Scorn the Lord, and hope, deed, and knowledge all run empty together.
This is not one failure among several possible failures. It is total: the whole reachable field of a life, everything you hope for, everything you do, everything you come to know, hollowed out at once by a single turning away.
Their hopes come to nothing, their actions come to nothing, their knowledge comes to nothing. Lost to discernment, they take shelter in a deluding nature, the nature of demons and fiends.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
The verse before this one showed some looking at Krishna's human body and holding him cheap. Here Krishna names what that contempt actually costs: not one loss, but three, arriving together.
The teaching
Slight the Lord, and three things go hollow at the same time. Hope goes hollow: what you long for simply does not arrive. Action goes hollow: the offerings you make, the rites you keep, become bare labor with nothing real behind them. Knowledge goes hollow: whatever you study and think you have grasped leads nowhere true. None of this is chance. Each failure traces back to the same turning away. Deeds fail because they are done in contempt of the Lord, or apart from him, or toward some end other than serving him. Hopes fail because they were pinned on rewards, or powers, considered apart from him entirely. Knowledge fails because it was drawn from teachings that leave him out from the start. And underneath all three runs a single deeper wound: the offense clouds the very faculty that could have told the real from the unreal, so that even careful study cannot find its way anywhere true, because the instrument doing the searching is already blocked. The refuge beneath it all is named plainly: a demonic, deluding nature that treats the body as the self, cruel toward others, grasping after what belongs elsewhere, forgetful of the Lord. This is the very nature the previous verse showed scorning him in the first place, now traced forward into its full cost.
The doubt that rises
If contempt for the Lord can hollow out even ritual and study that look sincere from the outside, how would a person, honestly examining their own hope, effort, and knowledge, actually tell the fruitful kind from the empty kind before the fruit ever arrives?
Where the paths divide
Read as contempt for the Lord who is one's own Self.
Shankara reads the failure as self-inflicted in the most literal sense: to slight the Lord is to slight what you most truly are, so offerings and knowledge alike turn fruitless together. The deluding, demonic nature named here is simply the disposition that mistakes the body for the Self. He adds, almost as an aside, that those who set out in faith on the path of devotion stand apart from this entire collapse.
Read as one misjudgment cascading into total ruin.
Ramanuja traces everything back to a single wrong estimate: taking the Lord's human form as merely equal to others, missing the compassion and the qualities it carries even there. From that one misjudgment, hope, deed, and knowledge cascade together into emptiness, because the understanding itself has gone twisted about everything, the Lord and the whole world alike.
Read as the settled fate of the hater, with no recourse.
Madhva reads this as fixed: nothing a hater of the Lord hopes for is ever attained, and no devotion offered to any other power substitutes for what only the Lord grants. He spends real effort defending this against scripture's seeming counter-examples, insisting that apparent haters who reached the Lord's state were devotees before, rewarded for old love, never for their hatred. Disposition decides outcome, and settled hatred has no recourse at all.
Read from a thin, terse fragment; treat elaboration as flagged extrapolation.
What survives of Abhinavagupta's comment here is brief: action, knowledge, and longing run fruitless together for one reason, each rests on something unreal, and the demonic and rakshasa natures simply mark a person in whom restlessness and darkness have grown excessive. The source does not elaborate into hell or rebirth. On a Kashmir Shaiva reading more broadly, one might extend this toward the contraction of consciousness into a narrow self, but that extension goes beyond what this fragment itself says.
Read as cause running straight into effect.
Sridhara chains the three failures together: a cruel nature, a nature dense with craving and pride, and a nature that wrecks sound understanding, each feeding the next until the person ends up looking down on the Lord, exactly as the verse before already showed. Hope is empty because it waits on some other power's reward; deeds are empty because they turn away from him; knowledge is empty because it leans only on faulty reasoning.
Read as a working mechanism, traced link by link.
Madhusudana's account gives the clearest chain of cause: an offense against the Lord blocks discernment first; blocked discernment then makes knowledge, drawn from teachings that leave the Lord out, come up empty; and that same deluding nature, part tamasic aversion, part rajasic craving, is what feeds the threefold gateway of hell, desire, anger, and greed, described later in the text.
All six readings agree the emptiness is real and traces back to turning from the Lord, but they fork on how far that failure reaches and what exactly it fundamentally is. For Advaita it is an offense against your own deepest Self. For Vishishtadvaita it cascades from a single misjudgment of the Lord's human form. For Dvaita it is a fixed, hopeless verdict for the settled hater, defended at length against scripture's apparent exceptions. The Kashmir Shaiva fragment stops at a single unreal object and says nothing more. The bhakti reading chains cruelty, craving, and ruined understanding into one another. The modern reading names the precise mechanism, blocked discernment first, hollow knowledge after. These are not the same claim in different words, and this page does not force them into one.
A question to carry
Where, honestly, have you placed your own hope today: on something that yields its result and is then simply gone, or on what could actually hold the weight of your whole life?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
What is aimed at what cannot last comes to nothing even when it arrives; may your hope, your labor, and your knowing all find their way, instead, toward what does not pass.
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.
The verse before showed the deluded holding Krishna cheap for wearing a human body; this verse counts what that scorn actually costs, before the chapter turns to those who see truly.
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.
Hope, action, and knowledge do not fail one at a time; scorning the Lord in his human form empties all three at once.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 3 others’ words
All six readings agree that this verse names a threefold collapse: hope, action, and knowledge, the whole reachable field of a human life, all run empty together for those who scorn the Lord. This is not one loss among several possible losses. It is total, striking every direction a life can be built in at once.
The failure is never bad luck. Deeds fail because done apart from him; hopes fail because pinned elsewhere; knowledge fails because it leaves him out.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The emptiness is read as consequence, never as accident. Deeds fail because they are done in contempt of the Lord, or apart from him, or toward some other end than serving him; hopes fail because they are pinned on rewards or powers considered apart from him; knowledge fails because it is drawn from teachings that leave him out entirely.
The deeper wound falls on discernment itself: once that instrument is blocked, no amount of study can find its way to what is true.
Across Advaita, ViśiṣṭādvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
Several commentators trace the collapse to a single wound: the offense against the Lord blocks the very faculty of discrimination that could otherwise have told truth from falsehood. Once that instrument is obstructed, study and reasoning cannot reach anywhere true, no matter how much of them a person undertakes.
Underneath it all lies a refuge taken: a cruel, grasping, deluding nature that mistakes the body for the Self.
Across Advaita, Kashmir Śaiva, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Abhinavagupta, and 2 others’ words
The cause of the whole failure is named as a refuge taken: a demonic, rakshasa nature and an asuric one, both deluding, both mistaking the body for the Self. This is the same nature the previous verse already showed scorning the Lord for wearing a human form, now traced forward into its full cost.
The same nature that scorned the Lord in the last verse is what sinks deeper here, unless it is set down for another refuge entirely.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, DvaitaŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Madhva · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Beneath the differences in emphasis, one mechanism unites the readings: hope, deed, and knowledge do not fail on their own separate terms. They fail together because they all draw on the same discerning center, and it is that center, not any one of its outputs, that the offense against the Lord damages first.
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 roots the whole collapse in one wrong estimate: taking the Lord in his human form to be merely equal to others, hiding his supreme compassion and the qualities present even in that form. From this single misjudgment, hope, deed, and knowledge cascade into ruin together, because the understanding itself is now twisted about everything, the world and the Lord alike.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva reads this as the settled fruit reserved for haters of the Lord, with no recourse through devotion to any other power. He defends this at length against the seeming counter-example of figures who reached the Lord's state through apparent hatred, arguing they were devotees before, turned haters only by a curse, rewarded for their former love and not their hatred. Disposition, he insists, is what determines outcome, and settled hatred has only a hater's fruit.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara draws out moghashah, empty hope, as hope placed in some other god's quick reward, apart from the Lord. He ties hope, deed, and knowledge together as cause into effect: leaning on a cruel nature, a craving and prideful nature, and a nature that wrecks the understanding, such people end by looking down on the Lord exactly as the verse before already showed.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for its working mechanism, Madhusudana's account gives the clearest chain: an offense against the Lord blocks discernment; blocked discernment makes knowledge from Lord-less teachings empty; and that same deluding nature, part tamasic aversion, part rajasic craving, is what feeds the threefold gateway of hell named later as desire, anger, and greed.
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 hope, effort, and study are actually aimed today. If they are aimed at some reward, some person, some outcome held apart from what is most real, they will not fail from bad luck; they will fail because that is what happens when the aim itself is off. Try, for one task today, redirecting hope, effort, and attention together toward what does not pass, and see what changes in how the task feels to do.
What is aimed at what cannot last comes to nothing even when it succeeds; may your hope, your work, and your knowing all find their way home to what does not pass.
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 that this verse names a threefold collapse: hope, action, and knowledge, the whole reachable field of a human life, all run empty together for those who scorn the Lord. This is not one loss among several possible losses. It is total, striking every direction a life can be built in at once.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The emptiness is read as consequence, never as accident. Deeds fail because they are done in contempt of the Lord, or apart from him, or toward some other end than serving him; hopes fail because they are pinned on rewards or powers considered apart from him; knowledge fails because it is drawn from teachings that leave him out entirely.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Several commentators trace the collapse to a single wound: the offense against the Lord blocks the very faculty of discrimination that could otherwise have told truth from falsehood. Once that instrument is obstructed, study and reasoning cannot reach anywhere true, no matter how much of them a person undertakes.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The cause of the whole failure is named as a refuge taken: a demonic, rakshasa nature and an asuric one, both deluding, both mistaking the body for the Self. This is the same nature the previous verse already showed scorning the Lord for wearing a human form, now traced forward into its full cost.
Śaṅkarācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Beneath the differences in emphasis, one mechanism unites the readings: hope, deed, and knowledge do not fail on their own separate terms. They fail together because they all draw on the same discerning center, and it is that center, not any one of its outputs, that the offense against the Lord damages first.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara reads the failure as contempt for the Lord who is one's own Self: to slight him is to slight what one most truly is, so the fire-offering and the knowledge alike turn fruitless. The deluding demonic and asuric nature is simply the disposition that holds the body to be the Self, and leaning on it such people fall to cruel speech and cruel deeds. Against this backdrop he notes, almost in passing, that those who have set out in faith on the path of devotion stand apart.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja roots the whole collapse in one wrong estimate: taking the Lord in his human form to be merely equal to others, hiding his supreme compassion and the qualities present even in that form. From this single misjudgment, hope, deed, and knowledge cascade into ruin together, because the understanding itself is now twisted about everything, the world and the Lord alike.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva reads this as the settled fruit reserved for haters of the Lord, with no recourse through devotion to any other power. He defends this at length against the seeming counter-example of figures who reached the Lord's state through apparent hatred, arguing they were devotees before, turned haters only by a curse, rewarded for their former love and not their hatred. Disposition, he insists, is what determines outcome, and settled hatred has only a hater's fruit.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
The surviving fragment attributed to Abhinavagupta is brief and gives a single cause: everything runs fruitless because it rests on something unreal, and the demonic and rakshasa natures simply name a person in whom rajas and tamas have grown excessive. The source does not elaborate further into hell or rebirth; anything beyond this compact statement would be a labeled extrapolation, not his own recorded words.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara draws out moghashah, empty hope, as hope placed in some other god's quick reward, apart from the Lord. He ties hope, deed, and knowledge together as cause into effect: leaning on a cruel nature, a craving and prideful nature, and a nature that wrecks the understanding, such people end by looking down on the Lord exactly as the verse before already showed.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for its working mechanism, Madhusudana's account gives the clearest chain: an offense against the Lord blocks discernment; blocked discernment makes knowledge from Lord-less teachings empty; and that same deluding nature, part tamasic aversion, part rajasic craving, is what feeds the threefold gateway of hell named later as desire, anger, and greed.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
I try to act sincerely and study honestly. How do I know whether my own hope, action, and knowledge are the fruitful kind this verse assumes exist, or quietly the empty kind it warns about?
The dividing line the commentators draw is never the outward form of the act. The same ritual, the same study, becomes empty when done in contempt of, or apart from, the Lord, and becomes fruitful when oriented toward him. Look first at orientation, not performance.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Check whether your estimate of what matters most is accurate or quietly reduced. Ramanuja's reading suggests the whole collapse can start from one misjudgment, treating the highest thing as merely ordinary. A life built on an accurate estimate does not cascade the same way.
Rāmānujācārya
Ask, too, whether your discernment still feels clear or has gone scattered. Madhusudana names distracted, scattered mind as the telltale sign that something has already blocked the instrument. Where discernment stays clear, hope and effort still have somewhere true to land.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Contemplation
Notice, without judgment, where your own hope, effort, and study are actually aimed today. If they are aimed at some reward, some person, some outcome held apart from what is most real, they will not fail from bad luck; they will fail because that is what happens when the aim itself is off. Try, for one task today, redirecting hope, effort, and attention together toward what does not pass, and see what changes in how the task feels to do.
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.