You have climbed to yoga the moment the inner grip on objects and actions falls away.
It is tempting to imagine this arrival as a summit reached only after years of discipline. The verse names something more exact: a resolve laid down, at whatever moment that happens.
When a person no longer clings to the objects the senses reach for, and no longer clings to the actions that fetch them, having let go of every inner resolve, that person is said to have climbed to yoga.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just told Arjuna how to tell the one still climbing from the one who has arrived. Now he gives the sign itself, and it turns out to be something you can look for in your own mind today, not a milestone measured in seasons of practice.
The teaching
You are said to have climbed to yoga when you no longer cling to the objects the senses reach for, sound, touch, form, taste, smell, and no longer cling to the actions that fetch them. The senses may still meet their objects, the hands may still work; what has ended is the inner claim, this is mine to enjoy, this I must do for it. Beneath that claim sits something deeper still, called sankalpa, the mind's resolve: the quiet plan that this is to be done by me, that fruit is to be enjoyed by me. From that resolve desire is said to grow, and from desire, action. Cut the resolve at its root, and you do not have to fight the desires and actions branch by branch; they are said to wither on their own once the root is gone. And where the fuller readings on this verse survive, something is said to fill the space the clinging leaves: a settled rest in your own nature as neither the one who does nor the one who enjoys, so that sense-objects simply stop pulling at you, not because you have forced them away but because you are no longer hungry for what they offer.
The doubt that rises
Two of the six voices gathered for this verse left only a brief remark where the others left a developed argument. That gap is itself worth sitting with: can the same inner mark, cutting resolve at its root, really happen today, all at once, as some readings suggest, or does it depend on a settled self-knowledge that only long practice can ripen? And when a source is this thin, how much of a fuller reading in that voice can honestly be offered at all?
Where the paths divide
Read as knowledge dissolving the very sense that action remains to be done.
Take renouncer of all resolve to its widest reach. It carries with it the giving up of every desire and every action, obligatory duties included, since desire is rooted in resolve and action follows desire the way an effect follows its cause; where resolve is wholly given up, no creature can even stir. The self is known here as the non-doer, the non-enjoyer, and is said to be drawn up out of the whole mass of sorrow that is birth and death. The accent falls entirely on knowledge: seeing your own true nature is what actually dissolves the clinging, not a separate act of willpower.
Read as a bridge from the one still climbing to the one who has arrived.
The yogarudha is one who, by nature now rather than by strain, tastes the Self alone as a single steady experience, and so no longer clings to the objects of matter or to the actions that reach for them. But this is not offered as a sealed-off achievement. For anyone still climbing, the very discipline of action, practiced as ongoing non-attachment toward what one might still rightly experience, is itself the road to that same summit.
Reported honestly, from a brief surviving remark rather than a developed argument.
What is on record here is terse: the word when marks the arrived state, and complete, effortless non-attachment belongs only to the one who has truly climbed. In such a person the dissolution of faults comes of itself; for everyone else it comes only through sustained effort, after direct seeing. This is offered as the compact fragment it is, without stretching it into a fuller argument that this verse alone does not supply.
Reported honestly, from a brief lexical gloss, with any fuller reading clearly flagged as extrapolation.
What survives at this verse is a short clarifying note: the sense-objects are named, and the actions that pursue them are glossed as the gaining of objects and the like. No developed statement in this voice, at this verse, connects that note to recognition or to the contraction and expansion of consciousness that shape the wider system elsewhere. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading, one would extend this toward non-attachment as consciousness releasing its own contraction into a bounded, craving self, but that extension is offered here only as a labeled possibility, not as recorded commentary.
Read as arrival completed the moment both roots of resolve are laid down.
The question worth asking is what kind of person this yogarudha actually is. The answer given is exact: when, toward the objects the senses enjoy and toward the actions that serve as their means, a person forms no attachment at all, that person is yogarudha. The reason offered is readiness, a character prepared to lay down every resolve rooted in either enjoyment or the pursuit of it. In such a person, the ascent has already taken place; nothing further is being withheld.
Read as a technical account of exactly what is, and is not, being renounced.
Ask precisely when a person becomes one who has climbed to yoga, and the answer given is: when the mind has gathered itself so completely that it is no longer drawn to any sense-object or to any of the five kinds of action, because none of them are seen to carry real being. What replaces that pull is settled knowledge of oneself as non-doer, non-enjoyer, bliss without a second. And what is renounced, named with care, is resolve itself, the plan that says I must do this and enjoy that fruit, not action, and not the senses' bare contact with their objects.
All six readings agree the mark is non-attachment, and they even agree on tracing it back to resolve. They part on how much this verse alone will bear. Two of the developed readings treat cutting resolve as something that can, in principle, happen at a moment; two more treat non-attached action as the ongoing road rather than a finished state; and two of the six voices here have left too little material at this exact verse to responsibly say more than what they actually wrote. This page keeps all three gaps open rather than papering over any of them.
A question to carry
The next time something you wanted arrives, can you let the pleasure of having it pass through you without a quiet resolve forming to protect or repeat it, and if you cannot yet, is that itself useful to notice?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Let the resolve that wants to form stay unformed a little longer. What is yours to do is still there, waiting, unharmed by your not having claimed its fruit.
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.
Having just distinguished the one still climbing toward yoga from the one who has climbed, Krishna now gives the inner sign by which that arrival is actually known.
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 question answered here is single: when may a person be called risen to yoga? Not after a fixed span of practice, but in the moment the inner clinging falls away.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
All six readings agree on what the verse is answering: when may a person rightly be called yogarudha, one who has climbed onto yoga and now stands established there? The test given is an inner mark, not a count of years practiced or seasons endured. The word when ties the arrival to the moment the clinging actually falls away, whenever that comes.
The clinging that must end is the mind's grip, this is mine to enjoy, this I must do for it; the senses may still meet their objects without that grip reforming.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The clinging that must end is named precisely: anushajjate, to attach oneself, to fasten on. It is the mind's inner grip, not the bare fact that senses meet their objects or that the body performs an act. The senses may still make contact; what has ended is the inner claim this is mine to enjoy, this I must do for it.
Beneath that grip sits resolve itself, the intention that this is to be done by me and its fruit enjoyed by me; cut the resolve, and the desires and actions it feeds wither on their own.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
Beneath the clinging to objects and to actions sits a single deeper root, sankalpa, the mind's resolve. Every commentator with a developed reading traces the same chain: resolve gives rise to desire, and desire gives rise to action. Cut the resolve at the root, and the desires and actions that grow from it wither on their own, without having to be fought branch by branch.
What fills the place of the lost clinging, where the fuller readings survive, is a settled rest in one's own nature as neither doer nor enjoyer, so non-attachment becomes natural rather than forced.
Across Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
Where a full reading survives, the falling-away of clinging is not described as bare emptiness. Something fills its place: rest in the Self, a settled knowledge of one's own nature as neither doer nor enjoyer, so that sense-objects lose their pull because the mind is no longer hungry for what they offer.
Where the old commentators left only a brief remark, as with two voices gathered here, the honest path is to say so plainly rather than dress a thin source in borrowed confidence.
Across Dvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaMadhva · AbhinavaguptaIn Madhva and Abhinavagupta’s words
Two of the six voices on file, Madhva and Abhinavagupta, have left only a brief remark at this verse rather than a developed argument, and honesty about that gap is itself part of what the sources hold in common: not every acarya's fuller reasoning on this exact verse survives, and the confident architecture built elsewhere in their systems cannot simply be read back into this line without saying so.
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 identifies the yogarudha as one who now tastes the Self alone as his single experience, and for whom this has become simple nature rather than effort. But he does not leave the mark stranded as a finished state: the very path of action, practiced as ongoing non-attachment toward what one might still rightly experience, is itself the cause that carries the still-climbing aspirant to that summit.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The surviving remark from Madhva is brief: the word when marks the arrived state, and complete non-attachment belongs only to the person who has actually climbed, in whom the dissolution of faults comes effortlessly, while for everyone else it comes only through sustained effort after direct seeing. This is reported as the terse fragment it is, without extending it into a fuller argument he did not leave at this verse.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
What remains of Abhinavagupta's comment here is a brief lexical note, glossing sense-objects and the actions that pursue them, without a developed statement of his own on recognition or the freedom of consciousness at this specific line. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading, one would extend this toward non-attachment as consciousness releasing its own contraction into a bounded self, but that extension is flagged here as conditional, not as his recorded words.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara poses the verse as answering what kind of person the yogarudha is, and locates the mark exactly in the ending of clinging toward both sense-objects and the actions that serve them, rooted in a readiness to lay down every resolve oriented to either. He states directly that in such a person the ascent has already taken place, keeping the reading compact and close to the verse's own terms.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana treats the verse as a technical account of gathered mind: no longer drawn to sense-objects or to any of the five kinds of action, because none are seen to carry real being, and grounded instead in the settled knowledge of oneself as non-doer, non-enjoyer, and bliss without a second. He is precise that what is renounced is resolve itself, the plan that says I must do this and enjoy that fruit, and calls the resulting state samadhi.
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, the next time something you wanted arrives, whether a small resolve rises with it: now that I have it, I must protect it, repeat it, or hold onto it. See that resolve clearly, and let it settle back down without acting on it. You are not refusing the thing. You are simply declining to let its arrival write a new instruction for your mind.
So take the next thing you wanted, and the pleasure of getting it, and let it pass through an open hand; you are still here, and the resolve you did not form has cost you nothing.
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 readings agree on what the verse is answering: when may a person rightly be called yogarudha, one who has climbed onto yoga and now stands established there? The test given is an inner mark, not a count of years practiced or seasons endured. The word when ties the arrival to the moment the clinging actually falls away, whenever that comes.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The clinging that must end is named precisely: anushajjate, to attach oneself, to fasten on. It is the mind's inner grip, not the bare fact that senses meet their objects or that the body performs an act. The senses may still make contact; what has ended is the inner claim this is mine to enjoy, this I must do for it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Beneath the clinging to objects and to actions sits a single deeper root, sankalpa, the mind's resolve. Every commentator with a developed reading traces the same chain: resolve gives rise to desire, and desire gives rise to action. Cut the resolve at the root, and the desires and actions that grow from it wither on their own, without having to be fought branch by branch.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where a full reading survives, the falling-away of clinging is not described as bare emptiness. Something fills its place: rest in the Self, a settled knowledge of one's own nature as neither doer nor enjoyer, so that sense-objects lose their pull because the mind is no longer hungry for what they offer.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Two of the six voices on file, Madhva and Abhinavagupta, have left only a brief remark at this verse rather than a developed argument, and honesty about that gap is itself part of what the sources hold in common: not every acarya's fuller reasoning on this exact verse survives, and the confident architecture built elsewhere in their systems cannot simply be read back into this line without saying so.
Madhvācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads renouncer of all resolve at its widest possible reach: it carries the renunciation of every desire and every action without remainder, obligatory duties included, since desire is rooted in resolve and action follows desire as effect follows cause, and where resolve is wholly given up, no creature can even stir. The self is thereby known as non-doer, non-enjoyer, and drawn up out of the whole mass of birth and death; the weight of the teaching falls on knowledge dissolving the very sense that action remains to be done.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja identifies the yogarudha as one who now tastes the Self alone as his single experience, and for whom this has become simple nature rather than effort. But he does not leave the mark stranded as a finished state: the very path of action, practiced as ongoing non-attachment toward what one might still rightly experience, is itself the cause that carries the still-climbing aspirant to that summit.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The surviving remark from Madhva is brief: the word when marks the arrived state, and complete non-attachment belongs only to the person who has actually climbed, in whom the dissolution of faults comes effortlessly, while for everyone else it comes only through sustained effort after direct seeing. This is reported as the terse fragment it is, without extending it into a fuller argument he did not leave at this verse.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
What remains of Abhinavagupta's comment here is a brief lexical note, glossing sense-objects and the actions that pursue them, without a developed statement of his own on recognition or the freedom of consciousness at this specific line. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading, one would extend this toward non-attachment as consciousness releasing its own contraction into a bounded self, but that extension is flagged here as conditional, not as his recorded words.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara poses the verse as answering what kind of person the yogarudha is, and locates the mark exactly in the ending of clinging toward both sense-objects and the actions that serve them, rooted in a readiness to lay down every resolve oriented to either. He states directly that in such a person the ascent has already taken place, keeping the reading compact and close to the verse's own terms.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana treats the verse as a technical account of gathered mind: no longer drawn to sense-objects or to any of the five kinds of action, because none are seen to carry real being, and grounded instead in the settled knowledge of oneself as non-doer, non-enjoyer, and bliss without a second. He is precise that what is renounced is resolve itself, the plan that says I must do this and enjoy that fruit, and calls the resulting state samadhi.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If non-attachment is the whole mark of having arrived, can I reach it today by an act of will, or is it only the fruit of long practice and knowledge I do not yet have?
The developed readings on file locate the decisive move at the level of resolve, not at the level of years accumulated: cut the sankalpa at its root, and the desires and actions growing from it are said to wither of themselves, which is why the verse can speak of arrival at a moment rather than after a fixed span.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
At the same time, what is offered here is not a technique detached from a settled inner ground; Ramanuja and Madhusudana both describe the falling-away of clinging as resting on something already tasted, the Self's own experience or one's true nature as non-doer, so willing alone, without that deeper steadiness, is unlikely to be the same as arrival.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the sources are thin, as with Madhva's brief remark, honesty is itself part of the answer: what can be said with confidence is that effortless non-attachment marks the one who has climbed, and that for others it comes only through effort after seeing, which leaves open, rather than settling, how quickly effort can ripen into that seeing.
Madhvācārya
Contemplation
Notice, the next time something you wanted arrives, whether a small resolve rises with it: now that I have it, I must protect it, repeat it, or hold onto it. See that resolve clearly, and let it settle back down without acting on it. You are not refusing the thing. You are simply declining to let its arrival write a new instruction for your mind.
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.