Restrain every sense and sit intent on the Lord; that wisdom stands firm.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'intent on Me' (mat-parah) through the lens of non-dual identity. The 'Me' is Vasudeva, the inmost Self of all; to be intent on Him is to sit holding the conviction 'I am no other than That', seeing nothing beyond Him. One adds that this fixing is reached by long, uninterrupted, reverent practice of the contemplation 'I am not other than the supreme Self' (and alternatively by repeatedly seeing the fault in sense-objects), and that this very contemplation is what subdues the senses. So devotion here is not relation to a separate Lord but the steadying of the mind in its own ultimate identity, and the verse clears away any sense of a higher and a lower by that single phrase 'I am not other.'

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

Dvaita

These commentators flatly reject the non-dual reading of 'intent on Me.' They hold that 'Me' is the Lord who is supreme, higher and more excellent than all, distinct from the devotee; to read 'devoted to Me' as 'non-dual knowledge' does not follow the actual syllables of the verse. 'Joined' (yukta) is taken as the mind applied to Him, in absorption, not as union in identity. They also build a tight argument from the structure of these verses: direct knowledge of Brahman is meant to be reached by conquering the senses, yet the senses seem impossible to conquer by ordinary discriminating knowledge alone (a hungry body cannot even subsist), which would make knowledge and sense-control mutually depend on each other. The way out is 'great effort,' and above all the constant joining of the mind on the Lord alone as the most excellent of all; that, not bare discrimination, is the supreme means of conquering the senses. On this reading the closing point of the three verses is that knowledge is the fruit of a sense-conquest won by hard toil, and one who fears the toil simply fails to win it.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This commentator explains the mechanism in order: the senses are hard to conquer because they are bound up with passion for their objects, so the practitioner first sets the mind on the Lord, the mind's auspicious resort. With the mind fixed on Him, it is purified, its taint burned away and its passion for objects gone; the now-pure mind then makes the senses obey it, and only the mind with obedient senses is able to behold the self. The supporting image is of fire fanned by wind burning up brushwood: Vishnu present in the mind burns away all the impurity of the yogins. The order matters: purify the mind through the Lord first, and sense-control and self-vision follow; reverse it and try to force the senses first, and one comes to ruin.

Rāmānujācārya

Bhakti

These devotional commentators make devotion the indispensable condition. 'Intent on Me' means simply 'My devotee,' and one holds that there is no conquest of the senses at all without devotion to the Lord, citing Uddhava's confession that yogis who merely restrain the mind by effort sink down exhausted for want of absorption, so let them rather take refuge at the Lord's lotus feet. Another, sharing the Vishnu-in-the-mind image of burning away impurity, says that by the power of devotion to the Lord the vision of one's own self, preceded by the conquest of the senses, becomes easy. One stresses that the steady one's senses have become subdued, marking him off from the practitioner. Another warns that even the slightest lingering desire for sense-objects, however outwardly detached a person seems, spreads like a single drop of poison through the body and destroys all right thinking; only the heart never tempted by objects keeps the Lord always in view.

Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator uses the verse to answer a precise question: why is the austere man, who also abstains from objects, not called 'of established wisdom'? The answer turns on relish (rasa). Even when the ascetic has no contact with objects like form and the rest, those objects turn away from him while still leaving behind their relish, a residual tinge lodged in the inner organ; because that tinge does not leave, he is not steady of wisdom. The yogin is different: by the very seeing of the supreme Lord, no such tinge arises in him at all. So 'intent on Me' here is the vision of the Lord that dissolves the inner relish itself, not just the outward act of abstaining, and that is what separates real steadiness from mere austerity.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Śuddhādvaita

This commentator reads the two halves as a reciprocal circle. Having restrained the senses and brought them under control, one is to be 'mat-parah,' the one for whom the Lord alone is supreme, and joined to Him; and for such a one whose wisdom is firmly established, the senses come under his own control and no one else's. Steadiness of wisdom and mastery of the senses each secure the other, which is why the first half could say that even the wise are no match for the senses: the agitating senses are subdued only within this devotional steadiness, not apart from it.

Śrī Puruṣottama

Modern

These modern voices each draw out a practical emphasis. One reads 'yukta' as perfected by yoga, an adept who bears pain and pleasure with an equable mind, and finds in 'matparayana' the first hint in the Gita of the path of devotion; he insists that the mind is freed from the slavery of the senses only by gaining knowledge of Brahman, that merely mortifying the body is external and useless, and he cites Manu's warning that the powerful band of senses drags off even the wise man. Another, non-sectarian and devotional, finds the verse's heart in a trap of subtle pride: when the seeker controls the senses, the conceit arises, 'I have brought the senses under my sway,' and this conceit, crediting one's own strength, blocks progress and turns one from the Lord; so the seeker should credit only the Lord's grace, since the human birth, the taste for practice, and its very success all rest on grace alone, and by becoming wholly devoted to the Lord the practice is fulfilled. He also reads the second line against verse 59: there, cutting off contact with objects left the inner relish intact, so the senses were not truly mastered, whereas here the steady one's relish has passed off and the senses are genuinely in hand.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Sivananda