When the mind confused by hearing grows still in absorption, you attain yoga.
Scripture itself has done the scattering: many texts promising many rewards by many means pull the mind in opposing directions, and it cannot settle. What steadies you is not more reading; it is the hearing ripening into one fixed, doubt-free stillness.
When your discernment, bewildered by what it has heard, stands unshaken and steady in deep contemplation, then you will attain yoga.
Krishna has been teaching steadiness of intellect; here he rounds that teaching off, and the promise that you will then attain yoga provokes Arjuna's next question, what such a settled person is actually like.
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.
Your discerning mind has been thrown into confusion by what it has heard; the many scriptures, promising many rewards by many means, pull you in opposing directions and leave you unable to settle.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 7 others’ words
The verse begins by naming a real problem: the intellect (buddhi, the deciding, discerning faculty) has been thrown into confusion by what it has heard. The word is śruti-vipratipannā, the mind 'set at odds' or 'tossed about' by scripture. Most commentators explain this as the bewilderment caused by the many Vedic texts that promise many different rewards through many different ritual means, so that a person who listens to them is pulled in opposing directions and cannot settle. The intellect becomes, in Shankara's phrase, many-minded and scattered. Sridhara widens it to all kinds of hearing, both worldly and Vedic, that have left the mind distracted. Tilak ties it directly back to an earlier teaching: a person dazzled by the fruits the Vedic hymns describe falls into the turmoil of chasing this act for that result, and his reason grows more confused, not steadier.
What this asks for is one decisive change: that reason comes to rest in deep absorption, unshaken by the pull of distraction and immovable under every doubt and counter-argument, steady as a lamp where no wind reaches.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, DvaitaĀnandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Viśvanātha · Puruṣottama · MadhvaIn Ānandagiri, Madhusūdana, and 6 others’ words
The cure is a single, decisive change of condition: the buddhi must come to a complete stillness in samadhi. Samadhi here means deep absorption, the gathered, settled state in which the mind rests undistracted on its true object. The verse gives this stillness two qualities, and several commentators carefully keep them apart. Niścalā means unshaken, free from the wavering of distraction, no longer pulled outward toward this object and that. Acalā means immovable, free from doubt, no longer shaken by counter-arguments or uncertainty. Anandagiri reads them as freedom from error and freedom from uncertainty; Nilakantha as not shakable by counter-reasoning and free of doubt; Sridhara as unshaken by distractions and, by the strength of practice, stable. Madhusudana and Baladeva reach for the Gita's own later image of a lamp burning steady in a windless place.
Only when that unbroken stillness is reached does the promise land: then you attain yoga, the settled, doubt-free realization that ends the seeking, not a passing stage but the goal itself.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Dvaita, ŚuddhādvaitaŚaṅkara · Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara · Madhusūdana · Madhva · Viśvanātha · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Nīlakaṇṭha, and 5 others’ words
Only when that unbroken stillness is reached does the promise land: 'then you will attain yoga.' The commentators agree the verse marks an attainment, the arrival at the goal, and not merely a stage along the way. What yoga names here is the consummation: the settled, discerning realization that ends the seeking. Shankara calls it the insight of discernment, absorption itself. Nilakantha calls it the discerning wisdom. Sridhara calls it the fruit of yoga, knowledge of the truth. The teaching is therefore practical and ordered: scattered hearing cannot by itself deliver the goal; the hearing must ripen into a fixed, doubt-free absorption, and that absorption is the union the whole path is for.
And this is a turning point: it completes the teaching on steadiness of reason and opens the next question, what such a settled person is actually like, how one of steady wisdom speaks and sits and moves.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · TilakIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
Several commentators add that this verse is a hinge in the dialogue. It rounds off Krishna's teaching on steadiness of intellect, and by promising 'then you will attain yoga' it provokes Arjuna's next question, which asks what such a settled person is actually like, how the one of steady wisdom (sthitaprajna) speaks, sits, and moves. Shankara says Arjuna, given the seed of a question, now wishes to know the marks of one whose insight is settled in absorption. Ramanuja and Tilak read the very same turn. So the verse both completes one teaching and opens the famous description that follows.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Advaita Vedānta, in their fuller words
These commentators read the 'samadhi' as absorption in the Self, the inmost reality, and read the 'yoga' you attain as Self-realization, the non-dual knowledge of Brahman. The confusion is the scattering left by scriptures whose deeper purport was never examined. The settling is the ripening of discrimination and dispassion (telling the real from the unreal, and turning away from the unreal), so that the intellect comes to rest unmoving in the Self. Nilakantha frames the doubts being silenced as metaphysical questions, whether the Self is eternal or not, agent or non-agent, one or many, all set aside by inquiry until the mind becomes immovable in the non-duality of Brahman that scripture truly aims at. Madhusudana names the fruit most fully: the union that is the identity of the individual and the supreme Self, the undivided realization born of the great saying 'that thou art,' after which no further goal remains. On this view the verse describes the path of knowledge reaching its term.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja reads the verse as a compact statement of how action and knowledge work together. The 'understanding gained through hearing' is the true, eternal, subtle teaching about the self received from the Lord, an understanding that is itself unmoving and single in form. What allows it to stand unshaken is a mind purified by the performance of unattached action, action done without clinging to its fruit. The sequence is explicit: the discipline of action, preceded by scriptural knowledge of the self, produces the standing in knowledge that is called steadiness of wisdom, and that steadiness in turn accomplishes 'yoga,' which he defines as the beholding of the self, the direct vision of one's own true nature. Here yoga is not absorption into an undifferentiated absolute but the clear seeing of the self, reached through purifying action.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva turns on the word vipratipannā, reading the buddhi as having been opposed to, set at odds with, the Vedas heard. The remedy is to determine the truth in keeping with the Veda's own meaning, until the intellect can no longer be shaken even by speech that runs counter to it. The 'yoga' attained is then sinking unmoving in samadhi into the supreme bliss through the direct seeing of Brahman, an absorption so complete that even the beating of drums cannot disturb it. Jayatirtha develops the reasoning carefully across stages: 'unwavering' marks the limit of indirect, inferred knowledge, where the mind is steadied by ascertaining the Veda's meaning against false scriptures; 'unmoving in Brahman,' undisturbed even by the kettledrum, marks the limit of direct knowledge; and 'you will attain yoga' means you will become accomplished in supreme bliss, having reached the fruit. On this reading the single verse maps the whole culmination of the practice of yoga, from settled understanding to direct, blissful seeing of the Lord.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
Purushottama reads the goal personally and devotionally. The intellect grows steady when it is no longer drawn after the desire to hear of many duties, and cannot be moved even by those duties once they have been heard. The samadhi is the time of dwelling on the Lord, on 'Me.' And the 'yoga' attained is the state of the Lord's near-presence. Stillness here is not absorption into an impersonal absolute but a settled, undistracted dwelling that brings one close to God.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators read the 'samadhi' as the mind well placed in the Supreme Lord, in whom it comes to rest unshaken by other objects. Sridhara takes the yoga attained as the fruit of yoga, knowledge of the truth. Vishvanatha presses further, saying that by gaining direct experience you become one liberated while still living (a jivanmukta), and he points ahead to the kind of absorption the sixth chapter will describe. Baladeva strikingly reads 'confused by scripture' against its surface as well perfected by scripture, the scripture that awakens the knowledge-bearing power of action; for him action done without longing for fruit produces steadfastness in knowledge, and that steadfastness is itself the direct experience of the Self that the word yoga names. Jnaneshwari, the Marathi voice, describes the discerning power, once confounded through the senses, being set right so the mind looks at the Supreme Self steadily and whole, and only when it grows perfectly peaceful and settled in absorption is yoga attained.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Tilak reads the verse strictly in terms of his Karma-Yoga teaching. The 'yoga' attained is Equable Reason, an even, balanced intellect, and the path to it is to stop paying attention to the Vedic statements that advertise particular fruits for particular acts, since dwelling on them only deepens the turmoil. Once a person fixes the mind in concentration and the reason becomes steady, he can perform action without incurring sin and without needing any further advice. Such a one, whose reason has become steady (sthita), is the Sthitaprajna whose conduct Arjuna immediately asks about. For Tilak the verse is therefore less about absorption into the absolute than about acquiring the steady, equable reason that makes right action possible.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Tilak reads the verse strictly in terms of his Karma-Yoga teaching. The 'yoga' attained is Equable Reason, an even, balanced intellect, and the path to it is to stop paying attention to the Vedic statements that advertise particular fruits for particular acts, since dwelling on them only deepens the turmoil. Once a person fixes the mind in concentration and the reason becomes steady, he can perform action without incurring sin and without needing any further advice. Such a one, whose reason has become steady (sthita), is the Sthitaprajna whose conduct Arjuna immediately asks about. For Tilak the verse is therefore less about absorption into the absolute than about acquiring the steady, equable reason that makes right action possible.
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
Ramsukhdas offers a concrete way to walk this verse when the mind is genuinely torn. He says the first knot to cut is the relationship with the world itself. Make one quiet decision: I am here only to serve, and I have nothing to take from the world. The moment that decision settles, he says, dispassion begins to dawn and the pull of pleasures loosens its grip on its own. Then, when you turn toward the Supreme and find many conflicting teachings about which goal to seek and which method to follow, do not try to settle it by anxious comparison. Test your own genuine inclination, your faith, and your capacity in the company of the wise (satsang). And if even that is beyond you, his counsel is the simplest of all: take refuge in the Lord and call upon Him. The steadiness the verse promises, on this reading, is reached not by out-arguing every doubt but by serving without grasping and resting the whole matter in God.
The torn mind does not have to out-argue every doubt; it can quietly serve, take nothing for itself, and rest the whole matter in the Lord.
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 begins by naming a real problem: the intellect (buddhi, the deciding, discerning faculty) has been thrown into confusion by what it has heard. The word is śruti-vipratipannā, the mind 'set at odds' or 'tossed about' by scripture. Most commentators explain this as the bewilderment caused by the many Vedic texts that promise many different rewards through many different ritual means, so that a person who listens to them is pulled in opposing directions and cannot settle. The intellect becomes, in Shankara's phrase, many-minded and scattered. Sridhara widens it to all kinds of hearing, both worldly and Vedic, that have left the mind distracted. Tilak ties it directly back to an earlier teaching: a person dazzled by the fruits the Vedic hymns describe falls into the turmoil of chasing this act for that result, and his reason grows more confused, not steadier.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Śrī Puruṣottama
The cure is a single, decisive change of condition: the buddhi must come to a complete stillness in samadhi. Samadhi here means deep absorption, the gathered, settled state in which the mind rests undistracted on its true object. The verse gives this stillness two qualities, and several commentators carefully keep them apart. Niścalā means unshaken, free from the wavering of distraction, no longer pulled outward toward this object and that. Acalā means immovable, free from doubt, no longer shaken by counter-arguments or uncertainty. Anandagiri reads them as freedom from error and freedom from uncertainty; Nilakantha as not shakable by counter-reasoning and free of doubt; Sridhara as unshaken by distractions and, by the strength of practice, stable. Madhusudana and Baladeva reach for the Gita's own later image of a lamp burning steady in a windless place.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Puruṣottama · Madhvācārya
Only when that unbroken stillness is reached does the promise land: 'then you will attain yoga.' The commentators agree the verse marks an attainment, the arrival at the goal, and not merely a stage along the way. What yoga names here is the consummation: the settled, discerning realization that ends the seeking. Shankara calls it the insight of discernment, absorption itself. Nilakantha calls it the discerning wisdom. Sridhara calls it the fruit of yoga, knowledge of the truth. The teaching is therefore practical and ordered: scattered hearing cannot by itself deliver the goal; the hearing must ripen into a fixed, doubt-free absorption, and that absorption is the union the whole path is for.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Madhvācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Puruṣottama
Several commentators add that this verse is a hinge in the dialogue. It rounds off Krishna's teaching on steadiness of intellect, and by promising 'then you will attain yoga' it provokes Arjuna's next question, which asks what such a settled person is actually like, how the one of steady wisdom (sthitaprajna) speaks, sits, and moves. Shankara says Arjuna, given the seed of a question, now wishes to know the marks of one whose insight is settled in absorption. Ramanuja and Tilak read the very same turn. So the verse both completes one teaching and opens the famous description that follows.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Lokmanya Tilak
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the 'samadhi' as absorption in the Self, the inmost reality, and read the 'yoga' you attain as Self-realization, the non-dual knowledge of Brahman. The confusion is the scattering left by scriptures whose deeper purport was never examined. The settling is the ripening of discrimination and dispassion (telling the real from the unreal, and turning away from the unreal), so that the intellect comes to rest unmoving in the Self. Nilakantha frames the doubts being silenced as metaphysical questions, whether the Self is eternal or not, agent or non-agent, one or many, all set aside by inquiry until the mind becomes immovable in the non-duality of Brahman that scripture truly aims at. Madhusudana names the fruit most fully: the union that is the identity of the individual and the supreme Self, the undivided realization born of the great saying 'that thou art,' after which no further goal remains. On this view the verse describes the path of knowledge reaching its term.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads the verse as a compact statement of how action and knowledge work together. The 'understanding gained through hearing' is the true, eternal, subtle teaching about the self received from the Lord, an understanding that is itself unmoving and single in form. What allows it to stand unshaken is a mind purified by the performance of unattached action, action done without clinging to its fruit. The sequence is explicit: the discipline of action, preceded by scriptural knowledge of the self, produces the standing in knowledge that is called steadiness of wisdom, and that steadiness in turn accomplishes 'yoga,' which he defines as the beholding of the self, the direct vision of one's own true nature. Here yoga is not absorption into an undifferentiated absolute but the clear seeing of the self, reached through purifying action.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva turns on the word vipratipannā, reading the buddhi as having been opposed to, set at odds with, the Vedas heard. The remedy is to determine the truth in keeping with the Veda's own meaning, until the intellect can no longer be shaken even by speech that runs counter to it. The 'yoga' attained is then sinking unmoving in samadhi into the supreme bliss through the direct seeing of Brahman, an absorption so complete that even the beating of drums cannot disturb it. Jayatirtha develops the reasoning carefully across stages: 'unwavering' marks the limit of indirect, inferred knowledge, where the mind is steadied by ascertaining the Veda's meaning against false scriptures; 'unmoving in Brahman,' undisturbed even by the kettledrum, marks the limit of direct knowledge; and 'you will attain yoga' means you will become accomplished in supreme bliss, having reached the fruit. On this reading the single verse maps the whole culmination of the practice of yoga, from settled understanding to direct, blissful seeing of the Lord.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
Purushottama reads the goal personally and devotionally. The intellect grows steady when it is no longer drawn after the desire to hear of many duties, and cannot be moved even by those duties once they have been heard. The samadhi is the time of dwelling on the Lord, on 'Me.' And the 'yoga' attained is the state of the Lord's near-presence. Stillness here is not absorption into an impersonal absolute but a settled, undistracted dwelling that brings one close to God.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators read the 'samadhi' as the mind well placed in the Supreme Lord, in whom it comes to rest unshaken by other objects. Sridhara takes the yoga attained as the fruit of yoga, knowledge of the truth. Vishvanatha presses further, saying that by gaining direct experience you become one liberated while still living (a jivanmukta), and he points ahead to the kind of absorption the sixth chapter will describe. Baladeva strikingly reads 'confused by scripture' against its surface as well perfected by scripture, the scripture that awakens the knowledge-bearing power of action; for him action done without longing for fruit produces steadfastness in knowledge, and that steadfastness is itself the direct experience of the Self that the word yoga names. Jnaneshwari, the Marathi voice, describes the discerning power, once confounded through the senses, being set right so the mind looks at the Supreme Self steadily and whole, and only when it grows perfectly peaceful and settled in absorption is yoga attained.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
Tilak reads the verse strictly in terms of his Karma-Yoga teaching. The 'yoga' attained is Equable Reason, an even, balanced intellect, and the path to it is to stop paying attention to the Vedic statements that advertise particular fruits for particular acts, since dwelling on them only deepens the turmoil. Once a person fixes the mind in concentration and the reason becomes steady, he can perform action without incurring sin and without needing any further advice. Such a one, whose reason has become steady (sthita), is the Sthitaprajna whose conduct Arjuna immediately asks about. For Tilak the verse is therefore less about absorption into the absolute than about acquiring the steady, equable reason that makes right action possible.
Lokmanya Tilak
Modern
Ramsukhdas alone reads the 'confusion by scripture' as Arjuna's own concrete moral deadlock. Arjuna is caught between two scriptural duties that cannot both be honored: it is wrong to destroy his teachers and family, and it is also wrong to abandon his warrior-duty of fighting; protect the family and there is no war, wage the war and the family is not protected. This clash has shaken his intellect. So the Lord urges him to make the buddhi unshaken (niścala) amid these scriptural differences and immovable (acala) in the one matter of attaining the Supreme. Ramsukhdas then traces a seeker's path: first decide that one is here only to serve the world and take nothing from it, which begins dispassion; then, when many conflicting views about the goal and the means crowd in, decide one's own genuine inclination, faith, and capacity through holy company (satsang), or, failing that, simply take refuge in the Lord and call upon Him. The accent falls on devotional surrender as the way through confusion.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If even scripture leaves my mind tossed about, how am I supposed to use scripture to become steady rather than just reading my way into deeper confusion?
The commentators agree that the confusion is real and even expected at first. The very phrase of the verse, the mind 'tossed about' or 'set at odds' by scripture, names the experience of being pulled in many directions by texts that promise many results through many means. So the unsettledness you feel is not a sign that you are doing it wrong; it is the starting point the verse itself describes.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Lokmanya Tilak · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The way out is not more accumulation of hearing but a shift in how you hold what you hear. Several commentators say the scattering is overcome by inquiry that sees through the surface to the real purport, and by the ripening of discrimination and dispassion, so the mind stops chasing this fruit and that. Nilakantha describes the doubts being actively set aside by inquiry until the intellect becomes immovable in what scripture truly points to; the texts stop being a tug-of-war and become a single direction.
Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Madhvācārya
What finally steadies the mind is not winning every argument but coming to rest in the one object the path is for, deepened by practice. The verse's two words mark this: unshaken by distraction, and immovable against doubt, like a lamp in a windless place. That stillness comes by absorption strengthened over time, and the commentators in the devotional voices add that this rest is found by placing the mind in the Lord himself.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Puruṣottama
And if the conflict is not abstract but a real life-decision, there is a humbler path through it. Ramsukhdas counsels settling first to serve without grasping, then testing your own inclination and faith in the company of the wise, and, when even that is beyond you, taking refuge in God and calling upon Him. You do not have to resolve every scriptural difference by yourself before the mind can grow quiet.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Ramsukhdas offers a concrete way to walk this verse when the mind is genuinely torn. He says the first knot to cut is the relationship with the world itself. Make one quiet decision: I am here only to serve, and I have nothing to take from the world. The moment that decision settles, he says, dispassion begins to dawn and the pull of pleasures loosens its grip on its own. Then, when you turn toward the Supreme and find many conflicting teachings about which goal to seek and which method to follow, do not try to settle it by anxious comparison. Test your own genuine inclination, your faith, and your capacity in the company of the wise (satsang). And if even that is beyond you, his counsel is the simplest of all: take refuge in the Lord and call upon Him. The steadiness the verse promises, on this reading, is reached not by out-arguing every doubt but by serving without grasping and resting the whole matter in God.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
All the translations and commentary
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