A mind fully rented to pleasure has nothing left to gather into resolve.
It is tempting to hear this as a verdict on pleasure itself. It is closer to a mirror: notice where your fondness and your sense of importance actually rest, and ask what steadiness might look like if they rested elsewhere.
In those whose hearts are fastened to pleasure and to power, whose minds that flowery speech has carried off, the resolute, one-pointed understanding never takes shape.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just described the flowery speech, the ritual promises of heaven and dominion that so many mistake for the whole of scripture. Now he turns to what that speech does inside the person who believes it. This verse is the diagnosis, not yet the remedy.
The teaching
As long as your fondness and your sense of importance are fastened on enjoyment and on power, the steady, one-pointed understanding cannot form in you. Nothing is being withheld from you by decree. There is simply no room left, because the whole of your inner faculty is already given over to pleasure, and resolve needs an undivided instrument to settle in. This is not a verdict on pleasure itself, nor a demand that you renounce it before you may even begin. It is a mirror held up to where your attention currently rests. The same faculty that chases reward, once it stops chasing, is exactly the faculty capable of the steadiness Krishna has just praised. What differs is never the faculty. It is only where it has been allowed to settle.
The doubt that rises
What exactly has been carried off in such a person: the inner instrument of mind, their very knowledge of the Self, the reasoned ascertainment that should come first, or one-pointed devotion to the Lord? And is the fault the presence of desire, or only the direction in which the deciding intelligence has been allowed to face?
Where the paths divide
Read as the inner instrument fully occupied.
Samadhi here names the inner instrument itself, the understanding, called so because it is where all experience is gathered for a person's enjoyment. In one bound to pleasure, that whole gathering-place belongs to craving, so the resolute intellect bearing on knowledge or on disciplined action has no space in which to form. The fault is structural, not a punishment handed down from outside.
Read as the theft of Self-knowledge itself.
What the ritual-speech has actually stolen is not discrimination in general but the seeker's own knowledge of the Self. The understanding that fails to arise presupposes that knowledge, so its absence forecloses everything built upon it. And a harder question waits just behind this one: why would the Veda, which tends us more carefully than any parent, prescribe the very actions that produce this captivity?
Read as a broken first step in a fixed order.
Resolute understanding is reasoned ascertainment of truth, and it must come first in a sequence that cannot be reversed: ascertainment, then composure of mind on the Lord, then liberation. The pleasure-bound are missing not one link but the whole chain, because the very first step, seeing worldly pleasure for what it is, has never been permitted to form.
Read as a faculty facing the wrong direction.
The deciding intelligence is not absent in the pleasure-bound; it is simply turned outward, fixed on reward instead of recognizing its own free, self-luminous source. Samadhi withheld is consciousness still chasing its own reflections in objects it has forgotten it produced. The remedy is not to destroy the faculty but to let it turn and recognize itself.
Read as devotion and craving competing for one heart.
Samadhi is one-pointed consciousness resting in the Supreme Lord, and it cannot form in a heart already deeply settled in enjoyment and lordship. The two settlings want the same ground. Loosen the fastening to pleasure, even slightly, and the very same capacity for absorption turns, without strain, toward the Lord instead.
Read as a question of aim, not of the act itself.
What decides the fruit of an action is never the action alone but the aim carried into it. Performed for reward, even a virtuous rite purifies only toward further enjoyment; performed without that aim, the identical action purifies toward the very knowledge that resolute understanding requires. The irresolute lack not means but intention.
All six readings agree that something has occupied the ground where steadiness should stand, and that nothing about this is permanent. They part on what exactly is missing: an occupied instrument, a stolen knowledge, a broken sequence, a misdirected faculty, a competing devotion, or an uncorrected aim. This page does not choose between them, and perhaps you do not need to either, only to notice which one names your own condition today.
A question to carry
Where, right now, has your own fondness and your own sense of importance quietly come to rest, and what would it feel like to let even a little of that attention come home?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So look at your own mind without harshness, notice where it is presently occupied, and let that noticing itself be the first small loosening.
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 named the flowery speech that makes the ritual path glitter; here he states, plainly, what that speech costs the mind that believes 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.
Attachment to enjoyment and to power, and a mind carried off by flowery speech, are two names for one condition.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse names a single condition and one consequence: those attached to enjoyment (bhoga) and lordship (aishvarya), whose minds the previous verses' flowery, rite-praising speech has carried off, cannot form the resolute, one-pointed understanding Krishna has just been praising. The attachment and the captured mind are two descriptions of the same state, not two separate faults.
Nothing is refused from outside; the resolute understanding simply has no room to form in an occupied mind.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
The grammar of the line is read as agentless: the resolute understanding is not refused to anyone by an outside authority, it simply does not arise. Nothing is being withheld from these people as a penalty; something is missing from them structurally, because the very faculty that would form the resolve is otherwise occupied.
The fault is structural: an undivided resolve needs an undivided faculty, and craving has already claimed the whole of it.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Madhva · Abhinavagupta · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 2 others’ words
The mechanism behind the missing resolve is the same across readings: a mind already committed, whole and entire, to chasing pleasure and power has nothing left over to gather into a single, steady aim. Resolve is not added from outside; it is what remains once craving no longer occupies the whole field.
No reading treats this as a permanent exclusion; every school implies the same mind, redirected, becomes capable of the very steadiness it now lacks.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
None of the commentators read this verse as condemning enjoyment itself or as permanently excluding anyone. The lock is on a particular orientation of the mind, and every reading implies that the same mind, redirected, is exactly the mind capable of the resolve it presently lacks.
The verse is a hinge, not a verdict: it exposes what the ritual path alone cannot deliver and opens the harder question the next verses press.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Madhva · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Madhva, and 1 others’ words
The verse is transitional rather than final: it diagnoses why the ritual path, pursued for its promised fruits, cannot by itself deliver the steadiness Krishna is urging Arjuna toward, and it sets up the sharper question the following verses will press, of what the Veda's own teaching is actually for.
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 specifies what has actually been lost: not discrimination in general but the seeker's own knowledge of the Self, carried off by the very ritual-speech bent on enjoyment and lordship. The understanding that fails to arise is specifically the one aimed at liberation-bound action performed after certain Self-knowledge, and its absence forecloses that further understanding entirely. He immediately raises, rather than resolves, the harder question of why the Veda prescribes such fruit-bound rites at all.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva reads resolute understanding as reasoned ascertainment of truth, which must come first in a fixed, irreversible order: discrimination, then composure of mind on the Lord, then liberation. In the pleasure-bound, the very first step is missing, so nothing further down the sequence can follow. He grounds this in scripture's own warning that even the finest words cannot convey the Lord's truth to a mind that has not itself already judged worldly pleasure to be as insubstantial as a dream.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta, reading this verse continuously with the two around it, locates the fault not in an absent faculty but in a faculty turned outward. Such people possess the deciding intelligence yet remain unready for absorption because that intelligence stays fixed on reward instead of recognizing its own free, self-luminous source. Samadhi withheld is really consciousness still chasing its reflections in objects rather than resting, recognized, in itself.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads samadhi here as one-pointed consciousness oriented to the Supreme Lord, which cannot form in a heart already deeply settled in enjoyment and lordship. The grammar's agentless construction confirms, for him, that nothing is being refused from outside; a heart occupied by one object of settling has no room for the other. Once the fastening to pleasure loosens, the very same capacity turns, without special effort, toward devotion.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana treats the verse as answering a real objection across three linked verses: why the irresolute lack firm understanding despite having the same means of knowledge as anyone. His answer isolates the aim behind an action, not the action itself, as decisive; rites performed for fruit purify only toward further enjoyment, while the same rites performed without that aim purify toward the knowledge that samadhi requires.
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, where your own mind keeps returning today: to what you are doing, or to what doing it might get you. This verse does not ask you to want less. It asks you to see how much of your attention pleasure and standing have already rented, and to let a little of that attention come home.
So look, without harshness, at where your own fondness rests today, and let that noticing itself begin to loosen its grip.
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 names a single condition and one consequence: those attached to enjoyment (bhoga) and lordship (aishvarya), whose minds the previous verses' flowery, rite-praising speech has carried off, cannot form the resolute, one-pointed understanding Krishna has just been praising. The attachment and the captured mind are two descriptions of the same state, not two separate faults.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The grammar of the line is read as agentless: the resolute understanding is not refused to anyone by an outside authority, it simply does not arise. Nothing is being withheld from these people as a penalty; something is missing from them structurally, because the very faculty that would form the resolve is otherwise occupied.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The mechanism behind the missing resolve is the same across readings: a mind already committed, whole and entire, to chasing pleasure and power has nothing left over to gather into a single, steady aim. Resolve is not added from outside; it is what remains once craving no longer occupies the whole field.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
None of the commentators read this verse as condemning enjoyment itself or as permanently excluding anyone. The lock is on a particular orientation of the mind, and every reading implies that the same mind, redirected, is exactly the mind capable of the resolve it presently lacks.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
The verse is transitional rather than final: it diagnoses why the ritual path, pursued for its promised fruits, cannot by itself deliver the steadiness Krishna is urging Arjuna toward, and it sets up the sharper question the following verses will press, of what the Veda's own teaching is actually for.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads samadhi as the inner instrument itself, the understanding, called samadhi because it is the place where all experience is gathered for a person's enjoyment. In one bound to pleasure, that entire gathering-place is occupied by craving, so the resolute intellect bearing on Sankhya or on yoga has no room in which to form. The fault is structural and not punitive: a mind wholly rented out to enjoyment simply has nothing left to steady.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja specifies what has actually been lost: not discrimination in general but the seeker's own knowledge of the Self, carried off by the very ritual-speech bent on enjoyment and lordship. The understanding that fails to arise is specifically the one aimed at liberation-bound action performed after certain Self-knowledge, and its absence forecloses that further understanding entirely. He immediately raises, rather than resolves, the harder question of why the Veda prescribes such fruit-bound rites at all.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva reads resolute understanding as reasoned ascertainment of truth, which must come first in a fixed, irreversible order: discrimination, then composure of mind on the Lord, then liberation. In the pleasure-bound, the very first step is missing, so nothing further down the sequence can follow. He grounds this in scripture's own warning that even the finest words cannot convey the Lord's truth to a mind that has not itself already judged worldly pleasure to be as insubstantial as a dream.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta, reading this verse continuously with the two around it, locates the fault not in an absent faculty but in a faculty turned outward. Such people possess the deciding intelligence yet remain unready for absorption because that intelligence stays fixed on reward instead of recognizing its own free, self-luminous source. Samadhi withheld is really consciousness still chasing its reflections in objects rather than resting, recognized, in itself.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads samadhi here as one-pointed consciousness oriented to the Supreme Lord, which cannot form in a heart already deeply settled in enjoyment and lordship. The grammar's agentless construction confirms, for him, that nothing is being refused from outside; a heart occupied by one object of settling has no room for the other. Once the fastening to pleasure loosens, the very same capacity turns, without special effort, toward devotion.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana treats the verse as answering a real objection across three linked verses: why the irresolute lack firm understanding despite having the same means of knowledge as anyone. His answer isolates the aim behind an action, not the action itself, as decisive; rites performed for fruit purify only toward further enjoyment, while the same rites performed without that aim purify toward the knowledge that samadhi requires.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If enjoyment and ambition are what block the steady mind, does that mean I have to renounce them before I can even begin?
No reading treats the verse as a demand for prior renunciation. It is a diagnosis, not a gate: it explains why a mind fully occupied with pleasure cannot yet settle, not that settling requires giving up pleasure first as a precondition.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
What changes is the aim carried into action, not necessarily the action itself. The same rite performed for reward or performed without that hunger yields different fruits; the shift Madhusudana describes happens in intention long before it requires a change in circumstance.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya
And the fault, on Abhinavagupta's reading, is a faculty facing the wrong direction, not a faculty that must first be destroyed. Turning attention inward, even briefly and imperfectly, is already the beginning of the very steadiness this verse says is missing.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhvācārya
Contemplation
Notice, without judgment, where your own mind keeps returning today: to what you are doing, or to what doing it might get you. This verse does not ask you to want less. It asks you to see how much of your attention pleasure and standing have already rented, and to let a little of that attention come home.
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.