Moving among objects free of liking and disliking, the mind grows clear.

Advaita Vedānta

For these commentators prasada is the clarity of the mind, its transparency and fitness for realizing the supreme Self. They press this further than mere calm: the clarity of the mind is finally the clarity of the inmost Self itself, because the mind partakes of the Self's quality and shows it through once the mire of attachment and choice is washed away. The reasoning runs: senses driven by liking and disliking cause fault; master the mind and those vanish; with them gone the senses have no impulse, and the unavoidable bare apprehension of objects leaves purity unobstructed. The goal in view is liberating knowledge, and this cleared mind is its ground.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha

Dvaita

These commentators frame the verse as stating the fruit of the conquest of the senses, and they are careful about the logical chain. Jayatirtha distinguishes a direct fruit from a mediate one: the removal of liking and aversion yields conquest of the senses, and conquest of the senses in turn yields knowledge, so knowledge is the mediate fruit reached through this serenity rather than directly. He also guards a precise point: 'serenity' might seem to be a property of the self, but it is to be understood as a property of the mind, which is why the following verse speaks of 'serene mind.' The accent here is on getting the order of cause and fruit exactly right.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Ramanuja makes the condition explicitly devotional and theistic. The one who attains serenity is the one who has set his mind on the Lord of all, the auspicious resort of the mind, and whose every taint is thereby burned away. With mind fixed on the Lord he moves among objects with senses freed from passion and aversion and obedient to himself, living in effect by setting the objects aside. The serenity he reaches is described as the inner organ becoming pure. The distinctive note is that the freedom from raga and dvesha is grounded in devotion to the Lord, not in a bare disciplining of the mind on its own.

Rāmānujācārya

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators give prasada a frankly theistic and graced meaning. Purushottama reads even 'vidheyatma' as the self in which the Lord has been made amenable to one's will, and he allows that the senses are touched by liking and aversion yet are under the control of the self and of Bhagavan. The objects themselves are enjoyments granted by Bhagavan's will, and the devotee uses them only so far as the work requires, knowing the Lord has given them through senses longing for the divine relish (rasa). On this reading prasada is not merely a clear mind but the grace of Bhagavan, and Purushottama cites the Bhagavata (11.14.18) that the devotee is not overpowered by objects. Vallabha, reading 2.64 with 2.65, ties this inner clearness to the destruction of all sorrow and the quick steadying of the intellect for the clear-minded.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators make offering the mind to Krishna the heart of the matter and then press a bold conclusion. Baladeva says that once the mind is conquered and offered to the Lord, even the non-conquest of the outer senses is no fault; the impurities of the mind are burned away by that offering, and such a one, with senses freed of liking and aversion, may move even among forbidden objects and still attain serenity, a clear mind in which no impurity arises. Vishvanatha pushes the same point: for so qualified a person, grasping objects is not merely no fault but a positive virtue, so that both his renunciation and his acceptance of objects, both his 'sitting' and his 'moving,' are auspicious. Jnaneshwari gives the famous image: as the sun touches the whole world with its rays yet is never stained by any impurity it contacts, so one who abides in the Self, free of passion and wrath, enjoys objects yet feels nothing but the Self in them; water cannot drown water, nor fire burn fire. This emphasis that acceptance itself becomes blameless, even virtuous, distinguishes these voices from those that confine the sage strictly to unforbidden, life-sustaining objects.

Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

Abhinavagupta reads the verse against the mere ascetic and exposes a trap in renunciation itself. The man of austerity who tries to give up objects must first dwell on them in thought to renounce them, and at the very moment of that dwelling, attachment and the rest arise again. So his giving-up is never clean; it carries the seed of the very attachment it means to drop. Therefore giving up objects 'without lapse,' without that backdoor return of attachment, belongs to the steady of wisdom alone, the one free of liking and aversion described here. This is a distinctive angle: the verse is read less as license to engage objects and more as showing why only the raga-and-dvesha-free person can truly let them go at all.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

Ramsukhdas, reading in a non-sectarian devotional Vedanta key, foregrounds the seva-versus-bhoga distinction and the practical mechanics of prasada. The sage does the needed dealings with objects (seva) but no indulgent enjoyment (bhoga); the words 'vidheyatma' and 'atmavashya' are there precisely to negate the enjoying attitude. He explains prasada as prasannata, the mind's cleanness, and identifies it with the mental austerity (manasika tapa) of Gita 17.16, which he ranks above bodily and verbal austerity. He then traces the full causal chain forward into the next verse: liking breeds dejection, dejection breeds craving, craving breeds all sorrow; remove liking and clarity arises, dejection goes, the craving for pleasure goes, the bond with the body-world is cut, and so all sorrows are absent and the intellect at once turns inward and settles in the Supreme. He cross-refers to Gita 3.34 and 5.3 on liking and aversion as the seeker's true foes.

Swami Ramsukhdas