A seam in the teaching: from Self-knowledge to the wisdom of action.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse through a strict division of qualified persons, and this is the heart of how they answer Arjuna's objection. Self-knowledge and action are as incompatible as light and darkness; for one who truly knows the changeless, non-acting, non-enjoying Self, no action is enjoined at all. So why is action being taught? Because the knowledge has not yet arisen in Arjuna, owing to an impurity of mind. For such a person the remedy is karma-yoga, action done without craving for fruit, which removes the obstructing fault and purifies the inner organ; only then does the direct knowledge of the Self dawn, and that is what frees. One commentator states it bluntly: knowledge is taught to the pure inner organ and action to the impure, so there is no real combining of the two, and Arjuna's present fitness is for action alone, not yet even for hearing the higher knowledge. On 'bondage,' one of these commentators specifically rejects the reading that 'bondage' here means only the impurity of the inner organ, calling it forced and an importing of words not in the verse; he keeps bondage as merit-and-demerit, and even hears in the address 'Partha' a hint that one freed will not enter a mother's womb again.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Dvaita

These commentators insist, at length and as their central concern, that 'Sankhya' and 'yoga' here do NOT name the Kapila-Sankhya school and the Patanjala-Yoga school. 'Sankhya' means knowledge, the discernment of the truth of the pure Self, citing the Lord's own word that 'the discernment of the truth of the pure self is what is called Sankhya'; and 'yoga' means the means. They give several reasons the two philosophical schools cannot be meant: the Gita's own usage speaks of 'karma-yoga,' a phrase that does not occur in the Patanjala scripture; and both of those schools are actually censured in the Mokshadharma, which by praising the Pancharatra and declaring its oneness with the Veda shows that the differences spoken of hold only against the Sankhya school and its kind, not within scripture's single aim. They add a reasoning of order: the knowledge belonging to the living being is rightly stated first, the means stated next. One of them resolves a fine grammatical point too: discrimination is knowledge and is produced, yet the verse says it was 'declared' in a locative, 'in Sankhya'; the sense is that the speech by which the matter of Sankhya is understood is what has been declared, with Sankhya taken as the object.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators stress the ordered dependence of knowledge and action and ground it grammatically. The understanding here is 'reckoning,' and Sankhya is the truth of the Self to be ascertained by it; the yoga now to be told is the discipline of understanding for performing action that, preceded by knowledge of the Self, is itself the means to liberation. They support this by the Gita's own coming words that mere action is far inferior to the discipline of understanding. On the sequence they note that although contemplative knowledge-yoga might seem to come first after the teaching of the Self's true nature, knowledge-yoga is itself accomplished by karma-yoga, so karma-yoga is taught first and knowledge-yoga is taught later as its fruit. One of them takes 'Sankhya' to apply even to the Self itself, citing the Upanishadic phrase 'the Self, attributeless, the Sankhya,' so that the word, like 'supreme Self,' can name the Self and not only a discipline. They also fix the grammar of 'karma-bandha': it is a tatpurusha meaning 'bondage by action,' and since the literal sense of bondage is not viable, bondage is glossed as transmigration.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhakti

These commentators read 'yoga' as the path that carries Self-knowledge through devotion and offering. For some the yoga here is plainly 'the yoga of devotion,' the understanding to be applied in devotion, by which one casts off the round of birth and death. One is explicit that the pivot from knowledge to yoga is not a turning away from Self-knowledge but its instrumental approach, with the Lord's grace built into karma-yoga from the very start: actions are offered to the Supreme Lord, the inner organ is purified, and by the direct knowledge gained through His grace the bondage that is karma is altogether let go. One frames the contrast in this scripture's own vocabulary: action whose fruit is cattle, sons, kingdom and the like is 'with desire,' while action whose fruit is knowledge is 'without desire'; performing toilsome actions at the Lord's command, by their being aimed at Him and by the steadfastness in Self-knowledge that arises within, one crosses the round of birth and death.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse as a plain transition from the sankhya-buddhi to the yoga-buddhi, but one of them adds a distinctive devotional accent: because the Lord as 'Sankhya' is the very pendant of the rasa, the sweet feeling, of separation from Him, mere Self-knowledge does not by itself yield inner ease, and so it is spoken of simply as an instrument. If even after hearing this knowledge no insight has dawned, then through karma-yoga the delusion will be dispelled; hear it. On 'prahasyasi,' the casting-off of the bondage of works, the excellence noted is that what is cast away does not rise again.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Modern

This commentator gives the verse unusual weight, calling it of very great importance for understanding the whole Gita, and reads 'Sankhya' and 'yoga' in his own distinctive way. 'Sankhya' here does not mean Kapila-Sankhya or only Vedanta, and 'yoga' does not mean Patanjala-Yoga; rather 'Sankhya' means the Path of Renunciation, the Samnyasa-marga, and 'yoga' means Karma-Yoga, the Path of Proper Action, as he argues from Gita 3.3. These two paths are independent. Because the followers of the renunciation path hold it more meritorious to give up action in the end, that path does not fully answer Arjuna's question 'Why should I fight?' So the Lord now imparts the knowledge of the Karma-Yoga path, by which true manhood consists in continuing to perform action lifelong, with a disinterested mind, without adopting renunciation even after true Knowledge is gained; and from here to the last chapter, he holds, the Gita supports the path of Karma-Yoga.

Lokmanya Tilak