Stilling the hands while the mind keeps feeding on what it pretends to have left.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators set the verse against the question of whether the ignorant person, simply by doing no works, can claim the safety of the true knower. The answer is no. The renouncer here has acted from mere eagerness with an impure mind, his inner organ defiled by attachment and aversion, and he has not remembered the truth of the self. So his renunciation gives no fruit. One source frames it sharply with a scriptural rule: the renunciation of all action is enjoined for those ripe to discern the meaning of 'that thou art,' and whoever abandons that discipline falsely is fallen. The point is that not from mere renunciation does the impure-minded reach perfection; there is no purifying of the mind by any means other than action.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the false renouncer is specifically the would-be jnana-yogi: a man who has set out for knowledge of the self but, his sin undestroyed and his senses unconquered, has turned his mind away from the self and toward objects. He resolves on one thing and behaves in another; under the disguise of the path of knowledge his conduct is its very opposite. One source reads vimudhatma as the mind turned away from the self, and notes that this verse recalls a chain from the second chapter, from dwelling on objects to the destruction of understanding. The marked outcome is double ruin: both the means is inverted and the fruit is lost, so the man set out for self-knowledge ends up its opposite, undone.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse as teaching that the mind alone, not the doing or not-doing of action, is what brings bondage and liberation; therefore it is the mind that must be restrained, not action that must be dropped. By giving both the positive case (remembering objects with the mind) and the negative (restraining the mind), Krishna shows the mind is the real agent. They add a careful qualification on what may be given up: actions that maintain the body cannot be abandoned, but so far as one is able, abandonable acts such as sacrifice may be relinquished, since scripture does not operate on what cannot be done. They also insist the discipline of action suits one's own class and stage of life and is not the householder's alone, since renunciation too is enjoined; the term 'yoga of action' is meant generally, with no restriction to any single order.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

For these commentators the verse strikes at every hypocritical renunciation and points to the offering of the inner life to God. Vallabha argues that freedom from action cannot come from merely not setting the organs to work, because the mental act remains; he cites traditional summary verses that locate renunciation in the mind alone and teach that, since the seers speak in many ways yet the fruit is one, the very doing of action with the mind surrendered is the way, for the mind must be offered to Krishna along with the body or the outward robe hides only inward bondage. Purushottama stresses that the hypocrite poses as if fallen into meditation on Bhagavan to be reckoned holy by the world, and so he gains neither real renunciation nor the fruit, which only Bhagavan grants.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhedabheda

This commentator passes quickly over the censure and moves straight to the positive counter-ideal stated in the next verse: the one who carries out what is enjoined is, by acting as prescribed, established on the path. He frames it as the man who restrains the senses with the mind and undertakes the yoga of action with the organs of action, unattached, and so excels. The false renouncer is implicitly contrasted with this prescribed actor.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator draws out the verse's underlying logic with great economy: if one does not act with the organs of action, then one necessarily acts with the mind. The mind's activity is utterly unavoidable. So the man who merely stops the outer organs has not stopped acting at all; he has simply moved his action inward, and that is why he is a man of deluded conduct.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators emphasize the bluntness of the censure and the vivid spectacle of the false ascetic. They picture a renouncer apparently empty of all sense activity, his eyes sealed shut and his ears closed, who is nonetheless inwardly brooding on objects under the pretext of meditation. One is blunt that outer organ-restraint without inner purification is not yoga but play-acting; the limbs are still while the brooding goes on. Baladeva adds a developmental point: because purity of mind has not yet arisen through the practice of desireless action, even with his senses drawn in he remembers their objects, and so, although he has set himself toward knowledge, he fails to gain it; his restraint is a fruitless exercise. Jnaneshwar adds that such men are always entangled in the allurements of sense objects, and uses the moment to promise the marks of true renunciation that follow.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators draw out the practical and definitional edges. Sivananda enumerates the five organs of action and insists that both the organs and the thoughts must be controlled and the mind fixed on the Lord before one is a true yogi. Ramsukhdas argues that 'organs of action' here must include the organs of knowledge (ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose) as well, since action cannot proceed without them, so that stopping only the hands and feet while the eyes and ears run free is no sense-control at all; the truth of renunciation lies in the inner removal of attachment. Gandhi-Desai draws the sharpest practical line: the verse condemns the man who curbs the body only because he cannot help it while indulging the mind, and who would indulge the body too if he could; it does not condemn the humble, sincere aspirant whose physical restraint is self-imposed as a genuine step toward mental restraint. Tilak states it plainly as the fool who controls the limbs but keeps thinking of objects, a hypocrite.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas