No one stays still even a moment; the qualities of nature keep us acting.

Advaita Vedānta

The verse describes the ignorant person only, not the knower of the Self. The word 'ignorant' must be supplied, because Krishna later declares that the gunas do not shake the one who knows. The knower is set apart, established beyond the gunas, so the compulsion of the qualities does not reach him; action-yoga is for the ignorant alone. One source meets the objection that the knower too might be forced to act by 'natural movement' by answering that the inmost Self has no spontaneous movement of its own, so no such forced activity is possible for the one who abides as that Self. On this reading the verse refutes the claim that a person who has not realized the Self can simply drop enjoined action: he cannot, since he is swayed helplessly by the differing impulses of the qualities and cannot control the aggregate of body and instruments. The reading that this verse denies even the knower all agency is rejected as contradicting both the plain sense and the later teaching about the one whom the gunas do not shake.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

The gunas are 'born of prakriti' in the sense of being roused and strengthened in accord with one's earlier karma. An objection is raised: since the qualities are eternal in primal nature, how can they be called 'born' or 'arisen'? The answer is that 'born' here means born by reference to prior karma; the gunas are governed by karma, as the sage Parashara teaches. The phrase 'in this world' marks out the variety of qualified seekers already shown earlier. The compulsion holds throughout all times except the cosmic dissolution. The practical upshot is positive: the clearing of one's stains, meaning the bringing of the gunas under one's own control through the discipline of action, is what conduces to liberation-bound activity and prepares the inner organ for knowledge-discipline. The reading that even the knowledge-established person whose gunas are spent is still bound therefore falls.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

The verse's single point is that actions cannot be wholly given up; it makes no claim here about the indispensability of knowledge or about the impossibility of omitting acts such as sacrifice. What it establishes is the unavoidability of the actions that serve the maintenance of the body and the like. The reason this matters is forward-looking: it lays the groundwork, by the principle of a preliminary statement, for a later restriction (at 3.9) of the scriptural rule that 'the creature is bound by action.' Before that restriction can be made, it must first be shown that the word 'action' in its unrestricted sense cannot be admitted even by the opponent. So this verse is read as part of an argumentative chain, establishing that not all action can be abandoned, rather than as a teaching about knowledge or purification.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhakti

Renunciation of action means only non-attachment (anasakti) within action, never its actual stopping, which is impossible by the very nature of things; this applies to knower and ignorant alike. Two of these writers warn of a specific danger: a person with an impure mind who takes to renunciation, having abandoned scripturally enjoined action, does not become actionless but sinks into mere worldly action, helplessly impelled by the qualities of attachment and aversion arising from his innate disposition. One writer develops the picture at length through the lens of Maya, the mother of the three gunas: so long as Maya holds sway, action goes on automatically. He asks whether dropping prescribed duties would stop the ears from hearing, the eyes from seeing, the life-breaths from moving, or hunger, sleep, birth, and death from running their course; since it would not, renouncing action is meaningless. He compares the would-be renouncer to a man sitting still inside a moving chariot, carried along regardless, and to a dry leaf blown helplessly through the sky.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Śuddhādvaita

Even giving up work is not possible without first knowing this truth, and one keeps acting whether one understands it or not, helpless before the gunas born of prakriti. One source draws a distinctive devotional point from the word 'avasha,' helpless or not under one's own control: it means not under my own control, that is, not the devotee who is in my (the Lord's) control. The implication is a sequence: one first undertakes work, and through that practice comes to recognize that the qualities themselves are the real agents in those works; then, becoming subordinate to the Lord, one finally renounces. The very word for certitude in the verse is taken to underscore this. Renunciation, on this reading, is not a refusal of action up front but the fruit of devotional surrender that follows mature practice.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Modern

Total abstention from action is simply impossible, so the real solution is to keep acting while removing what binds. One writer argues at length that 'naishkarmya' (the action-free state) does not mean absence of action; since action like sitting and sleeping never stops while the body exists, no one can ever totally abstain. He likens binding karma to a scorpion that never dies, which must instead be rendered poisonless, just as mercury is 'killed' before use; the device for this is destroying attachment (asakti) through knowledge while continuing to act, which is karma-yoga, and this combination of knowledge with action is what Krishna calls superior. Another, framing the matter without sectarian doctrine, says the same compulsion holds on every path, karma, jnana, or bhakti alike, and that even the knower acts simply by being present in the body; the remedy is not to stop karma but to withdraw the false sense of doership and offer the action in nishkama-bhava, desireless devotion. A third locates the dividing line in knowledge: the gunas cannot affect the one who knows the Self and has become a gunatita (one who has transcended the qualities), while the ignorant man, swayed by nescience, is driven helplessly to action.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas