Sit with the mind emptied of everything else, then set on the one thing that is also your highest aim.
It is tempting to hear meditation as making the mind blank. This verse asks for something more exact: draw the mind back from all it usually chases, then give it, deliberately, the single object that is also the whole point of your life.
Let him sit with a mind at peace, fear gone, established in the disciplines of a chaste student. Having drawn the mind back from everything else, let him fix his thought on Me, holding Me as the one goal of his whole life.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just described the outer seat: the steady posture, the body held even, the gaze settled. Now he turns to what fills that seat from within, the peace, the fearlessness, the discipline, and the single object the mind is finally given to rest on.
The teaching
Come to the seat already at peace, and let that peace run deeper than a calm surface. What is asked here is not a mind merely quiet for the length of the sitting, but one whose very cause of restlessness, the pull toward what is liked and the push from what is disliked, has been loosened at its root. Let fear be gone too, and let this fearlessness mean more than the absence of ordinary dread: it is the settled conviction of one who no longer doubts whether this path, chosen over the world's other pursuits, was the right one to take. Stand in the discipline this calls for concretely: continence, service of a teacher, food taken as given rather than sought, the ordinary structure of a life stripped down to what supports the practice. Then restrain the mind, drawing it back from the senses and the outward things it usually chases, until it is emptied of the forms it runs after all day. But notice this carefully: an emptied mind is not yet the goal. Meditation is itself a sustained activity, and a mind with nothing set before it drifts back, sooner or later, to its old wandering. So the mind drawn back from everything else must be given, deliberately, one object. Fix it on Me, and hold Me as the highest goal your life is lived for. These are not the same instruction said twice. One names what the mind rests on; the other names what you live for. And the verse's whole force lies in making these the same thing. Picture a man whose passion fixes his mind on someone he desires, yet whose highest aim, if you asked him, would still point somewhere else entirely, toward some ambition, some standing, some other prize. He is divided this way without noticing it. The seat described here belongs to someone who is not divided: what the mind rests on and what the life is for have become a single point. What you take up outwardly, the stillness of the body, is only ever in service of an inner sitting: the mind seated, and staying seated, in what it has finally been given to rest on.
The doubt that rises
If the discipline is meant to empty the mind of everything, why does the very same verse insist on filling it again with one particular object? And when a seeker's own sources on this verse are themselves partial, some full and specific, others only fragments or glosses spilling over from nearby verses, how much of what tradition says about this exact moment can we actually claim to know?
Where the paths divide
Read as the seat properly taken, before the fruit is named.
Shankara reads Krishna here as the inmost, non-dual Self, and this verse as the description of a seat correctly assumed rather than the fruit of the practice itself, which his comment says is stated only in what comes next. Madhusudana adds the reason this particular goal holds: the Self is dearer than son, wealth, or anything else, the most inward reality there is, so nothing rivals it as an object worth resting the mind on. On this reading, the verse's work is preparatory and exact: get the seat right, inner and outer both, and let the payoff follow in its own place.
Read as one unbroken act of worship spanning two verses.
What survives of Ramanuja's comment here treats this verse and the one just before it as a single continuous instruction, not two separate topics. Steady posture, withdrawn senses, and the mind fixed on the Lord are described together as one act of worship, so the peace and fearlessness named in this verse are not a separate attainment but the inward completion of the same bodily and mental discipline already underway. A fuller isolation of this verse's own clauses is not something the surviving passage supports.
Read honestly as a thin trace, not a full commentary.
What is on file attributed to Madhva near this point in the chapter is a single sentence, attached two verses earlier, naming the practice only as the yoga of samadhi, something to be joined to. It does not reach forward into this verse's own specific claims about peace, fear, or the fixed mind. One might expect, on his wider commitments, that even this settled state would be read as sustained by the Lord's will rather than the self's own doing, but that extension is not stated here and should not be presented as though it were.
Read as a wider gloss touching this verse without settling on it.
Abhinavagupta's surviving comment is attached several verses earlier and explicitly runs as one continuous gloss through language of attainment that comes later still, touching phrases close to this verse, mind and senses restrained, the Lord held as highest, peace following from that. It does not stop to comment on this verse's own words as a separate matter. A Kashmir Shaiva reading could extend this into a fuller claim, that the peace here is the mind's own contraction relaxing back into its native freedom, but this is offered only as a labeled possibility, not as anything the source itself states about this verse.
Read as the hinge where stillness becomes devotion.
Sridhara reads every clause with precision: the mind quieted, fear wholly gone, the vow of the chaste student truly kept, the mind reined in and drawn back through withdrawal of the senses. And he is unwilling to let the resting place of that stilled mind be anything abstract. It is Vasudeva, and Vasudeva alone, in whom the mind finds both its seat and the goal the whole life aims at, which is exactly what the name mat-parah is built to hold together. On this reading, the meditation this verse describes is not preparation for devotion. It already is devotion, arrived at through stillness.
Read as a working account of cause and cure.
Read for its account of mechanism, Madhusudana's comment offers something close to a diagnosis. Peace has a specific, nameable cause: the root of liking and disliking, not merely its surface symptoms. Fearlessness has a specific cause too: firm trust in scripture dissolving a specific doubt, whether renouncing ordinary action was the right choice. On this reading, the verse is less a description of an ideal state to admire from a distance than an instruction in cause and effect: address the causes named, and the described peace is not achieved by force but simply uncovered.
Every reading agrees the mind must move from everywhere to one place. They do not agree on what fills that one place once it is reached, an inmost non-dual Self awaiting recognition, an act of worship completing itself, a dependent state sustained by another's will, a wider freedom the mind returns to, or a person who is himself the whole of devotion. And two of the six sources on file here are honestly thin, glosses spilling over from other verses rather than a comment written for this one, which this page has tried to say plainly rather than paper over.
A question to carry
When you finally give your mind the one object that is also your whole life's aim, what happens to everything else your mind used to want, and where does that wanting go?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So take the seat that is offered here. Let the mind draw back from everything it has been chasing, and rest it, without division, on the one thing that is also the reason you are sitting at all.
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 is describing, step by step, the seat and the inner posture of the yogin he has just told Arjuna to become; this verse names the last and decisive piece, where the mind is fixed.
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.
The peace named here reaches the root of liking and disliking, not just its surface; loosen the cause and the calm already native to the mind shows itself.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
All six sources agree that the peace named here, prashantatma, is not a surface calm but a settled inner condition: the mind has come to rest because attraction and aversion, the pull toward the liked and the push from the disliked, have themselves been loosened at the root. What breaks ordinary peace is entanglement with the world's pairs of opposites, and when those pairs are stilled, a peace already native to the mind simply shows itself rather than being manufactured by effort.
Fearlessness here means a settled, doubt-free conviction, not the absence of ordinary fear alone.
Across Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · RāmānujaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
Fearlessness and the vow of the chaste student are read together as one concrete discipline rather than two separate virtues. The vow means continence, service of the teacher, and eating only alms-food; fearlessness is not mere absence of dread but a settled, doubt-free conviction, the confidence of one who has stopped second-guessing whether renouncing ordinary pursuits for this practice was the right course.
Withdrawing the mind from its objects clears the field, but an empty field is not yet meditation; something must be planted in it.
Across Advaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
Restraining the mind is read as withdrawal, drawing the mind back from food, the senses, and outward things until it is emptied of the forms it usually chases. But every source that comments on this step is careful that emptying is only half the work, since meditation is itself a sustained flow of mental activity; a mind drawn back from everything must then be set on one object, or it simply drifts back into its old wandering.
What the mind rests on and what the whole life is lived for must be the same single thing, unlike the split aim of one whose mind and highest goal point in different directions.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
That single object and the seeker's highest goal are insisted upon as one and the same reality, not two. The commentators return again and again to the image of a passionate man whose mind rests on a woman yet whose highest aim remains elsewhere, a king or a god; the yogin described here is unlike that man precisely because what his mind rests on and what he lives for have become identical.
The outer sitting is taken up only so the inner sitting, the mind seated and resting in the Lord, can stand.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The whole exercise is read as a posture of the inner person carried by an outer sitting, not an outer posture alone. The body is held steady only so that the mind can be seated and can rest there; where sources comment on this stage at all, they treat it as a genuine, fruitful attainment on the way, not yet the final goal but real progress toward it.
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's surviving comment folds this verse into one continuous instruction with 6.13, so the peace, fearlessness, continence, and fixed mind named here are read as inseparable from the steady bodily posture and unwavering gaze described just before. The unified act, body held even, senses withdrawn, mind fixed on the Lord, is itself the worship this passage as a whole describes; a fuller isolation of 6.14's own clauses cannot be drawn beyond what the combined passage already gives.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
What is on file for Madhva at this point is a single line attached to 6.12, naming the practice as the yoga of samadhi to be joined, without reaching forward to comment on 6.14's own peace, fearlessness, or fixed mind. On his broader Dvaita commitments one would expect even this settled absorption to be read as granted and sustained by the Lord's will rather than the self's own achievement, but that extension is not present in what survives and is flagged here only as an inference, not his stated word.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's extant remark is a running gloss stretching from verse 6.10 through the language of attainment several verses later, touching phrases close to this verse, holding the mind steady, restraining mind and senses, holding Me as the highest, after which peace comes and one attains the Lord, without isolating 6.14 as its own topic. A clearly labeled Kashmir Shaiva extension would read the peace named here as the mind's contracted movement relaxing into recognition of its own native freedom, but this is offered as a possibility, not as words Abhinavagupta wrote about this verse.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads every clause of this verse as building toward one claim: the restrained mind rests in Krishna alone, and Krishna alone is the highest goal of life, which is exactly what the name mat-parah is built to express. He states outright that this is not meditation on some bare shape of the self drawn from scripture but the meditation of one whose inner being has come home to Vasudeva, finding in him both the seat of thought and the end of living, so that stilled meditation here opens directly into devotion.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for its account of mechanism rather than its metaphysics, Madhusudana's comment traces the inner peace to a specific cause, the root of liking and disliking actually removed, and traces fearlessness to a specific cause, scriptural trust dissolving the doubt of whether renouncing action is proper. On this reading the verse offers something close to a working diagnosis: name what generates the pairs of opposites, remove that cause, and the peace that follows is not achieved by force but uncovered once the underlying cause is gone.
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
Notice, before you try to still anything, that the peace this verse describes is not built by force. It says the cause of your restlessness, not just its surface, can be loosened; and it says an emptied mind is not yet the goal, only the clearing of a field that must then hold one thing. So sit, let the mind draw back from what it usually chases, and instead of leaving it blank, give it the one object that is also your true aim. Watch what happens when what you rest your attention on and what you actually live for become, even briefly, the same single thing.
So take your seat, let the mind draw back from all it usually runs after, and set it, without division, on the one thing that is also your whole life's aim.
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
ll six sources agree that the peace named here, prashantatma, is not a surface calm but a settled inner condition: the mind has come to rest because attraction and aversion, the pull toward the liked and the push from the disliked, have themselves been loosened at the root. What breaks ordinary peace is entanglement with the world's pairs of opposites, and when those pairs are stilled, a peace already native to the mind simply shows itself rather than being manufactured by effort.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Fearlessness and the vow of the chaste student are read together as one concrete discipline rather than two separate virtues. The vow means continence, service of the teacher, and eating only alms-food; fearlessness is not mere absence of dread but a settled, doubt-free conviction, the confidence of one who has stopped second-guessing whether renouncing ordinary pursuits for this practice was the right course.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya
Restraining the mind is read as withdrawal, drawing the mind back from food, the senses, and outward things until it is emptied of the forms it usually chases. But every source that comments on this step is careful that emptying is only half the work, since meditation is itself a sustained flow of mental activity; a mind drawn back from everything must then be set on one object, or it simply drifts back into its old wandering.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
That single object and the seeker's highest goal are insisted upon as one and the same reality, not two. The commentators return again and again to the image of a passionate man whose mind rests on a woman yet whose highest aim remains elsewhere, a king or a god; the yogin described here is unlike that man precisely because what his mind rests on and what he lives for have become identical.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The whole exercise is read as a posture of the inner person carried by an outer sitting, not an outer posture alone. The body is held steady only so that the mind can be seated and can rest there; where sources comment on this stage at all, they treat it as a genuine, fruitful attainment on the way, not yet the final goal but real progress toward it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
For Shankara and Madhusudana, the 'Me' held as the mind's object and the life's supreme goal is the inmost, non-dual Self, the supreme Lord known as one's own innermost reality. Madhusudana grounds the choice of this goal in the Self's own nature as supreme bliss, dearer than son, wealth, or anything else, following scripture's claim that the Self is the most inward and dearest of all things. Shankara closes his comment noting only that the fruit of this practice is stated in what follows, treating this verse as the seat properly taken rather than the goal itself reached.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's surviving comment folds this verse into one continuous instruction with 6.13, so the peace, fearlessness, continence, and fixed mind named here are read as inseparable from the steady bodily posture and unwavering gaze described just before. The unified act, body held even, senses withdrawn, mind fixed on the Lord, is itself the worship this passage as a whole describes; a fuller isolation of 6.14's own clauses cannot be drawn beyond what the combined passage already gives.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
What is on file for Madhva at this point is a single line attached to 6.12, naming the practice as the yoga of samadhi to be joined, without reaching forward to comment on 6.14's own peace, fearlessness, or fixed mind. On his broader Dvaita commitments one would expect even this settled absorption to be read as granted and sustained by the Lord's will rather than the self's own achievement, but that extension is not present in what survives and is flagged here only as an inference, not his stated word.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's extant remark is a running gloss stretching from verse 6.10 through the language of attainment several verses later, touching phrases close to this verse, holding the mind steady, restraining mind and senses, holding Me as the highest, after which peace comes and one attains the Lord, without isolating 6.14 as its own topic. A clearly labeled Kashmir Shaiva extension would read the peace named here as the mind's contracted movement relaxing into recognition of its own native freedom, but this is offered as a possibility, not as words Abhinavagupta wrote about this verse.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads every clause of this verse as building toward one claim: the restrained mind rests in Krishna alone, and Krishna alone is the highest goal of life, which is exactly what the name mat-parah is built to express. He states outright that this is not meditation on some bare shape of the self drawn from scripture but the meditation of one whose inner being has come home to Vasudeva, finding in him both the seat of thought and the end of living, so that stilled meditation here opens directly into devotion.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for its account of mechanism rather than its metaphysics, Madhusudana's comment traces the inner peace to a specific cause, the root of liking and disliking actually removed, and traces fearlessness to a specific cause, scriptural trust dissolving the doubt of whether renouncing action is proper. On this reading the verse offers something close to a working diagnosis: name what generates the pairs of opposites, remove that cause, and the peace that follows is not achieved by force but uncovered once the underlying cause is gone.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If meditation is supposed to empty the mind of every object, why does this verse tell me to fix it firmly on one object instead of leaving it blank?
Because a wholly blank mind has nothing to do, and the sources that address this point agree meditation is itself a sustained flow of mental activity, not an absence of activity. Emptied of everything, the mind simply drifts back to its old wandering; the withdrawal from food, senses, and outward things clears the field, but the field still needs something planted in it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
So the mind drawn back from everything else is set on a single object rather than left without one, and this is one-pointedness, not a step back into multiplicity. In place of the many forms it used to chase, a single steady form is held, and that steady absorption is what several of the sources treat as real progress on the path.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
And the object chosen is not arbitrary. The verse pairs 'mind fixed on Me' with 'holding Me as supreme goal', so what the mind rests on and what the whole life is lived for become one and the same thing. That is why it steadies rather than distracts: it is the one place mind and purpose can finally coincide and stay.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
Notice, before you try to still anything, that the peace this verse describes is not built by force. It says the cause of your restlessness, not just its surface, can be loosened; and it says an emptied mind is not yet the goal, only the clearing of a field that must then hold one thing. So sit, let the mind draw back from what it usually chases, and instead of leaving it blank, give it the one object that is also your true aim. Watch what happens when what you rest your attention on and what you actually live for become, even briefly, the same single thing.
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.