The boundless bliss that the long discipline ripens into: the touch of Brahman.
After all the careful steadying of the mind, Krishna names what it comes to. The bliss he promises is not a passing relief to be collected and held, but a happiness untouched by any mixture of pain, reached once the inner stain has gone.
Engaging the self in this way always, the taintless yogi easily attains the boundless bliss of contact with Brahman.
Having shown across the earlier verses how the yogi settles the mind step by step, Krishna now speaks the harvest of that whole discipline, the supreme happiness he had earlier promised.
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.
This verse is not a fresh instruction but the fruit of all that came before; the word "thus" gathers up the whole steadying of the mind and names what it comes to.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Jayatīrtha · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 13 others’ words
This verse announces the result of the long discipline laid out in the preceding verses. Krishna has been describing how the yogi steadies the mind step by step; now he says what comes of it. The word 'thus' (evam) points back to that whole sequence: restraining the senses by the mind, settling the mind on the Self, and so on. So this is not a new instruction but the harvest of the old one. The commentators read it as Krishna making plain the supreme happiness he had earlier promised the yogi.
First the stain must depart: the load of good and bad action that keeps you turning in birth and death, the attachment and aversion, the holding-on through "I" and "mine".
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānuja · Vallabha · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 7 others’ words
The yogi who reaches this fruit is 'vigata-kalmasha', one whose taint or stain has departed. The commentators unpack 'kalmasha' as the load that keeps a person turning in birth and death: sin, and (one notes) merit too, since both bind. Several name it the dharma and adharma, good and bad action, that cause the round of rebirth, or the obstructions of attachment and aversion, or nescience and the other afflictions. One modern voice reads the taint very directly as 'I'-ness and 'mine'-ness (ahanta-mamata): holding a bond with the world through these is itself the sin, so being free of them is being free of sin. The common point is that this freedom is a precondition of the happiness; the taint must be gone first.
And the ease is real, but it is the ripeness of a long-trained mind; what was once forced and laborious has, through steady practice, become a flow that comes of itself.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, BhedābhedaŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Bhāskara · JñāneśvarIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 7 others’ words
The word 'sukhena', easily or with ease, is stressed by many commentators. It means without toil, without strain, effortlessly. They explain why it has become easy: the discipline that was once forced and laborious has, through steady practice, become a natural inflow. One says the once force-fed training has turned into something that flows of itself. Another grounds the ease in the Lord's grace and the removal of all obstacles; without that clearing of the mind, the calming would not even be possible. So the ease is not casualness but the ripeness of a long-trained mind.
What arrives is a happiness beyond every limit, untouched by any mixture of pain, uninterrupted and undecaying, nothing like the fleeting pleasures of the senses.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 12 others’ words
What he attains is the 'brahma-samsparsha', the touch or contact of Brahman, and an 'atyantam sukham', a happiness that is boundless, beyond every limit, the highest beyond which nothing is higher. The commentators emphasize its measurelessness: it goes past all limit, it is supreme bliss-essence, it is happiness untouched by any admixture of pain. One Vishishtadvaita voice explains precisely why it is called supreme: because there is no mixture of pain in it, and that very freedom from pain-mixture is what makes it the highest. The happiness is set against ordinary pleasure: sensual pleasures are fleeting and transitory, while the bliss of Brahman is uninterrupted, undecaying, and everlasting. This is why one should seek the Self within.
And this is not a reward kept waiting for after death; it is liberation tasted here, in this very body, the purpose of the whole long approach fulfilled now.
Across Advaita, Śuddhādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Vallabha · Śrīdhara · ViśvanāthaIn Śaṅkara, Vallabha, and 2 others’ words
Several commentators read this attainment as liberation while still living, jivanmukti. Reaching the touch of Brahman and the boundless bliss, the yogi becomes liberated even now, in this body, his purpose fulfilled. The contact is described as direct vision (sakshatkara) that puts an end to ignorance (avidya) and cuts off transmigration. So the verse is not promising a reward after death only; it marks a state of fulfilled liberation reached here.
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
The 'touch of Brahman' is read as identity, oneness of taste with Brahman, not a meeting of two. One commentator glosses 'contact' (samsparsha) plainly as identity, sameness of essence; the touch is the touch of objects falling away so that only Brahman remains. The fruit named here is the vision of oneness with Brahman, the very thing that cuts off all transmigration. Another describes the dissolution of the three conditionings and an identity with Brahman beyond the seer-seen distinction. One of these commentators adds a long technical frame from the Yoga tradition, listing the nine distractions or taints of the mind (disease, languor, doubt, heedlessness, sloth, non-abstention, error of vision, failure to gain a ground, instability) and their companions (sorrow, despondency, body-shaking, the in-breath and out-breath of the agitated), explaining that these are exactly the obstacles whose removal the word 'easily' refers to; the happiness is experienced only by the all-movement-free, subtle mind in absorption, a state unlike both distraction (which has movement) and dissolution (in which the mind has no being).
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
The 'touch of Brahman' is read as the experience of Brahman, a closeness in which the self's vision and the supreme Self are felt without any interval between them, not as a merger into identity. The happiness is the form of the experience of Brahman, enjoyed utterly and beyond measure. One commentator stresses that 'with ease' is the fruit of the steady prior training: what was once a force-fed discipline has become a natural inflow, and the touch is the nearness in which the self-vision and the supreme self are felt without separation. This same commentator notes that this verse opens onto the next phase, the ripening of the discipline, told in stages that follow.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
The fruit is read not as a featureless ease but as a relish in the very company of the Lord. One commentator keeps the door open in two stages: the contact with the imperishable (akshara), which is direct vision wiping out every kind of difference and which marks the yogi's liberation-while-living, is only the first fruit; a further fruit, the fullness (pushti) set out in the verses to come, is the higher contact in which Vasudeva himself is seen. He even notes a grammatical point, that the verb 'attains' is taken in the reflexive voice because the fruit bears on the agent's own self, citing the Taittiriya scripture. The other commentator reads the 'touch of Brahman' concretely as loving service (seva), of the form of massaging and the like done at the Lord's lotus feet, and of the nature of servitude (dasya); the supreme happiness is this service-relish in the Lord's presence, enjoyed without break.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
One Gaudiya commentator reads the verse as a two-step realization: yoking and experiencing one's own self leads, by that very means, to the realization of the Supreme Self; so the 'contact with Brahman' is the experience of the Supreme Self, an utterly boundless happiness, the faults all burnt away. A Marathi devotional commentator dwells on the union as an inseparable merging: when the mind, carrying its happiness, enters the interior of the supreme Brahman, it abides in that meeting and enjoys bliss as at a festival, in the temple of identity with the Supreme, the way salt once dissolved in water does not separate from it again; he frames the path as walking back on one's own legs, in the reverse direction, toward one's own original form.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These voices recast the verse in their own keys. One reads 'yogi' here as the Karma-Yogin, since the yoga of Patanjali is treated as one means toward Karma-Yoga, so the man who practises it is a Karma-Yogin who becomes free of all sins and happily enjoys the beatific happiness arising from union with Brahman; he allows that 'yogi' may also simply mean one in absorption (samadhi). Another non-sectarian devotional voice contrasts this verse with the saguna meditation of verse 6.15: here the 'yunjann evam' is for meditation on the formless (nirguna), and the freedom of taint is the renunciation of inertness; the practice here is non-practice, simply keeping oneself firmly in one's own true nature, with no further mental effort; the taint dissolved is 'I'-ness and 'mine'-ness, and the supreme happiness is one in which neither the experiencer nor the experienced remains, this being the same reality named by 'imperishable happiness' (5.21) and 'utmost happiness' (6.21). A third voice describes the mechanism in practical terms: by withdrawal of the senses, concentration, and meditation the yogi loses contact with sense-objects and comes into contact with the immortal Self within, removing the obstacles to union and keeping the mind steady in the Self.
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
There is a quiet relief in how this verse is read here. The practice it names is not one more effort piled on top of the others; it is, in a sense, non-practice. You are not asked to keep forcing the mind into shape. You are asked only to keep yourself firmly settled in your own true nature, your svarupa, and let that be the whole of the work. The taint that has to go is not some exotic sin; it is the everyday habit of 'I' and 'mine', the bond you keep tying with the world through ownership and self-importance. Loosen that, and the freedom from sin takes care of itself, because that bond was the sin. And the happiness waiting on the far side is not one more experience to collect and hold; it is a happiness so complete that neither the one who is enjoying nor the thing enjoyed stands apart any longer. So the contemplative direction is gentle: stop adding, start resting. Let the holding-on dissolve, and abide in what you already are.
So do not pile one more effort on the others; keep yourself settled in your own true nature, let the holding-on of \"I\" and \"mine\" loosen, and rest in what you already are.
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 announces the result of the long discipline laid out in the preceding verses. Krishna has been describing how the yogi steadies the mind step by step; now he says what comes of it. The word 'thus' (evam) points back to that whole sequence: restraining the senses by the mind, settling the mind on the Self, and so on. So this is not a new instruction but the harvest of the old one. The commentators read it as Krishna making plain the supreme happiness he had earlier promised the yogi.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
The yogi who reaches this fruit is 'vigata-kalmasha', one whose taint or stain has departed. The commentators unpack 'kalmasha' as the load that keeps a person turning in birth and death: sin, and (one notes) merit too, since both bind. Several name it the dharma and adharma, good and bad action, that cause the round of rebirth, or the obstructions of attachment and aversion, or nescience and the other afflictions. One modern voice reads the taint very directly as 'I'-ness and 'mine'-ness (ahanta-mamata): holding a bond with the world through these is itself the sin, so being free of them is being free of sin. The common point is that this freedom is a precondition of the happiness; the taint must be gone first.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
The word 'sukhena', easily or with ease, is stressed by many commentators. It means without toil, without strain, effortlessly. They explain why it has become easy: the discipline that was once forced and laborious has, through steady practice, become a natural inflow. One says the once force-fed training has turned into something that flows of itself. Another grounds the ease in the Lord's grace and the removal of all obstacles; without that clearing of the mind, the calming would not even be possible. So the ease is not casualness but the ripeness of a long-trained mind.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Bhāskara · Sant Jñāneśvar
What he attains is the 'brahma-samsparsha', the touch or contact of Brahman, and an 'atyantam sukham', a happiness that is boundless, beyond every limit, the highest beyond which nothing is higher. The commentators emphasize its measurelessness: it goes past all limit, it is supreme bliss-essence, it is happiness untouched by any admixture of pain. One Vishishtadvaita voice explains precisely why it is called supreme: because there is no mixture of pain in it, and that very freedom from pain-mixture is what makes it the highest. The happiness is set against ordinary pleasure: sensual pleasures are fleeting and transitory, while the bliss of Brahman is uninterrupted, undecaying, and everlasting. This is why one should seek the Self within.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Several commentators read this attainment as liberation while still living, jivanmukti. Reaching the touch of Brahman and the boundless bliss, the yogi becomes liberated even now, in this body, his purpose fulfilled. The contact is described as direct vision (sakshatkara) that puts an end to ignorance (avidya) and cuts off transmigration. So the verse is not promising a reward after death only; it marks a state of fulfilled liberation reached here.
Śaṅkarācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The 'touch of Brahman' is read as identity, oneness of taste with Brahman, not a meeting of two. One commentator glosses 'contact' (samsparsha) plainly as identity, sameness of essence; the touch is the touch of objects falling away so that only Brahman remains. The fruit named here is the vision of oneness with Brahman, the very thing that cuts off all transmigration. Another describes the dissolution of the three conditionings and an identity with Brahman beyond the seer-seen distinction. One of these commentators adds a long technical frame from the Yoga tradition, listing the nine distractions or taints of the mind (disease, languor, doubt, heedlessness, sloth, non-abstention, error of vision, failure to gain a ground, instability) and their companions (sorrow, despondency, body-shaking, the in-breath and out-breath of the agitated), explaining that these are exactly the obstacles whose removal the word 'easily' refers to; the happiness is experienced only by the all-movement-free, subtle mind in absorption, a state unlike both distraction (which has movement) and dissolution (in which the mind has no being).
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Viśiṣṭādvaita
The 'touch of Brahman' is read as the experience of Brahman, a closeness in which the self's vision and the supreme Self are felt without any interval between them, not as a merger into identity. The happiness is the form of the experience of Brahman, enjoyed utterly and beyond measure. One commentator stresses that 'with ease' is the fruit of the steady prior training: what was once a force-fed discipline has become a natural inflow, and the touch is the nearness in which the self-vision and the supreme self are felt without separation. This same commentator notes that this verse opens onto the next phase, the ripening of the discipline, told in stages that follow.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
The fruit is read not as a featureless ease but as a relish in the very company of the Lord. One commentator keeps the door open in two stages: the contact with the imperishable (akshara), which is direct vision wiping out every kind of difference and which marks the yogi's liberation-while-living, is only the first fruit; a further fruit, the fullness (pushti) set out in the verses to come, is the higher contact in which Vasudeva himself is seen. He even notes a grammatical point, that the verb 'attains' is taken in the reflexive voice because the fruit bears on the agent's own self, citing the Taittiriya scripture. The other commentator reads the 'touch of Brahman' concretely as loving service (seva), of the form of massaging and the like done at the Lord's lotus feet, and of the nature of servitude (dasya); the supreme happiness is this service-relish in the Lord's presence, enjoyed without break.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
One Gaudiya commentator reads the verse as a two-step realization: yoking and experiencing one's own self leads, by that very means, to the realization of the Supreme Self; so the 'contact with Brahman' is the experience of the Supreme Self, an utterly boundless happiness, the faults all burnt away. A Marathi devotional commentator dwells on the union as an inseparable merging: when the mind, carrying its happiness, enters the interior of the supreme Brahman, it abides in that meeting and enjoys bliss as at a festival, in the temple of identity with the Supreme, the way salt once dissolved in water does not separate from it again; he frames the path as walking back on one's own legs, in the reverse direction, toward one's own original form.
Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These voices recast the verse in their own keys. One reads 'yogi' here as the Karma-Yogin, since the yoga of Patanjali is treated as one means toward Karma-Yoga, so the man who practises it is a Karma-Yogin who becomes free of all sins and happily enjoys the beatific happiness arising from union with Brahman; he allows that 'yogi' may also simply mean one in absorption (samadhi). Another non-sectarian devotional voice contrasts this verse with the saguna meditation of verse 6.15: here the 'yunjann evam' is for meditation on the formless (nirguna), and the freedom of taint is the renunciation of inertness; the practice here is non-practice, simply keeping oneself firmly in one's own true nature, with no further mental effort; the taint dissolved is 'I'-ness and 'mine'-ness, and the supreme happiness is one in which neither the experiencer nor the experienced remains, this being the same reality named by 'imperishable happiness' (5.21) and 'utmost happiness' (6.21). A third voice describes the mechanism in practical terms: by withdrawal of the senses, concentration, and meditation the yogi loses contact with sense-objects and comes into contact with the immortal Self within, removing the obstacles to union and keeping the mind steady in the Self.
Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
A Seeker Asks
If this boundless bliss comes 'easily', why does my own practice still feel so much like strain and struggle?
The 'ease' in the verse is not the starting point; it is the ripeness. The commentators are careful here. The word 'easily' (sukhena) describes the state of a yogi who has already gone through the long, step-by-step discipline of the earlier verses. What was once a force-fed, laborious training has, over time, turned into a natural inflow; the ease is what the practice becomes, not what it begins as. So the strain you feel now is not a sign that something is wrong; it is the earlier stage doing its work.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The strain also has a name and a cure. The 'taint' that has to depart is described as attachment, aversion, and the cluster of mental obstacles, or as the deep habit of 'I'-ness and 'mine'-ness. One commentator lists the obstacles plainly (doubt, sloth, heedlessness, instability, and the rest) and says that these are precisely what the word 'easily' refers to once they are removed; before they are cleared, the calming of the mind is simply not possible. So the difficulty you feel is the friction of these very obstacles, and the work is to keep loosening them rather than to expect the ease prematurely.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri · Swami Ramsukhdas
And the reward is worth the long approach. What the verse promises is not a passing relief but a happiness that is boundless, beyond every limit, untouched by any admixture of pain, uninterrupted and undecaying, unlike the fleeting pleasures of the senses. For several commentators it is liberation experienced here and now, while still living. The struggle is the price of a happiness that, once reached, does not run out.
Śaṅkarācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Swami Sivananda · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
There is a quiet relief in how this verse is read here. The practice it names is not one more effort piled on top of the others; it is, in a sense, non-practice. You are not asked to keep forcing the mind into shape. You are asked only to keep yourself firmly settled in your own true nature, your svarupa, and let that be the whole of the work. The taint that has to go is not some exotic sin; it is the everyday habit of 'I' and 'mine', the bond you keep tying with the world through ownership and self-importance. Loosen that, and the freedom from sin takes care of itself, because that bond was the sin. And the happiness waiting on the far side is not one more experience to collect and hold; it is a happiness so complete that neither the one who is enjoying nor the thing enjoyed stands apart any longer. So the contemplative direction is gentle: stop adding, start resting. Let the holding-on dissolve, and abide in what you already are.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
All the translations and commentary
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