Desire does not just distract you; it steals the insight that would have shown you the true giver.
It is tempting to think these worshippers simply picked the wrong altar. Krishna traces the fault further back: a single craving quietly removes the clear seeing that would have named the real source, and only then does the search turn elsewhere.
People whose insight has been stolen away by this desire or that turn instead to other deities. Led by their own inborn nature, they take up whatever rule or rite belongs to that god.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just praised the devotee who comes to him even while still full of desire. Now he turns to name what happens when desire pulls in a different direction altogether: not toward him, but toward some smaller, partial power. This verse opens a short run that will trace exactly where that turning leads.
The teaching
Notice the verb first: knowledge is carried off, as if by a thief, and the thief is a particular desire, for sons, for wealth, for victory, for heaven. Nothing false is planted in the mind. Something true, the insight that would have shown the true giver, is simply taken away. Only after that theft does the turning happen: robbed of clear seeing, a person reaches for another deity, a partial power sought for a partial result, believing that this god and not that one holds the particular thing wanted. The worship that follows is not casual. It keeps the specific rule proper to that deity, the fast on its fixed day, the prayer, the circling of the shrine, the careful gathering of what the rite requires, held to scrupulously because the fruit still matters intensely to the one seeking it. And beneath the choice of deity itself lies something older than the desire that seems to trigger it: a bent already laid down by former habit, an accumulated nature that quietly decides which way a person leans before they ever notice themselves choosing. None of this is named as a verdict against such worshippers. It is named as a mechanism, a description of exactly how a soul comes to settle for less than it might have reached, and it opens, in the three verses that follow, into an account of what that settling costs and what stands available instead.
The doubt that rises
If my own ingrained nature already decided which desires would seize me and which god I would turn to answer them, was any of this ever really mine to choose, or am I only watching an old habit complete itself?
Where the paths divide
Read as the removal of a specific, nameable insight.
The knowledge stolen here is precisely the discrimination that would have shown the worshipper their own identity with Vasudeva, the one Self behind every form. Once that discrimination is gone, turning to another deity is simply what a mind without it will do. The traces of former action that govern the choice are one continuous chain, desire, deity, rite, and only knowledge arising later, not this verse by itself, finally breaks it.
Read through the guna-born mark each soul carries.
A particular disposition, shaped by the strands of nature, seeks the desire that matches it, and that desire carries off the knowledge that the Lord is the one inner Self behind every deity. What is available here stays close to the mechanism itself, mark, desire, chosen god, worship rendered there, while the fuller truth, that the Lord steadies even this worshipper's faith from within, is stated openly only two verses on.
Read honestly: only a narrow, surviving note, not a full picture.
What actually remains from this line is a single lexical gloss: 'own nature' names an individuated disposition, not the single undifferentiated nature of Samkhya. A fuller Dvaita account, of even this pull operating only within limits the Lord sanctions, would be a natural extension of the larger system, but it should be held as extrapolation, clearly marked as such, rather than presented as this verse's own established word.
Read as every deity already being a form of the one reality.
The lesser deities named here are subordinate bodies of Krishna himself, so the worshipper who turns to one of them, without knowing it, already reaches him, only through a narrow form matched to a narrow desire. The fruit received has an end, because it is measured by the worshipper's own latent impression, while the one whose aim is Krishna directly receives him without that same limit. The difference is one of scope, not of whether the Lord is touched at all.
Read against the devotee praised in the verse just before.
Set beside those full of desire who nonetheless worship Krishna and are gradually freed, these worshippers, deep in passion and in darkness, serve small gods instead and keep circling in the round of birth and death. Their turning is read as the ordinary behavior of an untended heart, ruled by long habit, not yet knowing where a wider refuge might be found, and the specific fasts and prayers they keep are named as evidence of how seriously, if narrowly, they already seek.
Read as a question of ground, not merely of desire's presence.
Even where two people carry equal desire and put in equal effort, one reaches liberation and the other only a fruit that ends, because the difference lies in the rank of the ground each stands on. The desires named, for bewildering, attracting, subjugating, or driving something away, are read as results the worshipper mistakenly assumes cannot come from the Lord directly, which is exactly the misjudgment the passage exists to correct.
All six readings agree that a specific desire removes a specific insight before any turning toward another deity occurs. They part on what that turning finally means. Does it reach Krishna at all, even narrowly, or does it miss him until the desire itself is worked through? Is the old habit governing the choice something to be dismantled by knowledge, absorbed by worship, or simply outgrown as the craving that built it starves? The verse names the mechanism with great precision. It leaves what to make of that mechanism, and how fixed or breakable it is, an open question the following verses only partly answer.
A question to carry
Think of something you are wanting right now, urgently enough that you would take up almost any rule or rite to get it. What has that wanting already made it hard for you to see?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May the theft this verse names become visible to you before it completes itself, and may the same honest attention that notices old habit slowly widen the refuge it was built to narrow.
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 praised the devotee who reaches him even while full of desire; now he turns to those whose desire carries them somewhere else entirely, naming the mechanism by which a soul settles for less.
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.
Desire is named as a thief: it does not merely distract, it removes the very insight that would have shown the true giver.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse names theft, not error: kamais tais tair hrita-jnanah, knowledge carried off by this desire or that. The desires named, for sons, cattle, wealth, fame, victory, heaven, are the active agent. It is not that the lesser gods pull people away; it is that a particular craving first steals the clear insight that would have shown them the true giver, and only after that theft does the turning elsewhere occur.
Only once that insight is gone does the person turn elsewhere, reaching for a partial power to match a partial want.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Abhinavagupta · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Robbed of insight, such people take refuge in deities other than Krishna, gods sought as separate, partial powers rather than as faces of the one Lord. The commentators read this as worship under a difference-intellect: the worshipper believes that serving this particular deity secures this particular result, and does not yet see the deities as forms within a single reality.
The worship that follows is not careless; it keeps the specific rule proper to that deity, scrupulously, aimed at the chosen result.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
This worship is not casual; it follows a specific, appointed rule, tam tam niyamam asthaya. Each deity has its own known discipline, fasting on the fixed days, muttering of prayers, circumambulation, prostration, careful gathering of ritual materials, and the worshipper observes it scrupulously in order to obtain the chosen fruit.
Underneath the choice of deity lies old habit: a bent laid down by the person's own former desires and deeds, not a random accident.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Beneath the desire and the rite lies the deepest cause named in the verse: prakritya niyatah svaya, governed by their own nature. This nature is read as the accumulated weight of latent impressions and old habit, not a fixed sentence handed down at birth but a bent laid down by the very desires and deeds the person has already chosen.
The verse sorts rather than condemns, opening quietly into an invitation, given fully in the verses just after, to turn that same refuge toward the one source instead.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
The verse opens a short run, continuing through the verses that follow, that sets Krishna's own devotees, who reach him even while full of desire and are gradually led toward liberation, against these worshippers of lesser powers, who gain only a fruit that ends and keep returning to the round of birth and death. The sorting is descriptive before it is corrective: it shows the mechanism by which a soul settles for less, and leaves the door to a higher refuge visibly open.
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 frames the mechanism through the guna-born marks each soul carries: a particular sinful disposition seeks its matching desire, and that desire in turn carries off knowledge of the Lord's true nature as the inner Self of all. Krishna's own surviving comment here stays close to this chain, mark to desire to chosen deity to worship, without yet stating the further claim, made explicit two verses later, that the Lord himself steadies the worshipper's faith and grants the result from within that very deity.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's own extant comment on this verse is a narrow lexical note, not a developed reading: he glosses 'by their own nature' through a lexicon equating disposition, formative tendency, and latent impression, securing only that the nature meant here is individuated rather than the single undifferentiated Prakriti of Samkhya. A fuller Dvaita picture, of the pull toward lesser gods as itself operating within limits set by the Lord's sanction, would extend this fragment along the lines of Madhva's larger system, but that extension is not present in his surviving word on 7.20 and should be held as inference, not citation.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara sets this verse against the one just before it: those full of desire who worship Krishna are gradually freed, but those described here, deep in passion and darkness, serve small gods instead and keep circling in samsara across this four-verse run. He reads their turning as the ordinary behavior of an untended heart, ruled by old habit, and names the specific rites, fasting, prayer, prostration, that such worship scrupulously keeps.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana places the verse as the pivot of a larger argument: Krishna's own three kinds of devotee, though they still carry desire, stand above worshippers of other deities because of the rank of the ground they occupy, gaining liberation where the others gain only a fruit that ends. The specific desires named, to bewilder, attract, subjugate, or drive away, are read as results the worshipper supposes cannot be had from the Lord directly, which is precisely the misjudgment the whole passage is built to correct.
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, without judgment, where your own refuge quietly goes when you want something specific and want it now. That reflex is not a flaw to punish; it is old habit finding its accustomed channel. Before acting on it, pause and ask what insight the wanting has already covered over, and let that one pause become the small gap through which a wider refuge can enter.
Of all the things you find yourself hungering for, ask plainly how long they will stay with you, and how long you will stay with them, and let that one honest question begin to loosen what desire has quietly stolen.
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
he verse names theft, not error: kamais tais tair hrita-jnanah, knowledge carried off by this desire or that. The desires named, for sons, cattle, wealth, fame, victory, heaven, are the active agent. It is not that the lesser gods pull people away; it is that a particular craving first steals the clear insight that would have shown them the true giver, and only after that theft does the turning elsewhere occur.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Robbed of insight, such people take refuge in deities other than Krishna, gods sought as separate, partial powers rather than as faces of the one Lord. The commentators read this as worship under a difference-intellect: the worshipper believes that serving this particular deity secures this particular result, and does not yet see the deities as forms within a single reality.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī
This worship is not casual; it follows a specific, appointed rule, tam tam niyamam asthaya. Each deity has its own known discipline, fasting on the fixed days, muttering of prayers, circumambulation, prostration, careful gathering of ritual materials, and the worshipper observes it scrupulously in order to obtain the chosen fruit.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Beneath the desire and the rite lies the deepest cause named in the verse: prakritya niyatah svaya, governed by their own nature. This nature is read as the accumulated weight of latent impressions and old habit, not a fixed sentence handed down at birth but a bent laid down by the very desires and deeds the person has already chosen.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The verse opens a short run, continuing through the verses that follow, that sets Krishna's own devotees, who reach him even while full of desire and are gradually led toward liberation, against these worshippers of lesser powers, who gain only a fruit that ends and keep returning to the round of birth and death. The sorting is descriptive before it is corrective: it shows the mechanism by which a soul settles for less, and leaves the door to a higher refuge visibly open.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the theft of insight literally: desire does not merely distract the mind, it removes the very discrimination that would have shown the worshipper that Vasudeva is their own inmost Self. Turning to other gods is then simply what remains possible once that discrimination is gone. The traces of former births that govern the choice of deity are read as one continuous chain of desire, deity, and rite, which only later knowledge, not this verse itself, finally breaks.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja frames the mechanism through the guna-born marks each soul carries: a particular sinful disposition seeks its matching desire, and that desire in turn carries off knowledge of the Lord's true nature as the inner Self of all. Krishna's own surviving comment here stays close to this chain, mark to desire to chosen deity to worship, without yet stating the further claim, made explicit two verses later, that the Lord himself steadies the worshipper's faith and grants the result from within that very deity.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's own extant comment on this verse is a narrow lexical note, not a developed reading: he glosses 'by their own nature' through a lexicon equating disposition, formative tendency, and latent impression, securing only that the nature meant here is individuated rather than the single undifferentiated Prakriti of Samkhya. A fuller Dvaita picture, of the pull toward lesser gods as itself operating within limits set by the Lord's sanction, would extend this fragment along the lines of Madhva's larger system, but that extension is not present in his surviving word on 7.20 and should be held as inference, not citation.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta reads the lesser deities as subordinate bodies of Krishna himself, so the desire-driven worshipper, without knowing it, still takes a fruit from Krishna alone, only through a partial form matched to a narrow desire. The fruit has an end because it is measured by the worshipper's own latent impression; those whose aim is Krishna himself receive him without that same limit. The difference is one of scope, not of whether the Lord is reached at all.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara sets this verse against the one just before it: those full of desire who worship Krishna are gradually freed, but those described here, deep in passion and darkness, serve small gods instead and keep circling in samsara across this four-verse run. He reads their turning as the ordinary behavior of an untended heart, ruled by old habit, and names the specific rites, fasting, prayer, prostration, that such worship scrupulously keeps.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana places the verse as the pivot of a larger argument: Krishna's own three kinds of devotee, though they still carry desire, stand above worshippers of other deities because of the rank of the ground they occupy, gaining liberation where the others gain only a fruit that ends. The specific desires named, to bewilder, attract, subjugate, or drive away, are read as results the worshipper supposes cannot be had from the Lord directly, which is precisely the misjudgment the whole passage is built to correct.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If my own ingrained nature already decides which god I turn to, is that pull something I can actually change, or am I only watching a program run?
The commentators do not soften the pull's reality. Your nature is the settled weight of old impressions, and it genuinely constrains which way you lean; this is exactly why clear knowledge of the one Lord does not dawn automatically for everyone. The difficulty named here is real, not imagined.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
But the verse describes a mechanism built out of desire, and desire is precisely what can be starved rather than fed. The trap is not steel; it is habit, and habit loosens exactly where the craving that built it loosens. Nothing here says the pattern is permanent.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
And even the mechanism itself, on one reading, already touches Krishna: the lesser god is only his subordinate form, so the very act of turning somewhere is never wasted, only narrowed. Widening the aim, rather than fighting the old habit head-on, is where the real change happens.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Notice, without judgment, where your own refuge quietly goes when you want something specific and want it now. That reflex is not a flaw to punish; it is old habit finding its accustomed channel. Before acting on it, pause and ask what insight the wanting has already covered over, and let that one pause become the small gap through which a wider refuge can enter.
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.