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V.373.363.38
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Desire, born of restless rajas, is the one enemy seated within, and anger is bound up with it.

When something blocks what we want and we burn at the person in our way, it is easy to think anger is the trouble and they are its cause. Krishna turns us back to the craving inside, the single root from which the harm comes.

37Chapter 3
The verseSpoken by Krishna
Voices20 commentators · 6 schools · modern voices
The readingAbout 5 minutes, unhurried
काम एष क्रोध एष रजोगुणसमुद्भवः। महाशनो महापाप्मा विद्ध्येनमिह वैरिणम्
kāma eṣha krodha eṣha rajo-guṇa-samudbhavaḥ mahāśhano mahā-pāpmā viddhyenam iha vairiṇam

It is desire, it is anger, born of the mode of rajas. It devours everything; it drives endless sin. Know it as the enemy here.

Bhagavad Gita 3.37
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda

Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur

Arjuna had just asked what drives a person to do wrong even against their own will, and here Krishna gives the answer in one word: it is desire.

Where they agreethe convergence

One craving, born of rajas, is the enemy that drives our wrong, and anger never stands apart from it.

Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.

6schools

Here is the answer to your own question: what forces you toward harm even unwilling is desire, the longing in you that says let this be mine, and it is the enemy of all the world.

Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Bhakti, Bhedābheda, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Sivananda · Ramsukhdas · Bhāskara · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Vedānta Deśika
In Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 13 others’ words

Krishna now names the answer to Arjuna's question from the previous verse: what is it that drives a person to do wrong even against their own will? It is kama, desire. Kama means craving or longing, the inner wish 'let this be mine, let me have that.' This single force, the commentators agree, is the cause of every calamity that befalls living beings. It is not a small enemy but the enemy of all the world. Desire is what forcibly pushes a person onto the path of harm and pain.

Asked in question 1, below
6schools

Look again and you find anger is not a second foe; it is this same desire, met by an obstacle and changed in form, so that to conquer the one is to conquer the other.

Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, Bhedābheda, Kashmir Śaiva, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Sivananda · Ramsukhdas · Bhāskara · Abhinavagupta · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Vedānta Deśika
In Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 13 others’ words

Arjuna had heard two things named earlier (desire and anger), and might wonder why Krishna now answers with desire alone. The commentators explain that anger is not a separate enemy. Anger (krodha) is desire itself in another form: when desire is blocked or thwarted by some obstacle, it transforms into anger. So when desire is conquered, anger is conquered with it. By using the word 'this' twice ('this is desire, this is anger'), Krishna points to the non-difference of the two. Several commentators trace this back to 2.62, where it was already said that from desire anger is born.

Asked in question 2, below
5schools

See where the craving comes from: it springs from rajas, the restless strand of your nature, and that very source shows the way out, for as calm grows and restlessness wears thin, desire wears thin with it.

Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, Bhedābheda, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Sivananda · Ramsukhdas · Bhāskara · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Vedānta Deśika
In Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 12 others’ words

The verse tells us where desire comes from: it is rajo-guna-samudbhava, born of the quality of rajas. Prakriti, the material nature, has three qualities or strands (gunas): sattva (clarity and calm), rajas (restless activity and passion), and tamas (darkness and inertia). Rajas is the strand of restless engagement, and desire springs from it. This origin is also the clue to the cure: when sattva is increased and rajas is worn down or conquered, desire too is worn down and conquered. Several commentators note that desire and rajas feed each other in a cycle: desire stirs rajas into motion, which sets the person to restless work, which strengthens attachment, which breeds more desire.

7schools

Do not try to fill it, for it is a great devourer that only swells with feeding, like fire fed with offerings; and do not try to make terms with it, for it is fierce enough to drive you to harm even when you know the harm.

Across Advaita, Bhakti, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Bhedābheda, Kashmir Śaiva, ŚuddhādvaitaŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Bhāskara · Abhinavagupta · Puruṣottama · Vallabha · Jñāneśvar
In Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 12 others’ words

Krishna calls desire mahashana, the great devourer, and mahapapma, the great sinner. Many commentators read these two words as proof that desire cannot be appeased and so must be fought outright. 'Great devourer' means it can never be filled: feeding desire does not satisfy it but makes it grow, like fire fed with offerings. The remembered verse is quoted that all the grain, gold, cattle, and women on earth are not enough for one person; knowing this, one should go to peace. 'Great sinner' means it is utterly fierce: even after it has been given what it wants, even when a person knows the harm that will follow, desire still drives them to sin. Some commentators frame this in terms of the classical means of subduing a foe: desire cannot be won over by gift (since it is unfillable) nor by conciliation or by sowing division (since it is too violent), so it can only be slain.

Asked in question 3, below
6schools

And know it as the enemy here, in this embodied life and this round of birth and death: not a foe standing outside you, but an inborn one seated within, set against your progress.

Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Bhakti, Bhedābheda, ŚuddhādvaitaŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Śrīdhara · Bhāskara · Puruṣottama · Baladeva
In Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 8 others’ words

The verse closes by telling Arjuna to know this desire as the enemy 'here' (iha). The commentators give weight to that word. The enemy is here in transmigration, in this round of birth and death, in this embodied life. For those reading the chapter as a teaching on the path, it is specifically the enemy that obstructs the discipline of knowledge or the path to liberation. It is not an enemy outside us but one seated within the body, an inborn opponent to spiritual progress.

This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.

Where they differthe divergence

The question they answer differently
Is anger a separate enemy, or is it desire itself in a changed form?
The traditional commentators
Advaita VedāntaŚaṅkara, Ānandagiri, Madhusūdana
Anger is this very desire obstructed somewhere and turned into a changed state, so conquering desire conquers anger.
Reading anger as desire blocked.
Advaita Vedānta, in their fuller words

These commentators hold the plain identity of anger with desire: 'this very desire, obstructed somewhere, turns into anger,' so anger is just desire in a changed state. They reason from desire's nature as restless longing arising from rajas. One adds that desire is mind-formed, citing scripture that 'desire, will, doubt' and the rest are all the mind, so kama is essentially the mind's unfixedness. The closing word 'here' is read as 'here in transmigration,' the round of birth and death. The cure is structural: since desire is rajas-born, wearing rajas away by a sattvic turn wears desire away.

Śaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati
DvaitaMadhva, Jayatīrtha
Desire and anger stay utterly different; anger always rises from desire as its cause, but never is desire itself.
On the literal identity claim.
Dvaita, in their fuller words

These commentators reject the idea that anger is literally desire transformed, and call this the error of other commentators who do not know the subtle truth from the texts. For them desire and anger are utterly different; a quality cannot be the material out of which another quality is made, only its occasioning cause. They affirm instead a strict causal link: anger always arises from desire, and apart from desire anger does not arise in any way at all. Even when anger seems to come from hearing one's teacher censured, it still arises from a desire (the desire that what one holds dear in devotion not be censured). They also parse 'great sinner' (mahapapma) not as a descriptive compound but as a possessive one: 'that from which great sin comes,' such as brahmin-slaying. And 'the enemy' opposes 'all,' meaning the complete human goal, namely liberation.

Madhva · Jayatīrtha
Asked in question 4, below
ViśiṣṭādvaitaRāmānuja, Vedānta Deśika
Desire fed by rajas and old impressions draws the seeker out toward objects, and when checked turns to anger at those who block it.
For one begun on the discipline of knowledge.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words

These commentators set the verse precisely in the context of one who has begun the discipline of knowledge while still joined to matter made of the gunas. Desire here is born of rajas and of the earlier impression (vasana) left by past experience of objects, fastening on sound and the other sense-objects, and it draws the seeker out toward all objects. When its course is checked, it turns into anger directed at the conscious beings causing the obstruction, and sets the person to harming others. One develops the precise mechanism: the seed-impressions of sense-experience, watered by rajas, sprout into desire and anger; desire is a knowledge-aspect of the self, while rajas is a quality of prakriti, and just as fire's heat touching the hand raises a blister, contact with guna-bearing prakriti raises desire in the self. To the worry that an overwhelmingly rajasic person could not even begin the discipline of knowledge, the answer is that sattva rises in interludes, alternating, which makes the beginning possible.

Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika
ŚuddhādvaitaVallabha, Puruṣottama
Desire is born of rajas, but anger is really born of tamas, left unsaid, so anger is the younger brother of desire.
On the deeper source of anger.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words

These commentators add a distinctive refinement: strictly speaking, desire (the prior appearance of attachment, raga) is born of rajas, while anger (the prior appearance of aversion, dvesa) is really born of tamas. The text does not say this only because, in the transformation, the cause being tamas is left implicit; for this reason anger is called the younger brother of desire. One frames rajas itself as a portion of Bhagavan manifested for the unfolding of the world's variety, which bewilders the embodied soul into engagement, so that knowing this form one should give up the distracted works it produces. The word 'here' is given a forward-looking sense: in this embodied worldly life desire is a foe, but once this body is over, in the supra-mundane sphere it becomes workable, no longer an enemy. One reads the naming of desire alone as a foe in light of Arjuna's own situation (at the moment of war he is attached to the lives of his kinsmen, so it is precisely desire that is at stake), and as setting up the later teaching that only refuge in the Lord and the grace of surrender dissolves desire at its root, since effort alone will not.

Vallabha · Puruṣottama
Kashmir ŚaivaAbhinavagupta
Dharma is still lodged in the heart, only veiled by a passing cover, and desire and anger are eternally one form.
On what the upheaval covers.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words

This commentator opens with the point that the inner upheaval is caused by an adventitious covering laid over the heart, not by any absence of dharma; dharma is still present, lodged in the heart, only veiled. By the two uses of 'this' the utter non-difference of desire and anger is hinted, and the two are eternally connected, mutually inseparable, so they are expounded as of a single form. He reads 'great devourer' as the eater of great happiness, the one that swallows joy down, and 'great sinner' as the sin-giver.

Abhinavagupta
BhaktiŚrīdhara, Viśvanātha, Baladeva
From rajasic desire is born tamasic anger, as milk joined with something sour becomes curd, so slaying desire slays anger.
On the inner chain.
Bhakti, in their fuller words

These commentators follow the identity of anger with desire and the rajas origin, but several sharpen the inner chain: from rajasic desire is born tamasic anger, so anger is the tamasic outgrowth of a rajasic root. One uses a homely image: desire becomes anger as milk joined with something sour becomes curd, so conquering desire is itself conquering anger. They frame the three terms as a refutation of three remedies: desire cannot be reconciled by giving (it is unfillable), nor by conciliation, nor by sowing division (it is too fierce), so it must be slain by the means to be told next. One notes that the Lord, hidden by action, is the prompter everywhere like rain, but desire is itself the foremost sinner. The Marathi devotional voice pours out an extended, vivid lament: desire and anger are merciless scourges working like the god of destruction, dark cobras guarding the buried treasure of knowledge, tigers in the valley of carnal pleasures, assassins waylaying the path of devotion to God; born of rajas yet fondled by tamas, fed on nescience, they devastate contentment and fortitude and uproot bliss, kill without weapons and bind without ropes.

Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar
Modern voices teachers of the last two centuries, read together; they stand apart from the classical schools
A modern readingSivananda, Tilak, Ramsukhdas
Attraction breeds desire and desire breeds attraction, a self-feeding loop, and the one craving for perishable things is the single root of all sin.
Reconciling with 14.7.
A modern reading, in their fuller words

These commentators give plain, practical readings. One restates the teaching directly: the cause of all sin and wrong action is desire; anger is desire itself, arising when a desire is blocked by those who stand in the way; when desire arises it generates rajas and urges the person to work to possess the object. Another renders the verse tersely, naming greedy and sinful desire, born of rajas, and anger, as the enemy. One develops the cycle most fully: he points ahead to 14.7, where rajas is said to be born from craving and attachment, and reconciles it with this verse (where desire is born from rajas) by describing a self-feeding loop: from raga (attraction) desire is born, and from desire raga grows; reckoning worldly things to give happiness breeds attraction, which sets their importance in the inner instrument, which raises the craving to hoard them, which grows attraction further; as long as this cycle runs, wrong action does not fully cease. He explains that both 'desire' and 'anger' are named because sin is seen done sometimes under the sway of one and sometimes the other, yet the singular is used to show that the one craving for perishable objects is the single root of all sin.

Sivananda · Tilak · Ramsukhdas
Sit with these

A few questions to carry

These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.

1
Krishna names a single force as the enemy that drives a person to wrong even against their own will. What is it?
2
Arjuna heard both desire and anger named, yet Krishna answers with desire alone. How do the commentators resolve this?
3
Krishna calls desire the 'great devourer.' What do the commentators draw from that word?
4
Where does the Dvaita reading part from those who say anger is desire transformed?
5
The verse says desire must be fought. What first move does the teaching point you toward?
For a second sitting7 more questions
6
The verse tells Arjuna to know desire as the enemy 'here.' How is that word read?
7
How does the Vishishtadvaita reading set the verse for one who has begun the discipline of knowledge?
8
What distinctive refinement does the Shuddhadvaita reading add about anger's source?
9
How does the Modern reading describe the working of desire across the verse?
10
What homely image does the Bhakti reading use for desire turning into anger?
11
What does the Kashmir Shaivism reading say about dharma during this inner upheaval?
12
Why do commentators say desire can only be slain, not won over by milder means?

Carry this with youwhat stays

Notice that the enemy named here is not any person standing in your way. It is the craving inside you. When desire meets an obstacle, it turns into anger, and the anger looks for someone to blame. But the real foe was never out there. So the first move is to stop feeding it. Desire is a great devourer: every time you give it what it wants, it does not quiet down, it grows, like fire fed with offerings. Try watching the cycle instead of obeying it. You reckon some object will make you happy, so attraction forms; the object grows important in your mind; craving to get and keep it rises; and once you have it, the attraction only grows stronger. As long as that loop turns, wrong action never fully stops. Seeing the loop clearly, for what it is, is the beginning of stepping out of it, and turning instead toward peace.

When something blocks you today and anger rises looking for someone to blame, turn gently back to the craving underneath, and watch the loop instead of obeying it.

काम एष क्रोध एष रजोगुणसमुद्भवः।kāma eṣha krodha eṣha rajo-guṇa-samudbhavaḥ

Read deeper

Everything a full study holds, folded below.

Word by word13 terms
śhri-bhagavān uvāchathe Supreme Lord saidkāmaḥdesireeṣhaḥthiskrodhaḥwratheṣhaḥthisrajaḥ-guṇathe mode of passionsamudbhavaḥborn ofmahā-aśhanaḥall-devouringmahā-pāpmāgreatly sinfulviddhiknowenamthisihain the material worldvairiṇamthe enemy
All the commentary, woven togetherevery voice, in one place

The commentary, woven together

machine-assisted draft, pending review

Convergence

rishna now names the answer to Arjuna's question from the previous verse: what is it that drives a person to do wrong even against their own will? It is kama, desire. Kama means craving or longing, the inner wish 'let this be mine, let me have that.' This single force, the commentators agree, is the cause of every calamity that befalls living beings. It is not a small enemy but the enemy of all the world. Desire is what forcibly pushes a person onto the path of harm and pain.

Braided from 15 commentators

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Bhāskara · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vedānta Deśika

Arjuna had heard two things named earlier (desire and anger), and might wonder why Krishna now answers with desire alone. The commentators explain that anger is not a separate enemy. Anger (krodha) is desire itself in another form: when desire is blocked or thwarted by some obstacle, it transforms into anger. So when desire is conquered, anger is conquered with it. By using the word 'this' twice ('this is desire, this is anger'), Krishna points to the non-difference of the two. Several commentators trace this back to 2.62, where it was already said that from desire anger is born.

Braided from 15 commentators

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Bhāskara · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vedānta Deśika

The verse tells us where desire comes from: it is rajo-guna-samudbhava, born of the quality of rajas. Prakriti, the material nature, has three qualities or strands (gunas): sattva (clarity and calm), rajas (restless activity and passion), and tamas (darkness and inertia). Rajas is the strand of restless engagement, and desire springs from it. This origin is also the clue to the cure: when sattva is increased and rajas is worn down or conquered, desire too is worn down and conquered. Several commentators note that desire and rajas feed each other in a cycle: desire stirs rajas into motion, which sets the person to restless work, which strengthens attachment, which breeds more desire.

Braided from 14 commentators

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Bhāskara · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vedānta Deśika

Krishna calls desire mahashana, the great devourer, and mahapapma, the great sinner. Many commentators read these two words as proof that desire cannot be appeased and so must be fought outright. 'Great devourer' means it can never be filled: feeding desire does not satisfy it but makes it grow, like fire fed with offerings. The remembered verse is quoted that all the grain, gold, cattle, and women on earth are not enough for one person; knowing this, one should go to peace. 'Great sinner' means it is utterly fierce: even after it has been given what it wants, even when a person knows the harm that will follow, desire still drives them to sin. Some commentators frame this in terms of the classical means of subduing a foe: desire cannot be won over by gift (since it is unfillable) nor by conciliation or by sowing division (since it is too violent), so it can only be slain.

Braided from 14 commentators

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya · Sant Jñāneśvar

The verse closes by telling Arjuna to know this desire as the enemy 'here' (iha). The commentators give weight to that word. The enemy is here in transmigration, in this round of birth and death, in this embodied life. For those reading the chapter as a teaching on the path, it is specifically the enemy that obstructs the discipline of knowledge or the path to liberation. It is not an enemy outside us but one seated within the body, an inborn opponent to spiritual progress.

Braided from 10 commentators

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīla Baladeva

Divergence

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators hold the plain identity of anger with desire: 'this very desire, obstructed somewhere, turns into anger,' so anger is just desire in a changed state. They reason from desire's nature as restless longing arising from rajas. One adds that desire is mind-formed, citing scripture that 'desire, will, doubt' and the rest are all the mind, so kama is essentially the mind's unfixedness. The closing word 'here' is read as 'here in transmigration,' the round of birth and death. The cure is structural: since desire is rajas-born, wearing rajas away by a sattvic turn wears desire away.

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

Dvaita

These commentators reject the idea that anger is literally desire transformed, and call this the error of other commentators who do not know the subtle truth from the texts. For them desire and anger are utterly different; a quality cannot be the material out of which another quality is made, only its occasioning cause. They affirm instead a strict causal link: anger always arises from desire, and apart from desire anger does not arise in any way at all. Even when anger seems to come from hearing one's teacher censured, it still arises from a desire (the desire that what one holds dear in devotion not be censured). They also parse 'great sinner' (mahapapma) not as a descriptive compound but as a possessive one: 'that from which great sin comes,' such as brahmin-slaying. And 'the enemy' opposes 'all,' meaning the complete human goal, namely liberation.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators set the verse precisely in the context of one who has begun the discipline of knowledge while still joined to matter made of the gunas. Desire here is born of rajas and of the earlier impression (vasana) left by past experience of objects, fastening on sound and the other sense-objects, and it draws the seeker out toward all objects. When its course is checked, it turns into anger directed at the conscious beings causing the obstruction, and sets the person to harming others. One develops the precise mechanism: the seed-impressions of sense-experience, watered by rajas, sprout into desire and anger; desire is a knowledge-aspect of the self, while rajas is a quality of prakriti, and just as fire's heat touching the hand raises a blister, contact with guna-bearing prakriti raises desire in the self. To the worry that an overwhelmingly rajasic person could not even begin the discipline of knowledge, the answer is that sattva rises in interludes, alternating, which makes the beginning possible.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators add a distinctive refinement: strictly speaking, desire (the prior appearance of attachment, raga) is born of rajas, while anger (the prior appearance of aversion, dvesa) is really born of tamas. The text does not say this only because, in the transformation, the cause being tamas is left implicit; for this reason anger is called the younger brother of desire. One frames rajas itself as a portion of Bhagavan manifested for the unfolding of the world's variety, which bewilders the embodied soul into engagement, so that knowing this form one should give up the distracted works it produces. The word 'here' is given a forward-looking sense: in this embodied worldly life desire is a foe, but once this body is over, in the supra-mundane sphere it becomes workable, no longer an enemy. One reads the naming of desire alone as a foe in light of Arjuna's own situation (at the moment of war he is attached to the lives of his kinsmen, so it is precisely desire that is at stake), and as setting up the later teaching that only refuge in the Lord and the grace of surrender dissolves desire at its root, since effort alone will not.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator opens with the point that the inner upheaval is caused by an adventitious covering laid over the heart, not by any absence of dharma; dharma is still present, lodged in the heart, only veiled. By the two uses of 'this' the utter non-difference of desire and anger is hinted, and the two are eternally connected, mutually inseparable, so they are expounded as of a single form. He reads 'great devourer' as the eater of great happiness, the one that swallows joy down, and 'great sinner' as the sin-giver.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators follow the identity of anger with desire and the rajas origin, but several sharpen the inner chain: from rajasic desire is born tamasic anger, so anger is the tamasic outgrowth of a rajasic root. One uses a homely image: desire becomes anger as milk joined with something sour becomes curd, so conquering desire is itself conquering anger. They frame the three terms as a refutation of three remedies: desire cannot be reconciled by giving (it is unfillable), nor by conciliation, nor by sowing division (it is too fierce), so it must be slain by the means to be told next. One notes that the Lord, hidden by action, is the prompter everywhere like rain, but desire is itself the foremost sinner. The Marathi devotional voice pours out an extended, vivid lament: desire and anger are merciless scourges working like the god of destruction, dark cobras guarding the buried treasure of knowledge, tigers in the valley of carnal pleasures, assassins waylaying the path of devotion to God; born of rajas yet fondled by tamas, fed on nescience, they devastate contentment and fortitude and uproot bliss, kill without weapons and bind without ropes.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators give plain, practical readings. One restates the teaching directly: the cause of all sin and wrong action is desire; anger is desire itself, arising when a desire is blocked by those who stand in the way; when desire arises it generates rajas and urges the person to work to possess the object. Another renders the verse tersely, naming greedy and sinful desire, born of rajas, and anger, as the enemy. One develops the cycle most fully: he points ahead to 14.7, where rajas is said to be born from craving and attachment, and reconciles it with this verse (where desire is born from rajas) by describing a self-feeding loop: from raga (attraction) desire is born, and from desire raga grows; reckoning worldly things to give happiness breeds attraction, which sets their importance in the inner instrument, which raises the craving to hoard them, which grows attraction further; as long as this cycle runs, wrong action does not fully cease. He explains that both 'desire' and 'anger' are named because sin is seen done sometimes under the sway of one and sometimes the other, yet the singular is used to show that the one craving for perishable objects is the single root of all sin.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas

A Seeker Asks

If desire is the root of every wrong I do, and it cannot be satisfied or reasoned away but only 'slain,' how am I supposed to fight something that lives inside me and keeps coming back?

Start by seeing the enemy correctly. The verse does not tell you to fight the people who frustrate you; it tells you to know desire itself as the foe. Anger at others is only desire that has hit an obstacle and changed form, so the work is always with the craving inside, not the person outside.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda

Understand why the usual tactics fail, so you stop wasting effort on them. You cannot satisfy desire by feeding it, because it is a 'great devourer' that grows with every indulgence, like fire fed with offerings; all the wealth on earth would not fill one person. And you cannot make peace with it or quietly negotiate it down, because it is fierce enough to drive you to harm even when you know better. That is why the commentators say it must be fought outright rather than appeased.

Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī

The verse also hands you the leverage point: desire is born of rajas, the restless strand of nature. That means the way to weaken desire is to weaken its source. As clarity and calm (sattva) increase and restless passion (rajas) is worn down, desire is worn down with it. So the fight is not raw suppression but cultivating the inner conditions in which craving loses its fuel.

Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas

Contemplation

Notice that the enemy named here is not any person standing in your way. It is the craving inside you. When desire meets an obstacle, it turns into anger, and the anger looks for someone to blame. But the real foe was never out there. So the first move is to stop feeding it. Desire is a great devourer: every time you give it what it wants, it does not quiet down, it grows, like fire fed with offerings. Try watching the cycle instead of obeying it. You reckon some object will make you happy, so attraction forms; the object grows important in your mind; craving to get and keep it rises; and once you have it, the attraction only grows stronger. As long as that loop turns, wrong action never fully stops. Seeing the loop clearly, for what it is, is the beginning of stepping out of it, and turning instead toward peace.

Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas

All the translations and commentary7 translations

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, tap a name in The seating.

Where this teaching echoesin the Haripath