You live inside weather made of three winds, and mistake the weather for the sky.
Krishna has just said everything springs from him; now he explains why, even so, the world does not know him. The states thrown up by nature's three strands are so absorbing that what stands beyond them goes unnoticed, not because he hides, but because the states blur the seeing.
Deceived by these three states of being that the gunas produce, this whole world does not know me, for I stand beyond them, and I never perish.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just told Arjuna that everything springs from him. The natural question follows immediately: if that is so, why does the world not know him? This verse gives the answer, and the next verse gives the way past it.
The teaching
Everything you feel moves through three basic currents: a current of clarity and calm, a current of drive and passion, a current of heaviness and dullness. Out of these three arise countless passing states, passion and hatred, delusion and attachment, greed, joy and sorrow, a settled quiet, an infatuated love. You live inside these states, and so does every moving and unmoving creature. Caught up in them, the whole world fails to recognize him as he really is. He is higher than these states, of an entirely different nature, untouched by what touches them. He is imperishable, free of decay, free of the coming-to-be and passing-away that marks every guna-state. They arise and perish moment by moment; he does not. They are what is seen and undergone; he is the one who sees. His not being recognized is not a flaw in him. He does not hide. The covering is a confusion in the one who looks, a loss of the very power to discriminate between what passes and what does not. This much names only the trap. The way out comes immediately next: the guna-made maya is hard to cross by yourself, but those who take refuge in him alone cross it.
The doubt that rises
If the very gunas that keep me from seeing him arise from him in the first place, is my failure to recognize him truly mine to correct, or is it a condition built into the world he himself has made?
Where the paths divide
Read as a loss of discriminating power, not a withholding by him.
The gunas at work throw up passion, hatred, and delusion, and by living inside these the world loses its power to tell things apart, and so fails to recognize him. He stands beyond these qualities, of a wholly different nature, never decaying, never born, never changing. The verse does not close on this. It opens a question that the next verse answers: how does anyone cross beyond this guna-woven maya at all?
Read as a delusion about what deserves to be enjoyed.
The whole world, conscious and unconscious, is his own body, arising from him, standing in him, dissolving into him; nothing apart from him is higher by any measure of gracious quality. The guna-states are far meaner, perishing in a moment, mere bodies, senses, and objects that follow one's own past action. The delusion, precisely, is that the crowd of enjoyers comes to take these lowest, unsteady states as things worth enjoying, missing him, who alone is supremely and endlessly enjoyable.
Read as a strict identity between guna and state, correcting a specific error.
Taking the suffix joining guna to state as identity rather than modification, the guna-made states simply are the guna-made things, bodies and senses themselves. This corrects a precise mistake: having seen even the exalted bodies of beings like Brahma made of the gunas, the deluded person wrongly assumes the Lord too must have such a body. He is beyond what is guna-made, free of the three gunas in a stronger sense than merely standing above their influence, and the word this in the verse sets the knower apart from the deluded mass.
On the surviving fragment shared with 7.12, read cautiously, without over-claiming.
What survives of Abhinavagupta's comment here treats 7.12 and 7.13 as one passage. It states plainly that sattva and the rest are made of him, while he is not made of them, and that the world, deluded by the gunas, does not grasp the truth that lies beyond them. A further reading, in terms of consciousness's own self-forgetting, mistaking the states arising within it for the whole of what is, would extend this image naturally, but the extant text itself does not spell that out in detail for 7.13, and this page keeps the claim to what the fragment actually supports.
Read as a failure of gratitude as much as a failure of sight.
He is the controller of these very gunas, untouched by what he controls, an ocean of infinite auspicious qualities, a dense mass of knowledge and bliss. The tragedy in this reading is sharper than mere ignorance: the world, rather than adoring the very source of its own states of being, comes to slight it. The delusion is read here as devotional failure as much as intellectual error, a forgetting of whom to be grateful to.
Read as compassion at a misfortune, not an accusation.
The verse answers a natural objection: if he is ever-pure, self-luminous, and free by nature, how does a world that is of his own self come to be caught in birth at all? The answer is only non-acquaintance with his nature, nothing more. The guna-states render the mind unfit to discriminate, and the tone is read as compassionate: the world's condition is named a misfortune to be met with understanding, not a fault to be condemned.
All six readings agree that the guna-states delude and that he stands beyond them, imperishable. They do not agree on why that transcendence holds: bare changelessness untouched by any modification, positive perfection grounded in ownership and grace, strict identity that rules out any guna-made body whatsoever, or simply being the controller who remains untouched by what is controlled. Nor do they agree on exactly what kind of failure the delusion is: a loss of discrimination, a taste for the wrong objects of enjoyment, a category mistake about his very nature, or an ingratitude toward one's own source. This page does not choose among them, and neither, in one verse, does the text.
A question to carry
When you notice a mood moving through you right now, can you find, underneath it, whatever it is that notices the mood coming and going, and does that noticing itself ever seem to change?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Let today's weather move through you, whatever wind is currently blowing, calm or driven or dull, and rest your attention, even briefly, on the one in whom the weather rises and passes, unchanged.
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 named himself the source of all things, Krishna turns to the natural next question, why the world still fails to recognize him, and answers it with the guna-veil.
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 world lives inside states thrown up by sattva, rajas, and tamas, passion, delusion, calm, sorrow, and every mood between, and mistakes this weather for the whole of what is.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Krishna has just said that everything springs from him; this verse answers the question that naturally follows, why, then, does the world not recognize him? The answer is that the world lives inside states thrown up by the three gunas, sattva, rajas, and tamas, states such as passion, hatred, delusion, attachment, greed, joy, sorrow, calm, and infatuated love. Living inside these states, the whole world, every moving and unmoving creature, fails to know him as he really is.
He is higher than these states and of another nature, imperishable, because they are modifications that arise and perish while he, their opposite, never changes.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
The closing description is read as one tightly bound claim: he is higher than these states, of another nature entirely, and imperishable, free of decay and change. Because the guna-states are modifications that arise and perish moment by moment, he who is their opposite never wears out. They are what is seen and undergone; he is the one who sees, untouched by what passes.
The non-recognition is a covering over the one who fails to see, not a fault or a withholding in him; he remains ever-pure and self-luminous throughout.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The non-recognition is read as a fault in the seer, never a fault or a withholding in the Lord. The word for deluded names a covering over the one who fails to see, not a hiddenness on his part. Whatever image is reached for, a rope mistaken for a snake, a controller untouched by what he controls, a body wrongly imagined where none exists, the failure belongs to the world's confusion, not to any deficiency in him.
This verse is only half the teaching: it names the trap so that the very next verse can name the door, refuge in him as the way across.
Across Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
The verse is read as deliberately incomplete, the first half of a single movement whose second half follows immediately. Having named the guna-veil as the problem, it leans forward into the next verse, where the Lord's own maya, hard to cross by oneself, is crossed only by those who take refuge in him. The trap and the way out are meant to be read together.
Under every difference in how the schools describe his transcendence, they agree the delusion is one thing: taking the passing state for the whole of reality.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
Underneath their differences, the readings converge on a single structural claim: whatever ultimately explains the Lord's transcendence, whether pure changelessness, ownership and positive perfection, strict identity over gunas and their effects, or being the controller untouched by what is controlled, the delusion itself is always located in the mechanism of identification, the world taking the passing states for the whole of reality and so overlooking what stands beyond them.
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 grounds the Lord's transcendence in positive perfection, not bare absence of qualities: the whole world is his body, and he is higher through his ownership of all and his unshared, gracious qualities. The guna-states are far meaner, perishing in a moment, mere bodies and senses following past karma, and the delusion lies in taking these mean, unsteady things as worth enjoying instead of him.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva reads the suffix joining guna to state as identity rather than modification: the guna-made states simply are the guna-made things, bodies and senses. This corrects a precise error, the assumption that since even Brahma has a guna-body, Vishnu must too. He is free of the three gunas in a stronger sense than merely rising above them, and the word this sets the knower apart from the deluded mass.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
The surviving fragment, shared between 7.12 and 7.13, states plainly that the gunas are made of him while he is not made of them, and that this world, deluded by the gunas, fails to grasp the truth beyond them; this is offered as a modest, sourced reading rather than a developed doctrine, since the extant comment does not unfold much beyond this image for 7.13 specifically. A further reading in terms of consciousness's own self-forgetting would extend this naturally but goes beyond what the fragment itself states.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the delusion through the lens of devotion rather than mere metaphysics: the Lord is the controller of these very gunas, untouched by what he controls, an ocean of auspicious qualities, a dense mass of knowledge and bliss. The tragedy of the delusion is that the world, rather than adoring this source, comes to slight it, treating ingratitude as much as ignorance as the shape of the failure to know him.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for its structure as an answer to an objection: if the Lord is ever-pure and free, why is the world caught in birth at all? Madhusudana's answer is that only non-acquaintance with his nature explains it, nothing more, and the guna-states simply render the mind unfit to discriminate. He reads the verse's tone as compassionate rather than clinical, naming the world's condition a misfortune rather than a fault to be blamed.
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, for a moment, which mood is running you right now: a calm clarity, a driven restlessness, a heavy dullness. Each one arose, and each one will pass. Rather than asking the mood what it wants, ask what is aware of the mood coming and going. That awareness is what this verse says stands beyond the states, imperishable, while they rise and fall like weather across it.
When a mood moves through you today, calm or driven or dull, let it move, and rest your attention on the one in whom it rises and passes, imperishable while the weather changes.
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
rishna has just said that everything springs from him; this verse answers the question that naturally follows, why, then, does the world not recognize him? The answer is that the world lives inside states thrown up by the three gunas, sattva, rajas, and tamas, states such as passion, hatred, delusion, attachment, greed, joy, sorrow, calm, and infatuated love. Living inside these states, the whole world, every moving and unmoving creature, fails to know him as he really is.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The closing description is read as one tightly bound claim: he is higher than these states, of another nature entirely, and imperishable, free of decay and change. Because the guna-states are modifications that arise and perish moment by moment, he who is their opposite never wears out. They are what is seen and undergone; he is the one who sees, untouched by what passes.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The non-recognition is read as a fault in the seer, never a fault or a withholding in the Lord. The word for deluded names a covering over the one who fails to see, not a hiddenness on his part. Whatever image is reached for, a rope mistaken for a snake, a controller untouched by what he controls, a body wrongly imagined where none exists, the failure belongs to the world's confusion, not to any deficiency in him.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The verse is read as deliberately incomplete, the first half of a single movement whose second half follows immediately. Having named the guna-veil as the problem, it leans forward into the next verse, where the Lord's own maya, hard to cross by oneself, is crossed only by those who take refuge in him. The trap and the way out are meant to be read together.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Underneath their differences, the readings converge on a single structural claim: whatever ultimately explains the Lord's transcendence, whether pure changelessness, ownership and positive perfection, strict identity over gunas and their effects, or being the controller untouched by what is controlled, the delusion itself is always located in the mechanism of identification, the world taking the passing states for the whole of reality and so overlooking what stands beyond them.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the guna-made states as the working of the qualities themselves, throwing up passion, hatred, and delusion, and the world's loss of discriminating power as what makes it fail to recognize him. He stands apart, of a wholly different nature, never decaying, never born, never changing. Shankara treats the verse as opening onto its own answer: it names the trap so that the next verse can name the crossing.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja grounds the Lord's transcendence in positive perfection, not bare absence of qualities: the whole world is his body, and he is higher through his ownership of all and his unshared, gracious qualities. The guna-states are far meaner, perishing in a moment, mere bodies and senses following past karma, and the delusion lies in taking these mean, unsteady things as worth enjoying instead of him.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva reads the suffix joining guna to state as identity rather than modification: the guna-made states simply are the guna-made things, bodies and senses. This corrects a precise error, the assumption that since even Brahma has a guna-body, Vishnu must too. He is free of the three gunas in a stronger sense than merely rising above them, and the word this sets the knower apart from the deluded mass.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The surviving fragment, shared between 7.12 and 7.13, states plainly that the gunas are made of him while he is not made of them, and that this world, deluded by the gunas, fails to grasp the truth beyond them; this is offered as a modest, sourced reading rather than a developed doctrine, since the extant comment does not unfold much beyond this image for 7.13 specifically. A further reading in terms of consciousness's own self-forgetting would extend this naturally but goes beyond what the fragment itself states.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the delusion through the lens of devotion rather than mere metaphysics: the Lord is the controller of these very gunas, untouched by what he controls, an ocean of auspicious qualities, a dense mass of knowledge and bliss. The tragedy of the delusion is that the world, rather than adoring this source, comes to slight it, treating ingratitude as much as ignorance as the shape of the failure to know him.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for its structure as an answer to an objection: if the Lord is ever-pure and free, why is the world caught in birth at all? Madhusudana's answer is that only non-acquaintance with his nature explains it, nothing more, and the guna-states simply render the mind unfit to discriminate. He reads the verse's tone as compassionate rather than clinical, naming the world's condition a misfortune rather than a fault to be blamed.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If the gunas that keep me from recognizing him are themselves made by him, how can my failure to see him be my fault to correct rather than his condition to remove?
The commentators are careful to place the delusion in the seer's own confusion, not in any withholding by the Lord. He is ever-pure and self-luminous; the failure to see him is a loss of discriminating power in the one who looks, not a veil he actively drops between himself and the world.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The verse is also not left standing alone as an accusation. It is read as the first half of a single teaching whose second half is the remedy: the guna-made maya is hard to cross by oneself, but the very next verse promises that refuge in the Lord is the crossing. The problem is named so that the solution can be given, not so blame can be assigned.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya
And what is asked of you in the meantime is modest: notice that the passing moods of sattva, rajas, and tamas are not the whole of what is, and that something beyond them, imperishable, is what the moods rise and fall within. The turn required is not a heroic feat but a shift of attention from the weather to the one in whom it occurs.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Notice, for a moment, which mood is running you right now: a calm clarity, a driven restlessness, a heavy dullness. Each one arose, and each one will pass. Rather than asking the mood what it wants, ask what is aware of the mood coming and going. That awareness is what this verse says stands beyond the states, imperishable, while they rise and fall like weather across it.
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.