Three words for action, and a depth in each that ordinary knowing never reaches.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators take the three terms in their plain ritual-ethical sense. Karma is action enjoined by scripture (vihita); vikarma is wrong or forbidden action (nishiddha, what is prohibited); and akarma is inaction, the state of sitting silent, the non-doing of enjoined action. The single mention of 'action' in the last line is read as standing for all three by indication. The whole stress falls on the word tattva, the deeper truth: ordinary people know the surface, but the real nature of each, which the rest of the chapter unfolds, is what is hard to know.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This school rereads the three terms in a liberation-centered key. Karma is action as the means to liberation. Vikarma is not forbidden action but 'cross-action' or varied action: action taken on in its many scriptural forms, the obligatory, the occasional, and the desire-prompted, including the gathering of the materials such action needs. Akarma is read as knowledge itself. One source argues directly that reading vikarma as 'prohibited' and akarma as 'mere inaction' is contradicted by the line 'deep is the way of action,' since gati there points to a profound to-be-known mode within action, not to a banned act or to idle silence. What is to be understood about vikarma is that the variety made by chasing different fruits should be dropped, and one should hold to the single scriptural sense with liberation as the one fruit, a point already made earlier in the chapter.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

Madhva keeps karma as action, akarma as the not-doing of action, and vikarma as the prohibited action that is distinct from both and is forbidden precisely because it binds. But he adds two distinctive moves. First, knowing these is not merely helpful but strictly necessary for release: he cites the teaching that without knowing the action, non-action, and wrong action of the Lord, no one comes to the sight of Him or to release. Second, he reads the verse as a careful construal in which, from prohibited action one is to discriminate the rest, from action one discriminates the rest, and from inaction one discriminates the rest; the three are known by mutual discernment. He also stresses that the wise were called deluded in the prior verse not from any curse but simply because this is genuinely hard to know.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhedabheda

Bhaskara holds that the qualified seeker of release must understand the real nature of all three. Distinctively, he gives concrete content to the wrong categories: prohibited action (vikarma) is what lies outside scripture, practiced by heretics, such as alchemy and the mechanical crafts; and inaction (akarma) he illustrates with things like the eating of forbidden garlic. He further folds in that even scripturally enjoined action, when done for the sake of its fruit by one who seeks release, is simply not to be done. So for him the deep, hidden course covers all of these subtly distinguished cases.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

This school turns the verse toward worship and self-knowledge. Vallabha reads the dense, hard-to-traverse path of karma as itself a reason to take up worship, since worship accomplishes the same end without the tangle; in the karma-path the fruit is not to be calculated at all, for actions can even cancel one another out. Purushottama centers the verse on knowing the Lord's own form: the very form of action is to be apprehended for the sake of knowledge of the Lord's form, while the forms of vikarma (forbidden work, or work that is the means to the fruit of samsara) and akarma (work not to be done, demonic work) are to be known precisely so as to abandon them.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

The Gaudiya voices read the three through the seeker's spiritual welfare. One holds that the truth is that doing the forbidden leads to misfortune, and that the real question about 'inaction' is which kind of non-doing on a renunciant's part is actually auspicious, since otherwise the highest good would never come. Another reads the three as the desireless action to be practiced by seekers of liberation (karma), desire-laden action opposed to knowledge (vikarma), and knowledge itself, distinct from action (akarma), to be deliberated alongside those who know each one. Jnaneshwari describes action as that by which the whole universe naturally comes to be and is sustained: one must first grasp the nature of action, then learn the action prescribed for one's own station, then mark off the forbidden actions so as not to get entangled.

Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

Tilak keeps the straightforward division: the path of karma is moot, so one must understand karma (action), vikarma (viparita or wrong action), and akarma (not performing action). Ramsukhdas, non-sectarian devotional Vedanta, gives the three a psychological basis: action is one in its own form but splits into three according to the inner disposition (bhava) of the mind. A scripture-enjoined act done with self-seeking desire becomes 'karma'; an act done free of craving for fruit, of possessiveness, and of attachment, purely for others' welfare, becomes 'akarma'; even an enjoined act, if done with intent to help or harm another, becomes 'vikarma,' as of course does any outright forbidden act. To stay unattached (nirlipta) while acting is itself to know the truth of karma.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas