Unborn, and yet he comes: the Lord takes birth by ruling his own nature, never by being ruled.
It sounds like a contradiction to say the unborn is born. Krishna does not resolve the tension by softening either half; he holds both, and asks you to notice what kind of coming this is.
Though I am unborn, undying by nature, and the Lord of every being, I still come to birth, and I do it by ruling my own nature, not by any power ruling me.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just told Arjuna of his own many past births, alongside Arjuna's. A doubt follows naturally: he has also said he is unborn, imperishable, and the Lord of all beings, free of the merit and demerit that force ordinary souls into the cycle. If all that is true, how can birth be spoken of him at all? This verse meets that doubt directly.
The teaching
Every premise of the doubt is granted. Unborn: yes. Imperishable in nature: yes. Lord of all beings: yes. And still, he says, I come to be. The weight of the verse rests on that one word, though. This is not the birth an ordinary being undergoes, dragged by the momentum of past deeds into a new body, losing the thread of awareness in the passage, born in ignorance of what came before. Nothing here is dragged into being. He takes his stand on his own nature and comes to be by his own will, fully, his knowledge and strength never slipping in the coming. Whatever this birth ultimately is, an appearance shown out of grace, or a real form freely assumed, or a knowing exercised without any outside force, every reading agrees on this much: the power at work is his own, never a power that overtakes him, and the coming never touches what he already and always is. He is born, and remains unborn. He shows a childhood and a youth, and his uncreated fullness stays whole underneath them.
The doubt that rises
If the Lord's birth is his own doing, willed rather than compelled, does that make it less real, a performance rather than an event? Or does willing it, rather than being dragged into it, make it more real than any birth you or I have ever known?
Where the paths divide
Read as appearance, never withdrawn.
The birth is maya's conjuring, the same power under whose sway the world turns and by which it fails to know its own Self. He takes his stand on this nature and seems to take a body, the way a juggler conjures a second figure climbing into the sky while never leaving his own footing. The one difference from an ordinary trick is that this form is never dissolved once shown; he remains, underneath it, the one unbroken awareness.
Read as a real form, freely willed, nothing conjured.
No illusion is at work here at all. He gives up no part of his nature as Lord, and presiding over his own essential form, he is genuinely born, by his own resolve, in the very luminous body scripture already describes. Maya, in this reading, names his own knowledge and will, not a trick played on sight; nothing about this coming is lesser than what he is.
Read as an eternal form only misperceived as birth.
Both his self and his body are imperishable, a special eternal form, never assembled matter. Governing his own nature, he is merely perceived as if born, the way one already-born being perceives another's birth. By his creative power he fashions bodies; by his deluding power he is seen, though unborn, as if born, for minds still caught in delusion, his actual state untouched throughout.
Honest note: the surviving comment treats this passage jointly with the surrounding verses.
What survives of Abhinavagupta's comment here covers 4.5 through 4.9 as one unit, not 4.6 on its own terms, and grounds the Lord's descent in his own maya read as a free, knowing power rather than any compulsion, with the action itself yielding no fruit. A reading of prakriti as consciousness recognizing its own creative freedom would extend that ground to this verse's specific language, but that extension is offered only as a flagged possibility, not retrieved from the master's own recorded word.
Read as a descent free of karma, in a body of pure goodness.
Two doubts are answered together here: how the unborn can be born at all, and how one lacking the subtle sixteen-part body, the very vehicle an ordinary soul needs to enter a womb, can descend regardless. The answer is exact: his own nature, pure sattva, taken as support; his own will; a form of intensified purity; a coming that, by the very shape of the verb used, is whole and unslipping from beginning to end.
Read as appearance for the world's sake, with rival views left unrefuted.
The verse removes a specific worry: remembering many past births would make him sound like an ordinary soul, bounded by an adjunct that cannot reach the order of creation. Only the Lord's causal adjunct permits true omniscience, and his body-taking is mere maya, shown for the world's favoring, not how things ultimately stand, though some hold even this form to be his real, eternal body, a view this reading declines to refute outright.
Every reading agrees the power he governs and the nature he takes are his own, never forced on him from outside, and that whatever birth means here, it never touches what he already and always is. They part on the deepest question: is the form he shows appearance, however un-withdrawn, or is it a real, eternal body no less true than his unborn nature? Neither side of this page settles it, and the source itself, on at least one honest reading, declines to fully settle it either.
A question to carry
When you meet the Lord in a form, in a story, an image, or a moment of grace, does it change anything for you whether that form is appearance or reality, so long as you are certain it is freely, not fearfully, given?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So let this coming settle one thing in you: what steps toward you today has not stopped being what it always was. You do not need the metaphysics resolved to receive it, only your full attention, freely offered in return for what is freely given.
Each school is voiced from the commentators named above. Their full words, every translation, and where the schools agree and differ wait in the reading desk just below. Open the commentary desk.
Krishna has just spoken of his own many past births alongside Arjuna's; here he turns to meet the doubt that naturally follows, how an unborn, imperishable Lord could be born at all.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
Every premise against his birth is granted; the verse answers not by denying them but with a single, decisive though.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
This verse answers a worry the previous one leaves hanging. If Krishna is unborn, imperishable, and the Lord of all beings, entirely free of the merit and demerit that drag ordinary souls into birth, how can birth be spoken of him at all? The verse concedes every premise of that worry, yes, unborn, yes, imperishable, yes, the Lord, and answers with a single though: even so, I come to be.
This birth is unlike an ordinary one: no karma compels it, no continuity of awareness is lost, nothing of his power slips.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Whatever this birth is, it is not the ordinary kind. An ordinary being takes on a new body dragged by past deeds, losing continuity of awareness, born in ignorance. None of that touches this birth: no karma compels it, the self behind it neither perishes nor changes, and it comes fully, with knowledge and power that never slip, entirely by its own will.
Prakriti and maya are his own to govern, never powers that govern him, the exact reverse of an ordinary being's condition.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Two words carry the whole weight of the verse: prakriti, his own nature, and maya, his own power. Every reading agrees the Lord governs this nature and power rather than being governed by it, the exact reverse of an ordinary being helplessly turned by nature's three qualities. The schools part only on what prakriti and maya actually name.
Whatever the birth's ultimate nature, appearance or reality, it never compromises what the Lord already and always is.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Whatever the metaphysics of the birth, no reading lets it compromise the Lord's true nature. He is born and yet remains unborn; he shows childhood and youth and yet his uncreated fullness stays intact. The body that is seen is not built by the laws that build an ordinary body.
The coming is offered freely, out of his own will, never a fall and never a compulsion laid on him from outside.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
None of the readings treat this coming as compulsion or fall. It is undertaken freely, whether as appearance shown out of grace, as a real form freely assumed, or as knowledge and resolve exercised without any external force, and each reading in its own way keeps this as an act of the Lord's own sovereignty rather than something done to him.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja rejects illusion outright. The Lord gives up no part of his nature as Lord, presides over his own essential form, svabhava, and by his own will and resolve is genuinely born in the very luminous divine body scripture already describes, sun-colored, beyond darkness. Maya here means knowledge and resolve, not trickery; nothing is conjured, and nothing here is lesser than what he truly is.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva holds that both the Lord's self and his body are imperishable, a special eternal form, not assembled matter. Governing his own nature, he is only perceived as if born, the way those already born of nature perceive each other's births; by his creative power he fashions bodies, and by his deluding power he is seen, though unborn, as if born, for minds still caught in delusion. His actual state never changes in the process.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
The extant Abhinavagupta material treats this verse only within a combined comment on 4.5 through 4.9, and speaks directly to his descent as grounded in his own maya, read as a mode of knowing and free power rather than compulsion, with the action itself yielding no fruit. A further reading of prakriti as consciousness's own creative freedom, svatantrya, would extend that ground to 4.6's specific language, but that extension is a conditional gloss, not the master's own recorded word on this verse.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the verse as answering two doubts in sequence, first how the unborn Lord can have birth at all, second how he can enter a body having no subtle sixteen-part vehicle to carry him into a womb. His answer is exact and grammatical: own nature, pure sattva, taken as support; own will; a form of intensified goodness; a descent free of any dependence on karma. The verb's prefix itself is read as promising a coming that is whole, with knowledge and strength that never slip.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana treats the verse as removing a specific objection: memory of past births would make Krishna sound like an ordinary soul, but ordinary souls, bounded by their adjunct, cannot hold the order of creation the way only the Lord's causal adjunct can. His body-taking is then mere maya, appearance put forth for the world's favoring, not the way things ultimately stand, though he is careful to note that some hold even this maya-body to be the Lord's real, eternal form, a view he declines to refute without argument rather than to adopt outright.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Sit for a moment with the shape of this verse rather than its metaphysics. Notice how it holds two things at once without letting either cancel the other: a nature that never began and never ends, and a coming, right now, into form. See if you can find, in your own experience, some small echo of that same holding, some part of you that watches even your most involved moment without ever quite being swept into it. You do not have to resolve whether that watching self is illusion or reality to notice it is there.
So let the coming of the unborn into form settle something in you: what steps toward you today has not stopped being what it always was, and needs no explaining away to be met with your whole attention.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
his verse answers a worry the previous one leaves hanging. If Krishna is unborn, imperishable, and the Lord of all beings, entirely free of the merit and demerit that drag ordinary souls into birth, how can birth be spoken of him at all? The verse concedes every premise of that worry, yes, unborn, yes, imperishable, yes, the Lord, and answers with a single though: even so, I come to be.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Whatever this birth is, it is not the ordinary kind. An ordinary being takes on a new body dragged by past deeds, losing continuity of awareness, born in ignorance. None of that touches this birth: no karma compels it, the self behind it neither perishes nor changes, and it comes fully, with knowledge and power that never slip, entirely by its own will.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Two words carry the whole weight of the verse: prakriti, his own nature, and maya, his own power. Every reading agrees the Lord governs this nature and power rather than being governed by it, the exact reverse of an ordinary being helplessly turned by nature's three qualities. The schools part only on what prakriti and maya actually name.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Whatever the metaphysics of the birth, no reading lets it compromise the Lord's true nature. He is born and yet remains unborn; he shows childhood and youth and yet his uncreated fullness stays intact. The body that is seen is not built by the laws that build an ordinary body.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
None of the readings treat this coming as compulsion or fall. It is undertaken freely, whether as appearance shown out of grace, as a real form freely assumed, or as knowledge and resolve exercised without any external force, and each reading in its own way keeps this as an act of the Lord's own sovereignty rather than something done to him.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the birth as pure appearance, produced by maya, the power made of the three qualities under whose sway the world turns and by which it fails to know its own Self as Vasudeva. The Lord takes his stand on this nature and comes to be as though embodied, as though born, the way a juggler conjures a second figure climbing into the sky while never leaving his own footing. The one difference from the juggler's trick is that this maya is never dissolved, so the form is not withdrawn; even so, in himself, he remains the one unbroken awareness.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja rejects illusion outright. The Lord gives up no part of his nature as Lord, presides over his own essential form, svabhava, and by his own will and resolve is genuinely born in the very luminous divine body scripture already describes, sun-colored, beyond darkness. Maya here means knowledge and resolve, not trickery; nothing is conjured, and nothing here is lesser than what he truly is.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva holds that both the Lord's self and his body are imperishable, a special eternal form, not assembled matter. Governing his own nature, he is only perceived as if born, the way those already born of nature perceive each other's births; by his creative power he fashions bodies, and by his deluding power he is seen, though unborn, as if born, for minds still caught in delusion. His actual state never changes in the process.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The extant Abhinavagupta material treats this verse only within a combined comment on 4.5 through 4.9, and speaks directly to his descent as grounded in his own maya, read as a mode of knowing and free power rather than compulsion, with the action itself yielding no fruit. A further reading of prakriti as consciousness's own creative freedom, svatantrya, would extend that ground to 4.6's specific language, but that extension is a conditional gloss, not the master's own recorded word on this verse.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as answering two doubts in sequence, first how the unborn Lord can have birth at all, second how he can enter a body having no subtle sixteen-part vehicle to carry him into a womb. His answer is exact and grammatical: own nature, pure sattva, taken as support; own will; a form of intensified goodness; a descent free of any dependence on karma. The verb's prefix itself is read as promising a coming that is whole, with knowledge and strength that never slip.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana treats the verse as removing a specific objection: memory of past births would make Krishna sound like an ordinary soul, but ordinary souls, bounded by their adjunct, cannot hold the order of creation the way only the Lord's causal adjunct can. His body-taking is then mere maya, appearance put forth for the world's favoring, not the way things ultimately stand, though he is careful to note that some hold even this maya-body to be the Lord's real, eternal form, a view he declines to refute without argument rather than to adopt outright.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If the Lord's birth is only an appearance he wills into being, does that make the Krishna of history less real, a kind of story I should not take too seriously?
Even the reading that calls this birth mere appearance insists on one crucial difference from any ordinary illusion: it is never withdrawn. A magician's trick ends; this form does not. Whatever word is used, appearance or reality, no reading treats the coming as thin, temporary, or unworthy of your full attention.
Śaṅkarācārya
Several major readings reject the word illusion altogether and insist the form is genuinely, eternally real, his own true nature made visible rather than conjured, so if this worry troubles you, you are free to stand on ground that was never asking you to doubt what you meet.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Notice, too, that even the most cautious reading refuses to fully settle the question, holding one interpretation as its own considered view while declining to refute a rival one outright. That restraint is itself instructive: the verse invites reverence before it invites a verdict, and you are not required to have the metaphysics settled before you take the meeting seriously.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Sit for a moment with the shape of this verse rather than its metaphysics. Notice how it holds two things at once without letting either cancel the other: a nature that never began and never ends, and a coming, right now, into form. See if you can find, in your own experience, some small echo of that same holding, some part of you that watches even your most involved moment without ever quite being swept into it. You do not have to resolve whether that watching self is illusion or reality to notice it is there.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
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, open a tradition in the doorways below, or add a voice by name above.
Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.