Arjuna names the one honest obstacle: a mind too restless to hold the evenness he has just been shown.
This is not doubt about whether the teaching is true. It is the plain confession of a sincere student who has genuinely understood the goal and genuinely cannot yet hold it.
Arjuna says: Krishna, this yoga of evenness that you have described, I do not see how it can stand steady, because the mind is so restless.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
You have just heard a long teaching on the yoga of sameness, the seat, the posture, the still mind resting in the self. Now you stop, and you say plainly what you actually feel: you do not see how this could hold.
The teaching
You have heard the yoga of sameness, and you do not doubt that it is true. What you doubt is whether you, specifically, can hold it. You look for a firm and lasting footing in it, a standing that would endure, and you cannot find one. The reason you give is the one you already know: the mind is restless. It wavers, it will not stay still, and whatever evenness it manages to reach for a moment slips away again almost at once. This is not a complaint against the teaching. It is an honest report from someone who has genuinely understood what is being asked and genuinely felt his own mind fail to meet it. Some of the oldest comments on this exact line stay brief, almost as spare as your own words, because this verse is built to carry a difficulty forward rather than resolve it here. The resolution is coming. For now, only the honest naming of the difficulty is asked of you.
The doubt that rises
If my mind is restless by its very nature, and even a glimpse of steadiness slips away from me almost as soon as I reach it, is this evenness really within reach for someone like me, or only for those whose minds were already quiet before they began?
Where the paths divide
Read narrowly, on what Shankara's own extant note actually gives.
What has come down to us here is exact and brief: you have declared this yoga by way of sameness, and Arjuna finds no firm footing for it, no unmoving ground, because the mind is restless. Shankara adds only that this is well known. He does not use this particular verse to build a program for stilling the mind; that belongs to what follows, not to this line. The doubt is registered precisely and left standing, honestly, for the next verse to answer.
For the seeing-alike Ramanuja has just described, now doubted for its durability.
The equal vision you doubt has a precise content. Selves you once knew as wholly distinct, split by the difference of god and man and the rest, and by the difference of soul and Lord, you have just been shown as alike one another, since each shares knowledge as its single form, and as like the Lord himself, since, freed from action, they no longer stand apart from his nature. Your doubt does not touch the truth of this vision. It touches only whether a mind that wavers can hold what has genuinely, already, been shown to you.
Presented at exactly the strength the surviving line supports.
What survives here is a single spare sentence: no firm standing for this yoga, because the mind is unsteady. It would not be honest to expand this into a fuller argument in Madhva's name; what is offered is a bare, exact confirmation of your own objection, nothing more claimed and nothing more needed at this point in the text.
A close word-level reading, not a developed doctrine attached to this line.
Notice your own two words, which and this, one reaching toward something distant, one pointing near. Read together, they mark a real distance: Brahman has just been made plain to you, pointed out directly, and yet the mind's cruel restlessness keeps it just out of reach, slipping back the moment it is shown. The mind churns, with real power to disturb both what is seen and what is unseen, and firm, in your own word, names exactly how hard that disturbance is to push back. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading extended beyond this fragment, the churning itself might be seen as consciousness's own freedom momentarily contracted rather than an outside enemy, though that extension goes beyond what the surviving comment actually states.
Naming exactly what you measure yourself against.
The yoga you doubt is named precisely: a mind free of dullness and of distraction, standing in the single form of the self. You are not confused about what is being asked of you. You have measured it honestly against your own mind and found, honestly, that your mind does not yet meet it, because it is by nature unsteady. The fuller answer, of how devotion might succeed where private effort falls short, belongs to what is still ahead, not to this line.
Read as a shared, not a private, difficulty.
Sameness, defined exactly, is the cancelling of liking and disliking in the mind, and the yoga that holds it is nothing less than the restraint of the mind's every movement. Measured against that precise bar, you say you see no steady, long-lasting firmness in yourself, and you say more than that: neither you nor any other practitioner of yoga, however skilled, can see it either. The difficulty is real, and it belongs to everyone who has ever tried this, not to you alone.
The readings agree on the trouble and largely agree that it is real, shared, and not a mark against you. They differ mostly in how much each is willing to say on this single line: some stay to a bare, exact restatement of your own words, leaving the answer to the verses ahead; others already sketch, in brief, what the mind's restlessness is actually doing, whether disturbing a plainly shown truth, swallowing a hard-won vision, or simply refusing, by its nature, to be still. This page keeps that difference visible rather than smoothing it away.
A question to carry
When the evenness you have just glimpsed slips away from you again, do you take that as proof it was never meant for you, or as the honest starting point Arjuna names here, aloud, to his own teacher?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
You do not have to arrive already steady. Naming the restlessness plainly, as you have just done, is itself the honest ground the next words are spoken onto.
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 finished describing the yoga of sameness across a long stretch of teaching on meditation; here Arjuna interrupts to name the difficulty that the very next verses exist to answer.
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.
You can honor a teaching as true and still say, honestly, that you cannot yet hold it. That is exactly what happens here, and it is received as a fair question, not a failure.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
This is Arjuna speaking, not Krishna. Having just heard the yoga of sameness described, he interrupts with an honest objection: he does not deny that it is a high teaching, but he says he cannot see for it a firm and lasting footing, a standing that endures.
The obstacle named is not ignorance of the goal but the mind's own restlessness, its plain refusal to stay put once it has glimpsed something steady.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
The stated reason, across every reading, is chanchalatva, the restlessness of the mind. The mind by its own nature wavers and will not stay put, so whatever evenness it manages to reach does not hold.
Several of the earliest comments on this line stay brief and close to Arjuna's own words, because this verse is built to hand the difficulty forward, not to resolve it on the spot.
Across Advaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Abhinavagupta · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Abhinavagupta, and 1 others’ words
The difficulty named is not in understanding what the yoga asks. Shankara and Madhusudana both stay close to this: the goal has been shown plainly enough; what fails is the mind's capacity to remain fixed on it once shown.
The doubt is not confessed as Arjuna's private weakness. Madhusudana is explicit that no practitioner of yoga, however skilled, is exempt from this same restlessness.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The readings agree this is a sincere seeker's admission of difficulty, not a rebellion against the teaching or a rejection of its truth. Ramanuja and Madhusudana both keep the doubt pointed at durability, at whether the vision can stand firm, never at whether it is rightly taught.
Naming the difficulty aloud, to the teacher's own face, is itself the first honest move; nothing in this verse asks you to have solved it before you speak.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Madhva · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 1 others’ words
Several of the extant comments on this particular verse are notably brief, more a precise restatement of Arjuna's own words than an extended argument; this is honestly a hinge line whose fuller answer is given in the verses immediately following, not one that each acarya elaborates at length in itself.
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 ties the doubt to the specific content he has just given the equal vision: seeing selves once known as utterly distinct, by the difference of god and man and the rest, as alike one another through shared knowledge, and as like the Lord through freedom from action. Arjuna's doubt is whether this inwardly won vision, once granted, can actually stand firm against a wavering mind.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
What survives of Madhva's comment here is a single spare sentence restating the objection: no firm standing for this yoga, because the mind is unsteady. It should be presented honestly as exactly that thin, a bare confirmation rather than an extended argument, with whatever fuller reading Madhva offers reserved for the verses that answer this doubt.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara specifies exactly what Arjuna judges impossible: a mind free of dullness and distraction, standing in the single form of the self. He reads Arjuna as measuring the yoga honestly against its own definition and finding, by that same definition, that his mind cannot yet meet it. The extant note stops at naming the difficulty precisely rather than developing a full devotional answer to it here.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana gives the most analytically developed reading on file for this verse: sameness is defined as the cancellation of liking and disliking, the yoga as the restraint of all the mind's movement, and the doubt is generalized beyond Arjuna to every practitioner of yoga, none of whom, he has Arjuna say, can see this firmness either. The demand named is exact and the difficulty is real for everyone, not a private confession alone.
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
Before reaching for reassurance, sit for a moment inside Arjuna's own honesty. Notice where in your own practice you have glimpsed the evenness he describes, held it briefly, and then felt it scatter. Let that scattering be observed without judgment, as the very thing the next verse exists to address, rather than as proof that the goal was never meant for you.
If you have felt evenness for a moment and then felt it scatter, you are standing exactly where Arjuna stands here, and the very next words in this chapter are addressed to you.
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 is Arjuna speaking, not Krishna. Having just heard the yoga of sameness described, he interrupts with an honest objection: he does not deny that it is a high teaching, but he says he cannot see for it a firm and lasting footing, a standing that endures.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The stated reason, across every reading, is chanchalatva, the restlessness of the mind. The mind by its own nature wavers and will not stay put, so whatever evenness it manages to reach does not hold.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The difficulty named is not in understanding what the yoga asks. Shankara and Madhusudana both stay close to this: the goal has been shown plainly enough; what fails is the mind's capacity to remain fixed on it once shown.
Śaṅkarācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The readings agree this is a sincere seeker's admission of difficulty, not a rebellion against the teaching or a rejection of its truth. Ramanuja and Madhusudana both keep the doubt pointed at durability, at whether the vision can stand firm, never at whether it is rightly taught.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Several of the extant comments on this particular verse are notably brief, more a precise restatement of Arjuna's own words than an extended argument; this is honestly a hinge line whose fuller answer is given in the verses immediately following, not one that each acarya elaborates at length in itself.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara's own extant comment stays exact and narrow: the yoga is named as sameness, Arjuna finds no firm footing for it, and the reason given is the mind's restlessness, which Shankara confirms is simply well known. He does not use this verse to unfold a program for stilling the mind; that belongs to what Krishna says next.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja ties the doubt to the specific content he has just given the equal vision: seeing selves once known as utterly distinct, by the difference of god and man and the rest, as alike one another through shared knowledge, and as like the Lord through freedom from action. Arjuna's doubt is whether this inwardly won vision, once granted, can actually stand firm against a wavering mind.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
What survives of Madhva's comment here is a single spare sentence restating the objection: no firm standing for this yoga, because the mind is unsteady. It should be presented honestly as exactly that thin, a bare confirmation rather than an extended argument, with whatever fuller reading Madhva offers reserved for the verses that answer this doubt.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's fragment lingers on Arjuna's own choice of pronouns, which and this, reading them as marking a real distance: Brahman has been pointed out directly, yet the mind's cruel restlessness keeps it just out of reach, churning with real power to disturb both the seen and the unseen. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading extended beyond what the fragment states, this churning might be framed as consciousness's own freedom momentarily contracted rather than an external force, but that extension is flagged as conditional, not part of the extant comment.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara specifies exactly what Arjuna judges impossible: a mind free of dullness and distraction, standing in the single form of the self. He reads Arjuna as measuring the yoga honestly against its own definition and finding, by that same definition, that his mind cannot yet meet it. The extant note stops at naming the difficulty precisely rather than developing a full devotional answer to it here.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana gives the most analytically developed reading on file for this verse: sameness is defined as the cancellation of liking and disliking, the yoga as the restraint of all the mind's movement, and the doubt is generalized beyond Arjuna to every practitioner of yoga, none of whom, he has Arjuna say, can see this firmness either. The demand named is exact and the difficulty is real for everyone, not a private confession alone.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If even Arjuna, taught directly by Krishna, cannot hold this evenness steady, what real hope is there for someone like me?
Take it first as good news rather than bad: the model student voices exactly the difficulty you feel, to the teacher's face, and it is received as an honest, well-founded objection, not as a failure of faith or aptitude. Shankara confirms outright that the mind's restlessness here is simply well known, a shared fact rather than a personal defect.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya
What is doubted here is durability, not the reality or worth of the vision itself. Ramanuja and Sridhara both keep the objection pointed precisely at whether a mind that wavers can hold what has already, genuinely, been shown; the goal is not in question, only your grip on it.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Notice, too, that this verse is a question, not a conclusion. Madhusudana is explicit that the difficulty belongs to every practitioner of yoga, not to Arjuna alone, and the very next verse exists to take this honest doubt somewhere, rather than to leave it standing as the final word.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Before reaching for reassurance, sit for a moment inside Arjuna's own honesty. Notice where in your own practice you have glimpsed the evenness he describes, held it briefly, and then felt it scatter. Let that scattering be observed without judgment, as the very thing the next verse exists to address, rather than as proof that the goal was never meant for you.
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.