When every faculty turns toward the one reality, the intellect, the sense of self, the abiding, and the final refuge.
Our faculties usually pull in different directions, the mind on one thing, the heart on another, our refuge somewhere else again. This verse describes the person in whom all of them are gathered upon a single supreme reality, so that nothing in them is divided against the rest.
Their discernment is fixed on That, their self is That, they are steadfast in That, and That is their supreme goal. Their impurities are washed away by knowledge, and they reach the state of no return.
The preceding verses have named the supreme reality, the "That," and here Krishna describes the one wholly turned toward it, the orientation in which knowledge ripens and frees.
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.
Let your deciding mind, your sense of self, your settled abiding, and your final refuge all rest on the one supreme reality, four namings of a single inward turning.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · Ramsukhdas · VallabhaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 15 others’ words
The verse uses four parallel phrases to describe the person who is wholly turned toward That (tat), the supreme reality named in the preceding verses. Each phrase fixes a different faculty on the same single object. 'Tad-buddhayah' means their intellect (buddhi), the deciding faculty, is set on That. 'Tad-atmanah' means That is their very Self. 'Tan-nishthah' means their firm settling or abiding is in That. 'Tat-parayanah' means That is their supreme goal or highest resort, the place they finally turn to. Almost every commentator walks through these four terms one by one and reads them as a single coherent inward orientation rather than four separate states.
And this is not four separate states but one ripening: the mind first moves toward That, then fastens on it, then settles, until it has become your one supreme refuge.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, BhaktiĀnandagiri · Madhusūdana · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · ŚrīdharaIn Ānandagiri, Madhusūdana, and 3 others’ words
Several commentators stress that these four phrases are not just a list but an ordered progression or a single act of focusing in which each later term deepens or secures the earlier one. The mind first moves to That, then the inner sense fastens on it, then the abiding is established in it, then it becomes the one supreme refuge. Read this way, the verse traces a ripening: a candidate begins by turning the intellect toward the supreme, removes the obstacles of action and of wanting any other goal, and so the orientation hardens into an unbroken settledness.
What this orientation brings is the end of all returning; knowledge does not merely cover your stains but shakes them loose at their very root, so rebirth has nothing left to feed on.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · TilakIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 12 others’ words
The fruit of this total orientation is apunaravritti: going to the state of no-return, which the commentators uniformly gloss as liberation (moksha). Most explain 'no-return' concretely as the end of any further connection with a body, the close of rebirth and transmigration. The cause of this freedom is stated in the verse's last word-cluster: jnana-nirdhuta-kalmashah, their stains (kalmasha) shaken off (nirdhuta) by knowledge (jnana). The 'stains' are read as sin, or more precisely as the merit-and-demerit of action that drives further embodiment, together with its root, the ignorance that is the very seed of samsara; knowledge does not merely cover these over but dusts them off at the root.
This comes only when nothing else competes for you, when the mind no longer runs out toward other things but holds one unbroken stream, deepened through hearing, reflecting, and quiet dwelling.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Viśvanātha · SivanandaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 6 others’ words
Many commentators add that this state is reached only when action and outward distraction are given up or transcended, so that nothing competes with the one object. The seeker renounces all actions and abides in That alone, having turned away from enjoyments both here and hereafter and grown wholly dispassionate. The inner organ no longer runs out toward external objects; instead it holds an unbroken stream of one kind of thought, free of the contrary notion that the Self is the non-Self body. This sustained one-pointedness, repeatedly practised through hearing, reflection, and meditation, is what allows knowledge to mature and the stains to fall away.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Advaita Vedānta, in their fuller words
These commentators read 'That' as the supreme Brahman, identical with the Self, and they insist there is no real difference between the knower and the known. The phrase 'tad-atmanah,' whose Self is That, is taken to mean that the apparent split into an individual who knows and a Brahman that is known is only a play of maya, an imagined distinction with no reality behind it; in truth the seeker is that very Brahman. So the four terms describe the inner organ's modification ripening into seedless absorption, a settled realization 'I am That,' and the 'stains' that are shaken off are above all root-ignorance, the seed of samsara. Liberation here is the destruction of that ignorance by direct knowledge, after which there is no further body and no return.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators keep the self and the supreme distinct and read the verse as a graded ascent of knowledge that culminates in self-experience. 'That' is the supreme self standing as the object of the rising knowledge, and the four terms mark four stages: the mind moves to it, the inner sense is fastened to it, the establishment is in it, the supreme refuge is taken in it. 'No-return' is read pointedly as the self in its own true form, the state of the self from which there is no falling back; the liberated one goes to abide in that own-form. One of these commentators also notes that the final term, supreme refuge, carries a devotional sense alongside the knowledge-sense without displacing it: the self to be known is also the self to which the devotee resorts.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators take the verse to state the immediate, direct means to firsthand knowledge of the supreme, and they use it to settle a precise question about how knowledge works. They distinguish mediate knowledge, the indirect grasp that comes from hearing and reflection, from immediate knowledge, the direct realization that actually frees. Mediate knowledge is indeed a means to immediate knowledge, but a remote one, because direct realization does not spring up the moment one has heard and reflected. This verse, on their reading, is pointing to the immediate means by which that direct knowledge finally arises, not merely to the remote preparatory step.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read 'That' as Ishvara, the Lord, and stress that the freeing knowledge is gained through his grace; its object is the very form of Brahman or the Lord, and by it the stains are cast off and the soul reaches release. In their Pushtimarga accent the four terms named here, intellect, mind, self-set in him, and refuge taken in him, are not four separate stages but the moments of a single act of surrender by which the soul is wholly turned upon Hari. Liberation follows from that grace-given, surrender-shaped knowledge rather than from an unaided effort.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators read 'That' as the Lord and treat the verse as the fruit of devoted meditation (upasana) on him. Some gloss the four faculties, intellect, mind, deepest concern, and supreme resort, as all sharing one and the same single point of aim, the Lord, so that from such an undivided heart the taint is naturally shaken loose, the freeing self-knowledge itself arising by the Lord's grace. One commentator presses the point further: bare knowledge yields only knowledge of the individual self, not of the Supreme Self, so even knowers must specially practise devotion; the 'sins washed away by knowledge' here are taken to mean that ignorance was already destroyed beforehand, and 'tat-parayana' is read as being devoted to hearing and chanting about the Lord. Another reads the terms as fixing the mind on the Lord's specific qualities, such as his impartiality, with aversion to him destroyed.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This commentator carries the verse straight into the next one's vision of equal sight, treating the two together. Those whose intellect and mind are given over to That, with every other working given up and their ignorance shattered, abide in such a way that toward a learned brahmana there arises no thought 'by serving him I shall gain merit,' toward a cow no thought 'this one purifies,' toward an elephant no thought of wealth, toward a dog no settled judgment of impurity, and toward an outcaste no notion of sin. It is for this very reason that they see all as the same. The basis given is that consciousness is the one property in all bodies, with no real distinction anywhere, so the one who has conquered realizes that all things are made of that single consciousness; yet, he adds, they do not necessarily act on this sameness outwardly.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator gives a brief term-by-term gloss: those whose understanding is in that Brahman, whose self is that Brahman, whose entire steadfast intent is on That, and whose resort or goal is That. The entry breaks off mid-sentence, so no fuller distinctive reading of the verse is preserved here beyond this plain identification of each phrase with Brahman.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators render the verse in accessible terms while keeping its core. One describes the four phrases as fixing the intellect on Brahman, realizing Brahman as one's self, becoming established in Brahman by constant protracted meditation so the whole world of names and forms vanishes, and having Brahman as sole refuge; such people never return to samsara because their sins are dispelled by knowledge. Another stresses that this is the description of the living-liberated (jivanmukta) state of Karma-yogins, not formal renouncers, whose ignorance has been destroyed. A third gives a distinctive practice-frame: he reads 'tad-buddhayah' as the unshakable conviction that one and the same supreme reality alone is fully present everywhere, before, during, and after the world, and explains that the imperishable reality is reached through such steady contemplation (chintana), not through action, which can only yield perishable results.
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
Begin not with a feeling but with a firm decision of the intellect. Settle it clearly in yourself that one and the same supreme reality is fully present everywhere, and at every moment. Before the world existed, it was; after the world passes, it will remain; and right now, in the middle of all this changing flow, it remains exactly as it is. Let this be an unshakable certainty, not a passing thought. The lasting reality is not something you can reach by doing, because actions only ever produce perishable results; it is reached by steady contemplation, by returning the mind again and again to that ever-present being. So make this conviction the ground you stand on, and let the rest of the verse, the mind fastening on it, the abiding in it, the taking refuge in it, grow out of that one steady certainty.
Begin not with a feeling but with a quiet certainty: that one reality was here before all this, will remain after it, and is fully present now; let everything else in you grow out of that one steady ground.
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
he verse uses four parallel phrases to describe the person who is wholly turned toward That (tat), the supreme reality named in the preceding verses. Each phrase fixes a different faculty on the same single object. 'Tad-buddhayah' means their intellect (buddhi), the deciding faculty, is set on That. 'Tad-atmanah' means That is their very Self. 'Tan-nishthah' means their firm settling or abiding is in That. 'Tat-parayanah' means That is their supreme goal or highest resort, the place they finally turn to. Almost every commentator walks through these four terms one by one and reads them as a single coherent inward orientation rather than four separate states.
Braided from 17 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya
Several commentators stress that these four phrases are not just a list but an ordered progression or a single act of focusing in which each later term deepens or secures the earlier one. The mind first moves to That, then the inner sense fastens on it, then the abiding is established in it, then it becomes the one supreme refuge. Read this way, the verse traces a ripening: a candidate begins by turning the intellect toward the supreme, removes the obstacles of action and of wanting any other goal, and so the orientation hardens into an unbroken settledness.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The fruit of this total orientation is apunaravritti: going to the state of no-return, which the commentators uniformly gloss as liberation (moksha). Most explain 'no-return' concretely as the end of any further connection with a body, the close of rebirth and transmigration. The cause of this freedom is stated in the verse's last word-cluster: jnana-nirdhuta-kalmashah, their stains (kalmasha) shaken off (nirdhuta) by knowledge (jnana). The 'stains' are read as sin, or more precisely as the merit-and-demerit of action that drives further embodiment, together with its root, the ignorance that is the very seed of samsara; knowledge does not merely cover these over but dusts them off at the root.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
Many commentators add that this state is reached only when action and outward distraction are given up or transcended, so that nothing competes with the one object. The seeker renounces all actions and abides in That alone, having turned away from enjoyments both here and hereafter and grown wholly dispassionate. The inner organ no longer runs out toward external objects; instead it holds an unbroken stream of one kind of thought, free of the contrary notion that the Self is the non-Self body. This sustained one-pointedness, repeatedly practised through hearing, reflection, and meditation, is what allows knowledge to mature and the stains to fall away.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Sivananda
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read 'That' as the supreme Brahman, identical with the Self, and they insist there is no real difference between the knower and the known. The phrase 'tad-atmanah,' whose Self is That, is taken to mean that the apparent split into an individual who knows and a Brahman that is known is only a play of maya, an imagined distinction with no reality behind it; in truth the seeker is that very Brahman. So the four terms describe the inner organ's modification ripening into seedless absorption, a settled realization 'I am That,' and the 'stains' that are shaken off are above all root-ignorance, the seed of samsara. Liberation here is the destruction of that ignorance by direct knowledge, after which there is no further body and no return.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators keep the self and the supreme distinct and read the verse as a graded ascent of knowledge that culminates in self-experience. 'That' is the supreme self standing as the object of the rising knowledge, and the four terms mark four stages: the mind moves to it, the inner sense is fastened to it, the establishment is in it, the supreme refuge is taken in it. 'No-return' is read pointedly as the self in its own true form, the state of the self from which there is no falling back; the liberated one goes to abide in that own-form. One of these commentators also notes that the final term, supreme refuge, carries a devotional sense alongside the knowledge-sense without displacing it: the self to be known is also the self to which the devotee resorts.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators take the verse to state the immediate, direct means to firsthand knowledge of the supreme, and they use it to settle a precise question about how knowledge works. They distinguish mediate knowledge, the indirect grasp that comes from hearing and reflection, from immediate knowledge, the direct realization that actually frees. Mediate knowledge is indeed a means to immediate knowledge, but a remote one, because direct realization does not spring up the moment one has heard and reflected. This verse, on their reading, is pointing to the immediate means by which that direct knowledge finally arises, not merely to the remote preparatory step.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read 'That' as Ishvara, the Lord, and stress that the freeing knowledge is gained through his grace; its object is the very form of Brahman or the Lord, and by it the stains are cast off and the soul reaches release. In their Pushtimarga accent the four terms named here, intellect, mind, self-set in him, and refuge taken in him, are not four separate stages but the moments of a single act of surrender by which the soul is wholly turned upon Hari. Liberation follows from that grace-given, surrender-shaped knowledge rather than from an unaided effort.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators read 'That' as the Lord and treat the verse as the fruit of devoted meditation (upasana) on him. Some gloss the four faculties, intellect, mind, deepest concern, and supreme resort, as all sharing one and the same single point of aim, the Lord, so that from such an undivided heart the taint is naturally shaken loose, the freeing self-knowledge itself arising by the Lord's grace. One commentator presses the point further: bare knowledge yields only knowledge of the individual self, not of the Supreme Self, so even knowers must specially practise devotion; the 'sins washed away by knowledge' here are taken to mean that ignorance was already destroyed beforehand, and 'tat-parayana' is read as being devoted to hearing and chanting about the Lord. Another reads the terms as fixing the mind on the Lord's specific qualities, such as his impartiality, with aversion to him destroyed.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator carries the verse straight into the next one's vision of equal sight, treating the two together. Those whose intellect and mind are given over to That, with every other working given up and their ignorance shattered, abide in such a way that toward a learned brahmana there arises no thought 'by serving him I shall gain merit,' toward a cow no thought 'this one purifies,' toward an elephant no thought of wealth, toward a dog no settled judgment of impurity, and toward an outcaste no notion of sin. It is for this very reason that they see all as the same. The basis given is that consciousness is the one property in all bodies, with no real distinction anywhere, so the one who has conquered realizes that all things are made of that single consciousness; yet, he adds, they do not necessarily act on this sameness outwardly.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhedabheda
This commentator gives a brief term-by-term gloss: those whose understanding is in that Brahman, whose self is that Brahman, whose entire steadfast intent is on That, and whose resort or goal is That. The entry breaks off mid-sentence, so no fuller distinctive reading of the verse is preserved here beyond this plain identification of each phrase with Brahman.
Śrī Bhāskara
Modern
These commentators render the verse in accessible terms while keeping its core. One describes the four phrases as fixing the intellect on Brahman, realizing Brahman as one's self, becoming established in Brahman by constant protracted meditation so the whole world of names and forms vanishes, and having Brahman as sole refuge; such people never return to samsara because their sins are dispelled by knowledge. Another stresses that this is the description of the living-liberated (jivanmukta) state of Karma-yogins, not formal renouncers, whose ignorance has been destroyed. A third gives a distinctive practice-frame: he reads 'tad-buddhayah' as the unshakable conviction that one and the same supreme reality alone is fully present everywhere, before, during, and after the world, and explains that the imperishable reality is reached through such steady contemplation (chintana), not through action, which can only yield perishable results.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If knowledge is what washes away all stains and ends rebirth, why do so many of these commentators keep bringing in devotion, surrender, and the Lord's grace?
Start with what nearly all the commentators agree on: the verse describes a total, single-pointed orientation in which intellect, sense of self, abiding, and final refuge are all fixed on one and the same supreme reality, and it is by knowledge that the stains, the very seed of rebirth, are shaken off at the root. On that core, the schools do not disagree; the freeing factor is direct knowledge of the supreme.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda
The reason devotion enters is that several commentators hold the freeing knowledge is not a dry intellectual act you can force on your own. They say the knowledge whose object is the very form of the Lord is gained through his grace, so devotion and surrender are how that liberating knowledge actually arises rather than a rival path to it.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī
One commentator makes the relation especially sharp: bare knowledge yields only knowledge of the individual self, so even those who already have self-knowledge must specially practise devotion to come to know the Supreme Self, and he reads 'tat-parayana,' having That as supreme resort, as devotion to hearing and chanting about the Lord. For this reading the devotion is not opposed to knowledge but is precisely what completes and matures it.
Śrīla Viśvanātha
Even a commentator who keeps strictly to the knowledge-sense grants that the same final term carries the devotional sense without displacing it: the self that is to be known is also the self to which the devotee resorts. So the verse holds knowing and resorting together rather than forcing a choice between them.
Vedānta Deśika
Contemplation
Begin not with a feeling but with a firm decision of the intellect. Settle it clearly in yourself that one and the same supreme reality is fully present everywhere, and at every moment. Before the world existed, it was; after the world passes, it will remain; and right now, in the middle of all this changing flow, it remains exactly as it is. Let this be an unshakable certainty, not a passing thought. The lasting reality is not something you can reach by doing, because actions only ever produce perishable results; it is reached by steady contemplation, by returning the mind again and again to that ever-present being. So make this conviction the ground you stand on, and let the rest of the verse, the mind fastening on it, the abiding in it, the taking refuge in it, grow out of that one steady certainty.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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, tap a name in The seating.