and constancy is the power to hold firm when an obstacle meets an act already begun. He instructs Arjuna to hear their threefold difference by the gunas, told separately. The record does not extend into his wider teaching on the self's dependence on the Lord for this specific verse, and this page does not read that fuller doctrine into so brief a remark.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva left no comment at all on this verse, and this page states that absence directly rather than filling it with an invented Dvaita reading. On a conditional extension of his broader system, one might expect him to treat the buddhi and dhrti classified here as further gifts sustained by the Lord's sanction, colored by the gunas he permits to each self's own nature; but this is clearly a labeled extrapolation, not his recorded word, since no recorded word exists for 18.29.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's distinctive move is to read dhrti not as steadfastness in ongoing action but as contentment, the settled thought that arrives after any deed, good or bad: what was to be done has been done, what need is there of more. He argues this alone is what lets a person stop acting at all, so firmness in this sense belongs to everyone alike, not only the sattvic or the disciplined. He flags his own limit honestly, noting the plain word-meaning is not yet clear from this and will be explained further as the verses proceed.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara's surviving comment is a single line: Krishna now declares the threefoldness of buddhi and dhrti, the meaning is plain, and he passes on quickly since the detailed sorting is about to be carried out. Nothing further is on record, and this page does not borrow the fuller devotional imagery that a different voice in the wider bhakti stream brings to this same verse and present it as Sridhara's own.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for a contemporary ear, Madhusudana's fullest-on-record comment offers a structural payoff: naming intellect and steadiness apart from the broader catalogue of inner-organ states scripture elsewhere lists is not an exercise in taxonomy for its own sake, but a deliberate move to isolate the power of knowing from the power of acting. The verse's real interest, on this reading, is which faculty does what, before either is sorted by the gunas.
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 detailed kinds arrive, sit for a moment with just the two words themselves. Buddhi: the faculty in you that actually decides, after weighing things, what is to be done and what is not. Dhrti: the power in you that holds that decision when something pushes against it. Ask, honestly, how each one feels tonight, without yet needing to know which of the three kinds you are. Notice, too, the quieter question one voice raises: is there already, in you, the simple contentment of a thing finished, the thought that lets an action come to rest?
So before the kinds are named, sit honestly with your own two instruments: how clearly you discern what is to be done, and whether you already know, in some quiet way, what it feels like for an action to come to its rest.
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 is an announcement, not yet the analysis itself. Krishna tells Arjuna to listen, because he is about to lay out two more threefold classifications, of buddhi, the intellect that discerns and decides, and of dhrti, the firmness or steadiness that holds a course. Both will be sorted by the same three gunas already used to classify knowledge, action, and the doer. The commentators who address this verse directly and briefly all treat it chiefly as a hinge, pointing to the detailed sorting that the following verses will actually carry out.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Where sources define the two terms, they converge closely. Buddhi is the determinative faculty, arriving at certainty about what is to be done after discernment; dhrti is the power that holds a person to that discerned course, especially when an obstacle falls across an act already begun. Read together, the intellect decides and firmness sustains the deciding under pressure.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The promise of the verse is thoroughness: the teaching will be given fully, with nothing left out, and each kind set apart on its own so it can be recognized and told from the others. This mirrors the same promise Krishna made two verses earlier for knowledge, action, and the doer, extending the same rigor to the inner instruments of the one who acts.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the record for a given voice is honestly thin, as it plainly is here for Madhva, who left nothing at all, and for Sridhara, whose surviving remark is a single dismissive line, this page reports that limit directly rather than manufacturing a fuller reading in either voice. A short, faithfully rendered fragment, or an honest blank, is worth more than an invented symmetry across all six commentators.
Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Even within this narrow verse, the commentators who do have something distinctive to say turn the analysis inward, toward the doer's own inner instruments rather than the outward shape of any single deed. Whether that turn is read as a plain technical classification or, as with the contentment-reading, as something closer to what finally lets any action come to rest, the movement is the same: from the deed done to the faculties that decided it and held it.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara's comment stays close to the plain sense: understanding and constancy each fall into three kinds by the gunas, told fully and one at a time, with a passing note on the name Dhananjaya. Madhusudana goes considerably further, settling a real technical question, whether buddhi names the bare mental movement or the inner organ that holds it, and concluding it is the instrument alone, since the doer was already classified two verses earlier as the reflection of consciousness conditioned by that instrument. He reads the separate treatment of intellect and steadiness, apart from the fuller range of inner-organ states scripture elsewhere names, as pointing specifically to the power of knowing and the power of acting.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's extant remark defines both terms with precision and stays there: understanding is certainty-bearing knowledge preceded by discernment, and constancy is the power to hold firm when an obstacle meets an act already begun. He instructs Arjuna to hear their threefold difference by the gunas, told separately. The record does not extend into his wider teaching on the self's dependence on the Lord for this specific verse, and this page does not read that fuller doctrine into so brief a remark.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva left no comment at all on this verse, and this page states that absence directly rather than filling it with an invented Dvaita reading. On a conditional extension of his broader system, one might expect him to treat the buddhi and dhrti classified here as further gifts sustained by the Lord's sanction, colored by the gunas he permits to each self's own nature; but this is clearly a labeled extrapolation, not his recorded word, since no recorded word exists for 18.29.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's distinctive move is to read dhrti not as steadfastness in ongoing action but as contentment, the settled thought that arrives after any deed, good or bad: what was to be done has been done, what need is there of more. He argues this alone is what lets a person stop acting at all, so firmness in this sense belongs to everyone alike, not only the sattvic or the disciplined. He flags his own limit honestly, noting the plain word-meaning is not yet clear from this and will be explained further as the verses proceed.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara's surviving comment is a single line: Krishna now declares the threefoldness of buddhi and dhrti, the meaning is plain, and he passes on quickly since the detailed sorting is about to be carried out. Nothing further is on record, and this page does not borrow the fuller devotional imagery that a different voice in the wider bhakti stream brings to this same verse and present it as Sridhara's own.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for a contemporary ear, Madhusudana's fullest-on-record comment offers a structural payoff: naming intellect and steadiness apart from the broader catalogue of inner-organ states scripture elsewhere lists is not an exercise in taxonomy for its own sake, but a deliberate move to isolate the power of knowing from the power of acting. The verse's real interest, on this reading, is which faculty does what, before either is sorted by the gunas.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If this verse only promises a classification that has not yet arrived, and more than one commentator says its meaning is plain, what is actually here for me to take before the detailed types are named?
First, you are given the two terms cleanly enough to start watching them in yourself. The intellect is the faculty that decides what should be done after weighing things; firmness is what holds you to that decision when an obstacle meets an act already begun. You do not need the detailed sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic kinds to begin noticing how clearly you discern and how steadily you hold.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Second, the verse tells you where the coming teaching is headed: inward, to your own inner instruments, and it promises that teaching will be complete, with nothing left out and each kind set apart so you can recognize it. That promise of thoroughness is itself worth carrying forward as you read on.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Third, where the record for a given voice is honestly thin, as it is for Madhva here, or reduced to a single line, as it is for Sridhara, that thinness is itself instructive. Not every verse yields a full argument from every teacher; some verses simply prepare the ground, and one voice in this stretch, reading firmness as contentment, quietly asks whether you already recognize in yourself the simple settledness that lets any action come to its close.
Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Before the detailed kinds arrive, sit for a moment with just the two words themselves. Buddhi: the faculty in you that actually decides, after weighing things, what is to be done and what is not. Dhrti: the power in you that holds that decision when something pushes against it. Ask, honestly, how each one feels tonight, without yet needing to know which of the three kinds you are. Notice, too, the quieter question one voice raises: is there already, in you, the simple contentment of a thing finished, the thought that lets an action come to rest?
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.