Advaita Vedānta

Of the unreal, of what does not exist, namely cold, heat and the rest together with their causes, there is no being, no coming-to-be, no existence. For cold, heat and the rest, with their causes, when examined by the means of knowledge, do not stand as a real thing: each is a modification, and a modification strays from itself. As the shape of a pot, examined by the eye, is found to be nothing apart from clay and so is unreal, so every modification, found to be nothing apart from its cause, is unreal. The effect, a pot, is not found before its birth or after its destruction, and the cause too, clay, is not found apart from its own cause; so it is unreal. If it be objected that this entails the unreality of everything, the answer is no: because everywhere two cognitions are had, a cognition of being and a cognition of a particular thing. That with regard to which the cognition does not stray is real; that with regard to which it strays is unreal. The division of real and unreal resting on cognition, everywhere two cognitions are had by everyone, of one and the same locus, not as in 'a blue lotus' where the two are of different things: 'the pot is', 'the cloth is', 'the elephant is', and so everywhere. Of these two, the cognition of pot and the rest strays, as shown; the cognition of being does not. Therefore the object of the cognition of pot is unreal, since it strays, and the object of the cognition of being is not, since it does not stray. If it be said that when the pot is destroyed and the cognition of pot strays, the cognition of being too strays, the answer is no: because the cognition of being is still had with cloth and the rest; that cognition of being has the qualified thing for its object. If it be said that the cognition of pot too, like the cognition of being, is had with another pot, the answer is no: because it is not had with cloth and the like. If it be said that the cognition of being too is not had once the pot is destroyed, the answer is no: because the qualified thing is then absent; the cognition of being, having the qualified thing for its object, can in the absence of the qualified thing have no object, since a qualifier without a qualified is untenable, but it is not that it has no object of its own. If it be said that being of one locus is not right in the absence of the qualified thing, the answer is no: because, as in 'this is water' said of a mirage, sameness of locus is seen even when one of the two is absent. Therefore of the unreal, the body and the pairs of opposites with their causes, there is no being; and of the real, the Self, there is no non-being, since everywhere it does not stray, as we have said. Thus the conclusion regarding both, the Self and the not-Self, the real and the unreal, has been settled by the seers of the truth: the real is just real, the unreal just unreal. 'Tat' is a pronoun, and Brahman, the all, is named 'tat'; the state of being that is 'tattva', the true nature of Brahman; those whose habit it is to see that are the seers of the truth. You too, taking your stand on the vision of the seers of the truth, casting off sorrow and delusion, settling in your mind that cold, heat and the rest, the pairs of opposites of fixed and of varying form, are a modification that, being unreal, appears falsely like the water of a mirage, endure them. That is the intent. What then is that which is said to be ever real?Adi Shankaracharya

One might object: granted the oneness of the person, yet, being real, his being the witness of the insentient is a real transmigration; a real cause of pleasure and pain being present, its experiencing is unavoidable, and the real cannot be destroyed by knowledge, so how endurance, how fitness for immortality? Not so: the whole dual expanse, being imagined in the self, can be destroyed by knowledge, as the silver imagined in the shell is destroyed by the knowledge of the shell. But, given an equal cognition of self and not-self, how does the not-self not become real, the self not become false? The Blessed One states the difference: of the unreal (asat), what is bounded by time, place or thing, like a pot, subject to birth and destruction, there is no being (bhava), no real existence; and of the real (sat), the one, self-luminous, eternal, all-pervading being that runs through all, there is no non-being (abhava), no such bound. Nothing seen is exempt from negation somewhere, while the real being is negated nowhere, running through all; so in the all-pervading real being the deviating, imagined thing is imagined, like the snake on the rope. The being and non-being of both have a fixed nature, ascertained by scripture, tradition and reasoning, by the seers of truth, the knowers of Brahman, not by bad logicians. The Naiyayika view that 'being' is a supreme universal is rejected for want of proof; what is established is the one real being, self-shining, illumining the states of being-known and being-unknown, accounting through the superimposition of its own identity for the usage 'a pot exists'. Scripture shows it: 'being alone, dear one, was this in the beginning, one only, without a second', concluding 'all this has that for its self, that is the real, that is the self, that thou art'; and 'a modification is a verbal handle, a mere name, the clay alone is real' shows the deviating modification to be untrue. Hence the real alone, by the cessation of the maya-imagined unreal, is fit for immortality; and by the vision of mere being, endurance too holds.Madhusudana Sarasvati

The next verse is brought in as a further reason for forbearance being the seeker's qualification. Since the non-Self, cold and the rest, the cause of grief, has no reality, and the Self, being changeless, is of one form, forbearance is fitting for the seeker. Objection: even if the effect is unreal, if the cause is real, absolute unreality is not established. Reply: this concerns that which has a cause. Duality is non-real because it is non-evidential, like the rope-snake; perception and the rest, which grasp the substrate, are not granted validity as revealers of reality, because the object is hard to define; hence duality is indeterminable (anirvachaniya). The duality of cold and heat is indeterminable because it is a modification, and the disputed thing is false because it comes and goes, like an admitted case. Considering whether the effect is different from the cause or non-different, both alternatives are faulted: the effect does not in reality differ from its cause, being an effect, like a pot; nor does it exist as something apart from the cause, by the maxim 'what does not exist at the beginning and the end does not exist in the present either.' Since the discontinuous cognitions, seen amid the continuous, are imagined, the un-imagined substrate of all imagined difference, free of cause and effect, is established as the real thing. Two inferences are offered: what is continuous amid the discontinuous is real, like the rope amid the snake-and-stick error; and what is discontinuous is false, like the snake. Objection: such inferences are untenable for one who holds the falsity of all duality, since then there is no division for inferential procedure. Reply: inferential usage proceeds on the strength of the division dependent on the two cognitions. Co-reference (samanadhikaranya), as in 'the pot exists,' rests on one thing, not on a difference of things as with 'pot' and 'cloth'; the co-reference of universal and particular, as in 'blue lotus,' is not figurative but imagined, hence resting on one thing. So the particulars are erring and the existent is non-erring; the imaginedness of the particulars and the reality of the existent stand. The objection that the cognition 'existent' lapses when the pot is destroyed is answered: that cognition does not have the pot as its object; when the pot perishes, the 'existent' shines forth in the cloth; existence fails to appear at the place of the pot's destruction only for want of a manifestor, not for want of its own nature, as the universal cow-ness is not manifested where there is no cow. Objection: this exposition is not what the author of the commentary intends; to mean the voidness of all duality contradicts scripture and its commentary, and some over-clever person has imagined it. Refusal: what is this 'voidness' of the world of duality? Utter nothingness, or being other than the existent? Not the first, for that is not admitted; if the second, then the contradiction with scripture is the objector's own, for all scripture and its commentary culminate in establishing the reality of non-duality by showing that duality is not the locus of reality. The suspicion of interpolation arises only from unfamiliarity with the tradition. He then expounds the second quarter as establishing the reality of the Self, the un-imagined substrate of all imagining: even when the qualified perishes, the intrinsic nature does not. Objection: sometimes the non-existent becomes existent, as the pot, non-existent before, becomes existent by birth, and the reverse; so existent and non-existent are unsettled. Reply: the pot, non-existent before, does not come to be existent, since while non-existence stands the attainment of existence is contradicted, and to make non-existence cease by the attainment of existence would be mutual dependence. How then does the existent appear non-existent and the reverse? For want of seeing reality. Some take the existent and non-existent as other than they are; others, following the settled conclusion, take them as they truly are. You too should follow the seers of reality.Anandagiri

Objection: granting the Self in deep sleep and samadhi is free, in the conditioned state it is like a heated iron-ball that becomes a burner: its pain seems unavoidable. And the conditioning, of the form of the pervasive root-prakriti, while it persists cannot be root-uprooted; so 'he is fit for the deathless' becomes incoherent. He answers: 'of the unreal.' The knower-state and the rest, coming and going, occasional like rope-snake, being unreal, have no being in any of the three times. The sense: the knower-state and the rest are imagined by root-nescience on the conscious Self. Root-nescience ceases with Self-knowledge, and with the cause gone there is no fresh emergence of the knower-state; so deathlessness is established by knowledge unhindered. Objection: if the knower-state is unreal because not perceived in some states, then the Self too, not perceived in deep sleep, is equally unreal; or both equally real. Answer: 'and of the real no non-being is found.' The non-being of the real is never found; in deep sleep, on waking we remember 'I slept happily, I knew nothing,' which is impossible without prior experience. So the real does not turn into the unreal. Sruti too declares the absence of the knower-state in sleep and aloneness, and the imperishability of the Seer: 'when one sees not, the Seer indeed does not fail to see, for there is no destruction of the Seer's seeing; only there is no second, no other, separate from him, that he might see.' If the knower-state were real, its absence in deep sleep would have to be explained either by absence of proximity or by interruption of the Seer's seeing; the first is excluded, since the Self does not vary thus; the second is denied by the same sruti. Objection: even of the real, like a particular atom, non-being is found at another place, and a prior-non-existent like a pot is then born; how then 'no non-being of the real, no being of the unreal'? He answers by the experience of the wise: 'of both these the resolution.' As in dream, sky, pot, rope-snake, settled as eternal or non-eternal, real or unreal, are sublated on waking; so even what is settled in waking is sublated by truth-knowledge. The objection that the cognition is mere dream-trace fails: by the past-life impressions extending from beginningless time, the daytime certainties too are likewise mistaken. The further objection, that what is real in itself, like silver, is superimposed on shell, while sky which is, on your view, unreal in itself, could not be superimposed, fails too: superimposition needs only prior experience, not real being of the superimposed (e.g. blue is superimposed even on the reflected sky, though blue is not really in the sky). Therefore, given the chain of mistakes possible, what is undreamt by us can yet be seen by the awakened. The srutis 'here there is no diversity at all,' 'this alone is to be apprehended,' 'whatever else is afflicted,' establish the unreality of the non-Self and the reality of the Self. Thus, by knowledge of the Real, by sublation of the unreal, aloneness is accomplished.Nilakantha

But heat and cold and so on are intolerable; if one endures them absolutely, the body itself may perish. Śrīdhara meets this with the verse 'na', the point being that by 'tattva-vicāra' all such states can in fact be borne. Of the 'asat', the not-real, the heat and cold and the rest which are not properties of the Self, there is no 'bhāva', no being, in the Self; and of the 'sat', the Self of the nature of being, there is no 'abhāva', no destruction. Thus the boundary, the 'antaḥ', the settled decision, between sat and asat, has been seen, and by whom? By the 'tattva-darśins', the knowers of the true nature of things. By this very discrimination, endure.Sridhara Svami

It is right, on grounds that heat and cold, though they appear, are sublated and therefore unreal, while the Self, contrariwise, is real, that you should drop both grief and delusion and endure them. Of the unreal, which is sublated by inquiry and was not there even before, there is no being in the highest sense. Even when, like silver in mother-of-pearl, it is perceived by the deluded through their instruments of cognition, that perception does not establish ultimate truth. To the objection that perception sometimes does establish truth, as when the same Veda speaks of both ritual and Brahman, the answer is: the dualities of heat and cold are determined to be unreal because they come and go. They are unreal because they appear and disappear, as the cord-snake. The shruti also confirms it: the transformation is mere name, a verbal current; the earth alone is true. And, what is not in the beginning and not in the end, is not so even in the middle. Effect is not other than cause. Through such reasonings the unreality of effects, the cause-effect series being itself a superimposition upon the substrate, is established. Nor is it the case that, if all effects are unreal, there can be no unreal-real distinction at all, for that distinction is a matter of cognition, and the two relevant cognitions are universally available. Of the substantive that is, the real, no decay can be shown; it is what underlies all change and is itself never absent. By the inferences, what is unchanging in changes is real, like the 'this' in successive cognitions of silver; what is changing is unreal, like the silver in those cognitions, the realities of the real and the unreality of the unreal are settled. The all-pervading Self has no decay either, for it is never absent, while the dualities of heat, cold and the rest are seen only by perception that itself shifts. The seers of truth, the knowers of Brahman, alone have full clarity about both, that the real is always real and the unreal always unreal. Adopt their vision, give up grief and delusion, and bear the impacts of the senses.Dhanapati Suri

He who knows the Self to be indestructible, free of the last modification, eternal, free of transformation, unborn, free of birth, imperishable, free of decline, as the earlier verse described: how can that man, learned and qualified, slay, perform the act of slaying, or cause another to slay, set a slayer to work? In no way does he slay anyone, in no way cause anyone to slay. The force of the question, in both cases, is a denial, since a question in the literal sense is not possible here; and since the reason, changelessness, is the same in both cases, the meaning the Blessed Lord intends in this topic is the denial of all action for the knower. The denial in the form 'how can he slay' is stated by way of an example. Seeing what special reason for the impossibility of action in the knower does the Blessed Lord deny actions of him? It has already been said that the changelessness of the Self is the special cause of the impossibility of all action. True; but that is not a cause special to the knower, since the changeless Self is other than the knower. If it be said that action is not impossible for one who has merely known a changeless post, the answer is no: because the knower is the Self. The aggregate of body and the rest is not what has knowledge; therefore, by elimination, the unconjoined, changeless Self is the knower, and so the denial of action of that knower, 'how can that man', is right. Just as the changeless Self is, through want of discernment between itself and the workings of the intellect, by ignorance imagined to be the apprehender of objects like sound brought to it by the intellect, so the changeless Self is, through the workings of the intellect by a knowledge not real in the highest sense, called the knower. From the statement of the impossibility of action for the knower, it is understood that the Blessed Lord's settled view is that the actions enjoined by scripture are enjoined for the ignorant, not for the knower. Now, knowledge too is enjoined only for the ignorant, since for one who already has it the enjoining of knowledge is as useless as grinding what is ground; so the distinction, that actions are for the ignorant and not for the knower, does not hold. The answer is no: because a distinction in what is to be done, as present or absent, is tenable. For an ignorant man with the cognition 'I am the doer, this is to be done by me', after the knowledge of the meaning of an injunction such as the fire-oblation, the rite is something to be done, to be carried out with its many means. But it is not so that, after the knowledge of the meaning of an injunction about the true nature of the Self, 'it is not born' and the rest, anything remains to be done; rather, from the knowledge whose object is the oneness and non-doership of the Self, 'I am not the doer, I am not the enjoyer', no other cognition arises. This is the distinction that holds. He who knows the Self as 'I am the doer' will inevitably have the cognition 'this is to be done by me'; with regard to that he is qualified, and toward him actions are possible. And he is ignorant; for the knower has been marked off by 'those two do not know' and by the denial of action of the qualified knower in 'how can that man'. Therefore, for the knower marked off as one who sees the changeless Self, and for the seeker of liberation, the authority is for the renunciation of all action alone. For this very reason the Blessed Lord Nārāyaṇa, distinguishing the Sāṅkhyas, the knowers, from the ignorant doers of action, has them take up two steadfastnesses: 'by the path of knowledge for the Sāṅkhyas, by the path of action for the yogins'. So too the Blessed Lord Vyāsa said to his son, 'these are the two paths' and the rest, and 'the path of action is first, and renunciation after'. The Blessed Lord will show this same division again and again: 'one of untrue knowledge, his self deluded by the sense of I, thinks I am the doer; but the knower of the truth thinks I do not act'; and 'renouncing all actions by the mind, he sits at ease' and the rest. Here some who think themselves learned say that no one ever gains the knowledge 'I, the one Self, am free of the six modifications of being beginning with birth, changeless, no doer', upon which the renunciation of all action could be taught. This is wrong, because it would make the teaching of scripture, 'it is not born' and the rest, purposeless. They should be asked: just as, by the power of the teaching of scripture, the knowledge of the existence of merit and demerit and the knowledge of the doer's connection with another body arise, why should the knowledge of that same Self's changelessness, non-doership and oneness not arise from scripture? If it be said that the Self is not within reach of the instruments, the answer is no: because of the scripture 'it is to be seen by the mind alone'. The mind, refined by the teaching of scripture and teacher and by calm, restraint and the rest, is the instrument in the seeing of the Self; and so to say that, when inference and scripture are present for the reaching of it, knowledge does not arise, is mere recklessness. And knowledge, once arising, must necessarily set aside its opposite, ignorance; this must be granted. That ignorance has been shown: 'I am the slayer', 'I am slain', and 'those two do not know'. There the doership, the objecthood and the causing-of-a-doer of the Self with regard to the act of slaying were shown to be made by ignorance; and that doership and the rest, being made by ignorance, is the same in all actions, since the Self is changeless. For only one who has modification, a doer, sets another, the object, to work, saying 'do'. The Blessed Lord Vāsudeva denies, without distinction, the knower's doership and causing-of-a-doer in all actions, in order to show that the knower has no authority for action, by 'know the indestructible... how can that man' and the rest. And where, then, is the knower's authority? That has been said: 'by the path of knowledge for the Sāṅkhyas'. So too He will state the renunciation of all action: 'renouncing all actions by the mind' and the rest. From the word 'by the mind' it might be thought there is no renunciation of the actions of speech and body. No: because of the qualification 'all actions'. If it be said that only all the mental actions are meant, the answer is no: because the actions of speech and body are preceded by the action of the mind, and untenable in its absence. If it be said that one should renounce by the mind all actions other than the mental actions that cause the scriptural actions of speech and body, the answer is no: because of the qualification 'neither acting nor causing to act'. If it be said that this renunciation of all action is stated for one about to die, not for one living, the answer is no: because the qualification 'the embodied one sits in the city of nine gates' is then untenable, for one dead by the renunciation of all action cannot sit in that body. If it be said the connection is 'having renounced in the body, while not acting and not causing to act', and not 'sits in the body', the answer is no: because the changelessness of the Self is everywhere affirmed, and because the act of sitting depends on a locus while renunciation does not; the word 'nyāsa' with the prefix 'sam' here means abandonment, not depositing. Therefore, in the scripture of the Gītā, for one who has the knowledge of the Self the authority is for renunciation alone, not for action; this we shall show, here and there below, in the topic of the knowledge of the Self. Let us state the matter in hand. There the indestructibility of the Self was laid down. Like what, it is asked.Adi Shankaracharya

Having proved 'it is not slain', now, proving 'it does not slay', the Blessed One concludes. 'Imperishable' (avinashin): free of the final modification; the reason, 'without diminution' (avyaya), having no loss of parts or of qualities, since destruction is seen through the loss of parts or of qualities. 'Unborn' (aja): free of the first modification; the reason, 'eternal' (nitya), ever existing, since birth is seen of what was not before, not of what ever is. He who knows this embodied one, his own self, free of all modification, who realises through scripture and teacher 'I am free of all change, the illuminer of all, free of all duality, of the nature of supreme bliss and consciousness', such a knower, full in form, whom does he slay, whom cause to slay? None at all, in no way; for the changeless non-agent can have no agency in slaying. Scripture too: 'if one knows the self as I am this, then, desiring what, for whose sake, would he be feverish after the body?'. The Blessed One's intent: in truth no one does or causes anything, the self being of changeless nature; but, as in a dream, through ignorance the deluded one ascribes agency to the self. So all scriptures are addressed to the ignorant; the knower, his superimposition uprooted with its root, does not ascribe agency to the self. Arjuna, superimposing agency on himself and prompter-hood on the Lord, feared the fault of injury on both sides; the Blessed One, knowing his intent, denied both with 'slays' and 'causes to slay'. Since by the showing of the self's changelessness all agency is denied, 'slays' stands for all action, and the foolish notion that 'fight' sanctions other action while only slaying is denied is set aside.Madhusudana Sarasvati

Suspecting redundancy because the prior verse's meaning reappears, the Lord brings in the next verse with a restatement of what went before. Since identification with agency contradicts the ascertainment of the non-dual immutable Self, the renunciation of the knower, for the maturing of knowledge, is sanctioned. Even granting the prior removal of the redundancy of the two words, non-redundancy is shown by another mode. The intended sense of the section is summed up: changelessness is the reason-purport, and it equally grounds the knower's renunciation of all works. The combination-theorist objects: since the knowing self and the known Brahman are of contradictory properties, like fire and frost, they are different, so the knower's renunciation of works must have some special cause. Answer: it is grounded in difference and changelessness. Objection: how can change belong to one who cognizes the immutable changeless Brahman? Answer is given, resolved by the scripture 'this Self is Brahman.' Further, is the state of being a knower a property of the qualified aggregate or of the bare Self? Not of the aggregate, for, being insentient, it cannot be the knower; and if of the bare Self, the distinction of the individual and Brahman is unestablished, so their non-difference is established. Objection: if, as the immutable Brahman, the Self can have no works, how can the knower even have knowing, since knowledge, a modification, cannot be the changeless Brahman's own act? Answer: the inner organ, aided by the unseen and the senses, transformed up to the object like the light of a lamp, is called a mental modification; the consciousness reflected in it is, through non-discrimination from the manifesting modification, called object-knowledge, and by that the Self is figured as a knower. Through a nescience-caused false relation the Self is called 'a knower' by means of the modification arising from the sentence revealing the identity of Brahman and Self; and a false relation does not impair the truly changeless Self. Objection: if the changeless Self is subject to false nescience and the knower's qualification for works ceases, for whom are works enjoined? Answer: works are enjoined for the ignorant. After the knowledge of dharma comes what is to be performed; after Brahman-knowledge nothing remains to be performed; hence the injunction of works is for one devoid of Brahman-knowledge alone. Even with the cognition 'I am agent and enjoyer,' one lacking Brahman-knowledge is to perform works; but knowledge of the changeless Self does not aid engagement in works, being opposed to what is to be performed. The cognition 'I am agent' does not arise again after the knowledge of the unity of Brahman and Self, for it has no cause. Works are enjoined for one who has the cognition of being qualified for them, and such a person is ascertained as ignorant. Even the seeker of knowledge has no works, for works are opposed to knowledge and to the desired liberation; of the works of the stages of life, only those not opposed to knowledge and its fruit are accepted. Hence the Lord's approval: the knower and the seeker are qualified for renunciation, the ignorant for works. The twofold path is shown by the Lord and by Vyasa: after the threefold class engages in Vedic study, the way of action and the way of knowledge are made known according to the difference of qualification. Having shown the renunciation of works from knowledge of the changeless Self, he raises the Mimamsaka view: since the Self is the locus of the powers of knowing and acting, and so not changeless, the knowledge of the changeless Self that causes renunciation is impossible. The absence of such knowledge is either from absence of object or absence of proof; both are refuted. The non-existence of the changeless Self is not so, since the scripture 'it is not born, nor does it die' is authoritative; and as from the action-section knowledge of the unknown dharma arises, so from the knowledge-section knowledge of the unknown Brahman-Self arises, the validity being the same. Objection: since knowledge arises from contact of the mind, and the Self is denied as an object of the mind, there is no means for Self-knowledge. Answer: the Brahman-Self, though self-luminous, becomes the basis of determinate usage as manifested by the mental modification arising from 'that thou art'; the figurative 'object of the mind' makes the alleged un-knowability unestablished, and the scripture denying the Self as an object of the mind concerns only the unrefined mental modification. Objection: for want of an aid, knowledge of the changeless Self cannot arise. Answer: to say that knowledge does not arise even when the proof exists is mere rashness, like saying the object does not shine even when the means of knowledge exists. Objection: even granting that such knowledge arises, since it serves neither rejection nor acquisition, how is it fruitful? Answer: knowledge necessarily removes nescience, as the activity of light cannot occur without the removal of darkness. The Lord himself shows nescience as something more than the mere absence of knowledge. Agency in the Self is neither eternal, else there would be no liberation, nor non-eternal without a material cause; the non-Self is not its material cause, since it appears in the Self, nor is the Self itself, since for the changeless Self that is impossible without nescience; so agency, and the state of being a causer, have beginningless indefinable nescience as their material cause, and their cessation comes from knowledge of reality. The Lord approves this. The knower's qualification lies in establishment in knowledge and in its component, the renunciation of all works. The objections that only mental works are renounced, or that 'all' is contracted to mental works by the word 'by the mind,' are set aside: with the total abandonment of mental activity, other activities are untenable, so the renunciation of all works is established; and the sound construction is 'having renounced all works in the body by the mind,' the renunciation being intended in the living state. The qualified person with the prompting knowledge has a place in the enjoined renunciation; one of perfect knowledge has the natural, non-enjoined renunciation that consists in the cessation of all activity.Anandagiri

'This one does not slay': he establishes this. 'Vedeti' (he who knows). 'Destructible' is what is by nature given to disappearing, that is, the threefold conditioning of gross, subtle and causal bodies, like rope-snake; other than that, the indestructible. So eternal, devoid of destruction. The reason: unborn. The born is non-eternal; this, being unborn, is eternal. Yet the destructible has, relative to its own effects, a kind of eternity, as in Sankhya pradhana and the Tarkika sky. He says: 'unmodifiable.' Not departing, that is, not abandoning its prior state. Sankhya pradhana, even in the equilibrium of qualities, is ever modifying, by their own admission. Sky, by the sruti 'from this Self space arose,' has a birth-origin, so its unbornness fails and so its unmodifiability. Such a Self, whoever knows immediately, how does he cause another to slay, or whom does he slay? Sruti rejects all factor-operation in the state of knowledge: 'where, of this one, all has become the Self, by what should one see and whom?' In ignorance it shows all factor-transaction: 'where, as it were, duality is, there one sees the other.' By this, the conjunction of knowledge that subverts all factors with action that depends on them is denied, by the analogy of chariot-and-horse opposed to one effect, as detailed elsewhere. For knowers like us, in the post-meditation state, agency etc. may appear through trace-ignorance, but is sublated by knowledge, and karma to come is not stuck; no fault. As will be said: 'having slain even these worlds, he does not slay and is not bound.'Nilakantha

From this very ground the previously stated absence of killership is itself well established. So 'veda'. Whoever knows the Self as 'nitya', without growth, 'avyaya', without decline, 'aja', without birth, and 'avināśin', without destruction, that person, whom can he kill, or how can he kill? There is no instrument for the killing of such a Self. And how, becoming himself the prompter, can he cause another to kill? Whom, in what way, indeed. By implication, Śrīdhara adds, do not fasten on Me the blemish of being the promoter of slaughter either.Sridhara Svami

Having begun by asserting in the previous verse 'this Self does not kill and is not killed,' the next verse establishes that it is not killed because it is unborn. Now Krishna establishes that it is not the killer, since it is changeless. The argument 'how could one for whom this Self is eternal, indestructible, unborn, imperishable be a killer or one who causes killing,' is set out. He who knows this Self, eternal, free of all modification, unborn and unaging, how can he kill anyone, how can he cause anyone to kill? Such a one is changeless; he is the knower of his own form. Therefore, becoming such a knower, do not impute to yourself either the agency of killing or the agency of causing to kill. As to the objection that all this would render the entire ritual portion of the Veda meaningless, since action presupposes an agent: the answer is that action is possible at the level of the inner organ, which is itself superimposed on the Self. The shastra remains valid not because it tells us anything new about the Self, which is self-evident, but because it removes from us the wrong attribution of agency and the rest. Even when a knower's prarabdha-karma forces him to act, his actions do not bind, since he has no sense of agency over them.Dhanapati Suri

By the qualification 'body' He marks off what was indicated with the pronoun 'this'. O son of Kuntī, because it is guarded from harm (kṣata-trāṇa), or because it decays (kṣaya), or because it wears away (kṣaraṇa), or because, like a field (kṣetra), the fruit of action ripens in it, this body is called the 'field' (kṣetra). And he who knows this body, the field, who makes it, from the soles of the feet to the head, an object of knowledge, marking it off part by part by an awareness either natural or got from teaching: that knower, those who know these two declare, is called the 'knower of the field' (kṣetrajña). Thus the field and the knower of the field have been told. Is it enough to know them only this much? No, it is said.Adi Shankaracharya

Madhusūdana opens with a verse of homage: 'If the yogins, with the mind mastered by the practice of meditation, behold some featureless, actionless, supreme light, let them behold it; but for us, let that something dark which runs along the breast of the Yamunā's sandbank long be the wonder of our eyes.' In the first and middle sets of six chapters the meanings of the words 'that' and 'thou' were stated; the last set of six, devoted to the meaning of the sentence, dominated by right understanding, now begins. There it was said before, 'of them I become the deliverer from the ocean of the round of birth joined with death'; and without the knowledge of the self there is no deliverance from the death that is marked as the want of self-knowledge. Therefore the kind of self-knowledge by which, joined with the knowledge of reality, the cessation of the round of birth joined with death comes, and which the renunciants endowed with the qualities non-hatred and the rest, explained before, possess, that knowledge of the reality of the self must be stated. And that takes for its object the very non-difference of the living being from the non-dual supreme Self, since all calamity has the error of their difference for its cause. There, in the doubt 'how could there be non-difference of the living beings, who are transmigrating and distinct per field, with the one non-transmigrating supreme Self', it must be said that, since the round of birth and the distinctness are non-self properties imagined by ignorance, the living being has neither transmigration nor distinctness. For that purpose, to set forth that the field-knower, the Person, the living being, distinguished by discrimination from the fields, the body, senses, and inner organ, is one alone, free of modification, per field, the discrimination of field and field-knower is done in this chapter. There, the two natures which, as the field of the form of earth and the rest and as the field-knower of the form of the living being, were indicated in the seventh chapter by the words 'lower' and 'higher', intending to set forth the reality by their discrimination, the Lord spoke. This body, the seat of enjoyment together with the senses and inner organ, O Kaunteya, is called the 'field' (kṣetra), since in it, like a crop, the fruit of action is repeatedly brought forth. He who knows this, who has the conceit 'I, mine' toward it, him the knowers of the discrimination of field and field-knower call the 'field-knower', since, like a farmer, he is the enjoyer of its fruit. Here, by the passive construction 'is called', the field, being insentient, has objecthood; and, bringing the word 'field-knower' without the accusative case, by the very distinction of expression he intends the absence of objecthood for it, since it is self-luminous. And the field is called whatever it is called by anyone, with no need of a particular feature in the speaker; but the field-knower the discerning alone speak of, even without objecthood, since it is beyond the reach of dull seeing: this the Lord indicates by the use of the agent-word in one place by a distinct expression.Madhusudana Sarasvati

For the establishment of the non-Self-property of the seen things, pain and the rest, the differentiators co-extensive with the body, the seer was stated as distinct from the body; and, to prevent the Sankhya-like supposition that liberation comes from that distinction alone, the seer's oneness across all bodies, and its oneness with one's own ultimate self, the imperishable, is shown through a question. The two particles 'ca api' conjoin the knowledge of the individual's imperishability with the knowledge of its distinctness from the body: know the field-knower not, as the Sankhya does, merely as distinct from the seen, but know it also as me; 'the one field-knower in all fields, know that to be me alone' is the construction. The oneness of individual and Lord is then objected to: if they are one, either the individual is included in the Lord or the Lord in the individual. Not the first, since, if the individual is not other than the supreme, worldly existence, having no support, would have the supreme itself as its locus, but the scripture 'the other, un-eating, looks on' denies the supreme's being a worldly-existent. Not the second, since, if the Lord were included in the individual, there being no other worldly-existent, the Lord would have worldly existence, which is unwanted, so worldly existence would vanish from the world; and that disappearance is contradicted by perception, since worldly existence is directly experienced, and by inference, since the world has a variegated cause, having variegated effects, like a palace. So the oneness seems improper. The resolution: even granting oneness, the division stands, that through nescience there is worldly-existent-hood and through knowledge non-worldly-existent-hood, so there is no untenability. Scripture shows that nescience and knowledge are utterly distinct in nature, 'far apart, divergent,' and distinct in fruit, knowledge culminating in liberation, nescience in worldly existence; Vyasa and the Lord agree. The two are not equally to be adopted: nescience, with its effect, is to be abandoned, knowledge to be embraced; scriptures and smritis are cited at length on the fruits of the two, and the maxim of positive and negative concomitance is set out: the consciousness-Self, veiled by beginningless indefinable nescience, places the 'I'-cognition in the non-Self, the body and the rest, and, joined with it, prompted by attachment and the rest, does works, and, as their doer, takes a new body and abandons the old; so with nescience there is worldly-existent-hood, and without it bondage is destroyed. Worldly existence is superimposed on the Self, and the supreme, non-different from the Self, is not really touched; the appearance is like the rock-redness of a crystal. Pain and pleasure and the rest are properties of the limiting adjunct, not the Self, established by the inferences 'pain and the rest are not properties of the Self, since they have coming and going, like worldly existence,' 'since they are to be abandoned,' 'since they are seen and insentient,' 'since they are objects of awareness,' for what is an object of awareness has an awareness distinct from itself, like a lamp, and 'since they err.' As the post mistaken for a man does not, by that error, transfer the man's properties to the post or the post's crookedness to the man, the identification being false, so here; happiness and the rest are not properties of the Self, by the scripture that desire and resolve are properties of the mind. The question 'where is nescience, whose is it' is raised. The siddhantin answers that nescience is directly experienced and its substrate, the Self, established by one's own experience, so the question has no scope, the Self being known by 'I am ignorant,' by the recollection in deep sleep, by inference from the effect-mark, and by scripture. The objection 'one who has nescience should himself strive for its removal' is met: the Self cannot be the object of its own apprehension or of another's apprehension of its connection with nescience, since one thing cannot be both agent and object; the connection is grasped by the eternal experience, and nothing of the knowing Self is impaired. The objector asks whether the Self is a doer of the act of knowing or the very nature of knowledge; not the doer, since that is not admitted, and on the second the being-a-knower is figurative, so no fault of it touches the Self, as the scripture 'as if it meditates' shows: all modification belongs to the adjunct. The objection that, if the Self is the Lord and not really a worldly-existent, the injunction-scripture and perception would be purposeless, is met: this objection concerns all schools alike, since for the liberated all admit the absence of worldly existence; before the dawn of knowledge, scripture and perception are purposeful for the ignorant, who, with the conceit of agency and enjoyership and 'I am a man,' are qualified for the injunction-and-prohibition scripture, while the knower, seeing the Self distinct from the body, is not qualified, since the conceit of 'mine' in the fruit is impossible for him; as Devadatta, employed, acts, while Vishnumitra, not employed, by failure to discriminate the employable, has the erring cognition 'I too am employed.' The objection that, if the bound and liberated states are not real, the two-section scripture is fruitless, is met: the Self has no real difference of states even for the dualist, and the two states, being non-natural, are not ultimately real, like the redness of a crystal; were they real, bondage, being beginningless, would by the maxim be eternal, and liberation, being produced, would be finite, so the two cannot both be real. Therefore, the oneness of individual and Brahman being admitted, the worldly-existent-hood is grounded in nescience, the imagined, and the supreme, the substrate of all imagining, is not really touched; there is nothing blameworthy in admitting that oneness.Anandagiri

Objection: in Chapter 2, by 'this is un-manifest, un-thinkable, un-modifiable... eternal, all-pervading, firm, un-moving, perennial,' the tvam-pada-form was stated. In Chapter 12, by 'those who worship the akshara, un-pointable, un-manifest, all-going, un-thinkable, kutastha, un-moving, firm,' the tat-pada-form was stated. Difference between them is not possible (since the marks are the same: un-manifest, un-thinkable, un-moving, all-going, etc.). Two cannot both be all-going (mutual exclusion would result in their not being all-going). Nor can specifics independent of marks be posited (to make liberated, jiva, Ishvara separate) without proof. Objection: even granting no specifics, by the need of accounting for bondage-liberation, individuals must differ. Sankhya elders: 'by the fixed regulation of birth, death, organs, and the non-simultaneity of their engagement, plurality of purushas is established; also by the reversal of the three qualities.' By the regulation of birth and the rest, by the non-simultaneity, and by the difference of sattvic, rajasic etc., the unity of purushas is denied. Answer: no. In the all-pervading-many-Selves view, the enjoyment-mixing would follow. When one inner-organ is transformed into pleasure-form, the experiencer cannot be regulated as one conscious one, since with all equally proximate, the experience would be unavoidable for all. Even one ear, by the difference of ear-cavity-form-conditioning, supports the regulation of sound-grasping for one Self; just so, by the difference of inner-organ-form-conditioning, the regulation of birth and the rest for one Self is established; so plurality of purushas is not stated. So jiva-Ishvara non-difference by mark-unity is established. What then is the use of the following text? Granted. By sruti 'where all has become Self, by what should one see whom?' in the vidya-state there is no difference. But in the avidya-state, by 'entering within, the ruler of people,' 'He makes do the good karma,' a real-seeming ruler-ruled and agent-causer difference holds. To dismiss it, the following text begins. There, with the just-stated tat-pada, to establish jiva's non-difference with it, by way of illumined-and-illuminator, the field-knower's distinction from the field (like the sun's from the pot) is shown: 'this.' This body (the manifestation as the non-Self, illumined, body from pot to ego, of perishing nature), O Kaunteya, is 'field' (kshetra), since it diminishes (kshina) the Self by avidya and protects (trayate) by vidya; or it is the field of the sprouting of karma-seeds. The 'kshetra' is named. Whoever knows this (illumines it), the consciousness-Self, the kshetra-jna (knower-of-field) is called by the kshetra-jna-knowers. So 'I go, I see, I eat', body-senses-ego, though appearing as illuminator, by their illumined-ness are non-Self.Nilakantha

Śrīdhara opens the chapter with a saṅgati verse of his own: Bhagavān had earlier pledged, 'of those whose minds are absorbed in Me I become the uplifter from the ocean of death and saṃsāra'; for the very accomplishment of that pledge the thirteenth chapter now lays out 'tattva-jñāna', since without knowledge of the Self no rescue from saṃsāra is possible. He then locates the chapter within the architecture of the Gītā. In the seventh chapter a twofold prakṛti was named, 'aparā' and 'parā'; it is from non-discrimination of these two that the chid-aṃśa, the consciousness-portion, has entered jīva-hood and so has come into saṃsāra. It is by means of these very two that Īśvara turns Himself outward into creation and the rest for the sake of the jīva's experience. That same twofold prakṛti, now under the names 'kṣetra' and 'kṣetrajña', is what the Bhagavān will set out as mutually distinct in their very tattva, and so He utters 'idam'. 'Idam śarīram': this body, the seat of experience, is called 'kṣetra', the field, because it is the very soil in which saṃsāra sprouts. Whoever knows this field, that is, whoever thinks of it as 'I' and 'mine', is called 'kṣetrajña' by the wise; he is like the ploughman, for he is the one who eats the fruit raised in it. 'Tad-vidaḥ' are those who know this very discrimination of kṣetra from kṣetrajña.Sridhara Svami

Krishna says: this body is called the kshetra, the field, that which holds the duhkhas of birth, old age, disease, death and all transformation. He who knows it, the knower distinct from it, is the kshetra-jna, the field-knower. As space is not distinguished by the limiting jars yet appears so, so the supreme Self is not distinguished by the body-limitations, yet appears so. By 'idam' is pointed the immediate body; the field is the dense substantive heap of objects, inert, knowable; the knower is the cit, distinct from it.Dhanapati Suri

Giving up all duties: the word 'duty' (dharma) here takes in lawlessness too, since freedom from action is what is meant, as the texts say, 'not he who has not ceased from ill conduct' and 'give up both law and lawlessness'. So 'giving up all duties' means renouncing all action. Take refuge in Me alone, the one self of all, the same, present in all beings, the Lord, the unfallen, free of conception, birth, age, and death; that is, take it for certain that I am that, and that there is nothing other than Me. You, whose understanding is so settled, I will free from all sins, from all the bondage that is law and lawlessness, by making manifest your own nature as the self. So it was said, 'abiding in their self, I destroy with the shining lamp of knowledge'. Therefore do not grieve. Now, in this scripture of the Gita, what has been settled as the means to the highest good: knowledge, or action, or both together? Why should there be doubt? Because such texts as 'knowing which one gains the deathless' and 'having known Me truly he enters Me right after' show that the highest good is reached by knowledge alone, while such texts as 'your right is to action alone' and 'do action' show that action must without fail be done. Since both knowledge and action are taught as things to be done, someone might doubt whether the highest good has the two combined for its cause. And what is the fruit of this inquiry? Just this: the ascertaining of which one of these is the means to the highest good. So this is to be examined at greater length. Knowledge of the self is, by itself alone, the cause of the highest good, because it removes the notion of difference and ends in the fruit of aloneness (kaivalya). The notion of the difference of action, agent, and fruit is, through ignorance, ever at work in the self: 'this is my action, I am the doer, this action I shall do for that fruit.' This ignorance has been at work from beginningless time. What removes this ignorance is the knowledge concerning the self that arises in the form 'I am this, alone, a non-doer, without action, without fruit; there is no other apart from Me', because it removes the notion of difference that is the cause of engagement in action. The word 'but' serves to set aside two views: it sets aside both the view that the highest good is reached from action alone and the view that it is reached from knowledge and action combined. And since the highest good is not something to be brought about, action cannot be its means; an eternal thing is not produced by action or by knowledge. Is mere knowledge then useless? No; since it removes ignorance, it is seen to end in the fruit of aloneness. The knowledge that removes the darkness of ignorance is seen to end in the fruit of aloneness, as the light of a lamp, which removes the darkness of not knowing a snake and the like in a rope and the like, has for its fruit the rope left alone, the figment of the snake having ceased; so too with knowledge. And as, in seen matters, the factors such as agent, engaged in acts like splitting and the kindling of fire, do not, once they have gained their fruit of severance, or the appearance of fire, engage in another fruit or another action, so the factors of knowing, engaged in the act of standing in knowledge whose end is seen, do not, once the fruit of the aloneness of the self is gained, engage in another action; so the standing in knowledge accompanied by action does not hold. It might be said that it could be like the action of eating and the action of the fire-oblation. No; in the case of knowledge whose fruit is aloneness, there can be no craving for the fruit of an action. When knowledge whose fruit is aloneness has been gained, just as, when the fruit of water flooding on every side has been gained, there is no longer any craving for the fruit of digging wells and tanks, so there can be no craving for another fruit, or for the action that is its means. One engaged in an action whose fruit is the gaining of a kingdom does not engage in something whose fruit is the gaining of a mere field, nor does he crave it. Therefore action has no power to be the means of the highest good. Nor have knowledge and action combined. Nor does knowledge, whose fruit is aloneness, need the help of action, since that would conflict with its removing ignorance; for darkness does not remove darkness. So knowledge alone is the means to the highest good. It may be objected that, since failing to do the obligatory daily rites brings sin, and since aloneness is eternal, the gaining of aloneness from knowledge alone is wrong; for failing to do the obligatory rites taught by revelation would bring sin, marked by the falling into hell and the like. But then, on this objection, there would be no liberation from action at all. This is no fault, because liberation is eternal. By the performance of the obligatory rites sin does not accrue; by not doing what is prohibited an unwished-for body does not arise; by shunning the desire-prompted rites a wished-for body does not arise; and when the action that began the present body has its fruit exhausted by enjoyment, this body falls, and, there being no cause for the rise of another body, since the self does not make passion and the rest, the abiding in one's own nature is aloneness; so aloneness is gained without effort. It may be objected that the karma done in countless past lives, with the fruit of heaven, hell, and the like, whose effect has not yet begun, will not be exhausted, since it is not enjoyed. No; the pain of the toil of performing the obligatory rites can serve as the enjoyment of that fruit. Or, like expiation, the obligatory rite serves to destroy sin gathered before. The begun karmas are exhausted by mere enjoyment; new karmas do not begin; so aloneness is gained without effort. The revealed text 'knowing Him alone one passes beyond death, there is no other path for the journey' shows that there is no path other than knowledge for liberation; the revealed text that liberation is impossible for the ignorant, as it is impossible to wrap up space like a hide; the remembered text of the Purana, 'from knowledge one gains aloneness'; and the impossibility of exhausting the meritorious karmas whose fruit has not begun: all confirm this. For just as there is the possibility of past sins whose fruit has not begun, so there would be the possibility of meritorious karmas whose fruit has not begun; and since these cannot be exhausted without taking another body, liberation would not hold. And the cause of merit and demerit, namely passion, aversion, and delusion, cannot be uprooted except by knowledge of the self, so the cutting off of merit and demerit would not hold. And since the obligatory rites are heard to have a meritorious fruit, and the remembered text 'the castes and orders, each devoted to its own action' says the same, the exhausting of karma would not hold by action alone. Some say that the obligatory rites, being painful in nature, are themselves the fruit of sinful action done before; that there is no fruit of them apart from their own nature, since none is heard of, and since they are enjoined on the occasion of being alive and the rest. No; for karmas that have not begun to fructify cannot give fruit, and there would be no particular painful fruit. What was said, that the pain of the toil of performing the obligatory rites is the enjoyed fruit of the sinful karmas done in past births, is wrong. It does not hold that the fruit of a karma not sprouted to give fruit at the time of death is enjoyed in a birth begun by another karma; otherwise the enjoyment of the fruit of hell-bound karma in a birth begun by the fire-oblation and the like for the enjoyment of heaven would not be ruled out. And it does not hold that that sin has a particular painful fruit; for, when many sins are possible, each with its own distinct painful means of fruit, if all are fancied to have for their fruit only the pain of the toil of performing the obligatory rites, the suffering of pairs of opposites, sickness and the rest, would be left without a cause; it cannot be supposed that only the pain of the toil of performing obligatory rites, and not the pain of carrying stones on the head and the like, is the fruit of sin gathered before. And this is said outside the point at issue, that the pain of the toil of performing the obligatory rites is the fruit of sinful karma done before. How so? The point at issue was that a sin done before, whose fruit has not sprouted, cannot be exhausted. Now you say that the pain of the toil of performing the obligatory rites is the fruit of a karma whose fruit has sprouted, not of one whose fruit has not sprouted. If you hold that all sin done before has its fruit sprouted, then the qualification 'the pain of the toil of performing the obligatory rites is the fruit' is uncalled for. And it would follow that the injunction of the obligatory rites is purposeless, since the sin whose fruit has sprouted is exhausted by enjoyment alone. Further, if pain is the fruit of the obligatory rites heard of in scripture, that pain is seen to come from the very toil of performing them, as with bodily exercise and the like, so it cannot be supposed to be the fruit of something else. And since the obligatory rites, like expiations, are enjoined on the occasion of being alive and the rest, it does not hold that they are the fruit of sinful karma done before; for the expiation enjoined on the occasion of a sinful act is not the fruit of that sin. If the pain of the expiation is the fruit of the very sin that occasioned it, then the pain of the toil of performing the obligatory rites enjoined on the occasion of being alive and the rest would be the fruit of that very occasion, since the obligatory and the occasional rites do not differ in being occasioned. Further, since the toil of performing the fire-oblation and the rest is the same whether they are obligatory or desire-prompted, if the pain of the toil of performing the obligatory rites is the fruit of sin done before, then, there being no difference, the pain of the toil of performing desire-prompted rites would equally be the fruit of sin done before. And in that case, since no fruit is heard of for the obligatory rites and their injunction would otherwise be without basis, the supposition by presumption that the pain of the toil of performing them is the fruit of sin done before is itself unfounded; for the injunction would otherwise be without basis, and one infers a fruit of the obligatory rites distinct from the pain of the toil of performing them. There is also a contradiction: it is contradictory to say, on the one hand, that when an obligatory rite is being performed the fruit of some other karma is being enjoyed, in which case that very enjoyment is the fruit of the obligatory rite, and, on the other hand, that the obligatory rite has no fruit. Further, when a desire-prompted fire-oblation is being performed, the obligatory fire-oblation too is performed by the same procedure, so the fruit of the desire-prompted fire-oblation would be used up by the very pain of that toil, since it shares the procedure; but if the fruit of the desire-prompted fire-oblation is something else, heaven and the like, then the pain of the toil of performing it would have to be something distinct; and there is no such thing, for it conflicts with what is seen, no pain of the toil of performing desire-prompted rites being seen as distinct from the pain of the toil of performing the merely obligatory ones. Further, only action neither enjoined nor prohibited has its fruit then and there; action enjoined or prohibited by scripture does not have its fruit then and there. Therefore the obligatory rites do not have an unseen fruit lacking; and so knowledge alone, not the performance of the obligatory rites, is what destroys without remainder the auspicious and inauspicious action that is preceded by ignorance. For all action whatever has ignorance and desire for its seed. Thus it has been established that action belongs to the domain of the ignorant, and that the standing in knowledge, preceded by the giving up of all action, belongs to the domain of the knower; this is shown by such texts as 'these two do not know', 'know the indestructible, the eternal', 'by the discipline of knowledge for the Sankhyas, by the discipline of action for the yogins', 'of the ignorant attached to action', 'but the knower of truth, mighty-armed, holding that the qualities move among the qualities, is not attached', 'renouncing all actions with the mind he rests', 'the knower of truth, joined, should think I do nothing at all'; that is, the ignorant man thinks 'I do', and for one wishing to mount the discipline action is the means, while for one who has mounted it, settled in the discipline, calm alone is the means; the three afflicted, the seeker of goods, and the seeker of knowledge are all ignorant, but the knower, in My judgment, is My very self; the ignorant who act, craving desires, gain coming and going, while those who, undistracted, meditating on Me, ever joined, worship the self described as space-like, to them I give the discipline of understanding by which they come to Me, that is, not the ignorant who act. Those qualified workers, even the most joined, who do the Lord's work, are ignorant, and their means end in the relinquishment of fruit, each higher than the last; whereas the worshippers of the indescribable Imperishable are those whose means were stated, from 'not hating any being' to the close of the chapter, and whose means of knowledge were stated in the three chapters beginning with the chapter on the field. The threefold fruit of action, the unwished-for and the rest, does not arise for those who renounce all action caused by the five, the seat and the rest, who have the knowledge of the self's oneness and non-agency, who stand in the supreme standing in knowledge, who know the truth of the Lord, the wandering ascetics of the highest order who have taken refuge in the oneness of their self with the gained nature of the Lord; but it does arise for the others, the ignorant who act and do not renounce. This is the division of what is to be done as taught by the scripture of the Gita. It may be objected that it is not established that all action is preceded by ignorance. No; it is, as with the slaying of a brahmin. Though the obligatory rite is learned from scripture, it still belongs only to one who has ignorance. As the action marked as the slaying of a brahmin, though learned from prohibitive scripture, is a cause of harm only for one who has the faults of ignorance, desire, and the rest, since otherwise engagement in it would not hold, so too the obligatory, the occasional, and the desire-prompted rites. It may be objected that, the self being distinct from the body unknown, engagement in the obligatory rites would not hold; for engagement is seen with the conviction 'I do', toward action which is of the nature of motion and is not done by the self. It may be said that the notion of 'I' in the aggregate of body and the rest is figurative, not false. No, for then its effects too would have to be figurative. The notion of 'I' in the aggregate of body and the rest, which is one's own, would be figurative as the notion of 'I' in one's own son is figurative, as in 'you are your very self named son', and as in the world one says 'this cow is my very breath'. But it is not so; this notion is not a false notion. The false notion is the one about the post and the man whose particular features are not grasped. A figurative notion does not have the purpose of bringing about the effect of the primary thing; it serves only to praise its substratum, the word of comparison being elided. As 'Devadatta is a lion', 'the boy is fire', meaning 'like a lion', 'like fire', because he shares the general features of cruelty, tawniness, and so on, serve only to praise the substratum, Devadatta or the boy; no effect of a lion or of fire is brought about by the figurative word and notion; whereas the effect of a false notion is the suffering of harm. One who has the figurative notion knows 'this Devadatta is not a lion, this boy is not fire'. So action done by a figuratively-styled self, the aggregate of body and the rest, would not be action done by the primary self, the object of the notion of 'I'. For action done by a figurative lion or fire is not done by the primary lion or fire. And no effect of the primary lion or fire is brought about by cruelty or tawniness, since they are used up in serving praise; and the men being praised know 'I am not a lion, I am not fire', for the lion's action is not mine, nor the fire's. So the notion 'the aggregate's action is not mine, the primary self's', rather than 'I am the doer, mine is the action', would be the more fitting. As for the claim that the self does action by means of its own memory, desire, and effort, which are the causes of action, no, for these are preceded by a false notion. Memory, desire, effort, and the rest are preceded by the impressions left by the experience of the fruit of actions, wished-for and unwished-for, occasioned by a false notion. As in this life merit and demerit, and the experience of their fruit, are made by attachment, aversion, and the rest that come of the conceit of being the aggregate of body and the rest, so in the past life, and the one before that; so transmigration, made by beginningless ignorance, is to be inferred as both past and future. And from this it is established that in the standing in knowledge accompanied by the renunciation of all action there is the utter ceasing of transmigration. And since the conceit of the body is of the nature of ignorance, on its ceasing, the body not holding, transmigration does not hold. The conceit of self in the aggregate of body and the rest is of the nature of ignorance. For in the world no one who knows 'I am other than cows and the rest, and cows and the rest are other than me' takes them to be himself. But one who does not know, like the man taking a post for a man, makes, without discernment, the notion 'I' in the aggregate of body and the rest, not one who knows with discernment. As for the notion 'I' in a son, as in 'you are your very self named son', that is figurative, occasioned by the relation of begetter and begotten; and by a figuratively-styled self one cannot do what is real, such as eating, any more than the primary lion's or fire's effect can be done by the figurative lion or fire. It may be objected that, since the injunction concerning the unseen is authoritative, what the self must do is done by the figurative selves, the body, senses, and the rest. No, because they are selves only as fashioned by ignorance. And the body, senses, and the rest are not figurative selves; rather, being non-selves, they are made to take on selfhood by a false notion alone, since selfhood is present when that notion is present and absent when it is absent. For in the unknowing condition of children without discernment the notion 'I' in the aggregate of body and the rest is seen, 'I am tall, I am fair'; but for those of discernment, who know 'I am other than the aggregate of body and the rest', the notion 'I' in that aggregate does not arise at that time. Therefore, being absent when the false notion is absent, it is made by that notion, not figurative. A figurative notion or word is used where the particular and the general are separately grasped, as with the lion and Devadatta, or the fire and the boy, not where they are not separately grasped. As for the appeal to the authority of revelation, no; for the authority of revelation lies in the domain of the unseen. In the domain of the connection of means and end in the fire-oblation and the rest, which is not reached by perception and the other means of knowledge, revelation is authoritative, not in the domain of perception and the rest, since the authority of revelation has for its object the showing of the unseen. Therefore it cannot be supposed that the notion 'I', occasioned by a seen false cognition, is figurative in regard to the aggregate of body and the rest. For not even a hundred revealed texts saying 'fire is cold' or 'without light' would gain authority. If they should say 'fire is cold' or 'without light', then some other meaning of revelation would have to be supposed, since otherwise its authority would not hold; revelation does not contradict another means of knowledge or its own statement. It may be objected that, since action has a doer who is fashioned by a false notion, in the absence of a real doer revelation would be without authority. No, since revelation has its purpose in the knowledge of Brahman. It may be objected that the revelation enjoining the knowledge of Brahman would then be as void of authority as the revelation enjoining action. No, because no contrary cognition holds. As, when the self has been made known by the revelation enjoining the knowledge of Brahman, the notion 'I' in the aggregate of body and the rest is set aside, so the cognition of the self in the self can never, by anyone, in any way, be set aside, because the cognition is not separate from its fruit, as one knows 'fire is hot and bright'. And the revelation enjoining action is not therefore void of authority, since its purpose is to produce, by checking the previous engagement, the rise of a new engagement, turned toward the inmost self. Even though the means be false, by the truth of the end it would itself be true; as with the explanatory passages that are subsidiary to injunctions, and as in the world, when milk and the like are to be given to children or madmen, the words about the growing of a top-knot and the like are used. And of those who are in another condition, before knowledge of the self, the authority of perception and the rest, occasioned by the conceit of the body, is established directly, just as it is. As for what you suppose, that the self, though not itself active, does by mere proximity, and that this is the primary agency of the self, as a king is said to fight when his soldiers fight, though he does not himself fight, and is said, by mere proximity, to be victor or vanquished; or as a commander acts by mere word; and as the connection with the fruit of the action is seen for the king and the commander; and as the action of the priests belongs to the sacrificer, so the action of the body and the rest would be done by the self, since the fruit comes to the self; and as a magnet, though itself unmoving, has the primary agency because it makes iron move, so it would be with the self: that is wrong, since agency would then belong to one who does not act. It may be said that a factor is of many kinds. No, since the primary agency of the king and the like is also seen. The king fights with his own activity too, and in causing the soldiers to fight and in giving wealth he has primary agency; so too in the enjoyment of the fruit of victory or defeat. And the sacrificer has primary agency in the offering of the chief oblation and in the giving of the priestly fees. Therefore the ascribing of agency to one who does not act is understood to be figurative. If the primary agency, marked by one's own activity, were not found in the king, the sacrificer, and the rest, then agency by mere proximity might be supposed to be primary, as with the magnet's moving of the iron; but it is not so, for the activity of the king, the sacrificer, and the rest is found. Therefore agency by mere proximity is only figurative. And this being so, the connection with its fruit too would be only figurative. A primary effect is not brought about by what is figurative. Therefore what is sung, that the self, though itself not active, would by the activity of the body and the rest be doer and experiencer, is unreal. But everything occasioned by error does hold, as in a dream and in a magic show. And in the breaks in the stream of the error of the notion of self in the body and the rest, in deep sleep, absorption, and the like, no harm of agency, experiencership, and the like is found. Therefore this delusion of transmigration is occasioned only by an erroneous notion, and is not real; so it is established that, by right vision, there is an utter ceasing of it. Having summed up the whole meaning of the teaching of the Gita in this chapter, and especially at the end, and having made a brief summing-up here to make firm the meaning of the scripture, the Lord now states the rule for the handing down of the scripture.Adi Shankaracharya

Now he expounds what was said, 'the Lord dwells in the heart-region of all beings; take refuge in him alone with your whole being': relinquishing all dharmas. Some are class-dharmas, some stage-of-life-dharmas, some common dharmas; relinquishing all those dharmas too, present or absent, disregarding them as a refuge, go to me, the Lord, the one, non-dual, the presider over all dharmas and the giver of their fruit, as your sole refuge. Let there be dharmas or not; what use are they, dependent on another? By the Lord's grace alone, independent of anything else, I shall accomplish my aim: with this conviction, ceaselessly, by contemplation, worship the endless one, the dense-supreme-bliss-form, the revered Vāsudeva, the Lord; that is, with a preceding considering and an excess of love, ceaselessly contemplate him by an inner-organ movement empty of all non-self worry, unbroken like a stream of oil. Here, by 'go to me, the one, as your sole refuge', the relinquishing of the taking of all dharmas as refuge being already got, 'relinquishing all dharmas' is a restatement of a prohibition for the sake of making it operative. This is not an injunction of the relinquishment of all dharmas and adharmas, since that is got from the renunciation-treatise and the prohibition-treatise; it is to ward off the apprehension that the class-and-stage-of-life dharmas, well known as causes of prosperity, might also be a cause of liberation. The supreme secret of all the treatises is the having-the-Lord-as-refuge alone, and there the Lord made the treatise end, since without it even renunciation does not culminate in its fruit; and since Arjuna, a kṣatriya unqualified for renunciation, is being addressed, the teaching of renunciation to him would not fit, and the opening and conclusion 'I shall tell you the beneficial', 'I shall release you from all sins, do not grieve' would not hold; so the Lord's orientation is the having-the-Lord-as-sole-refuge alone, even with disregard of the renunciation-dharmas. Since you have me as your sole refuge, with disregard of all dharmas, therefore I, since I alone do the work of all dharmas, shall release you from all sins, the causes of the round of birth occasioned by the slaying of kinsmen and the rest, even without an expiation, since, by the scripture 'by dharma one drives away sin', I stand in the place of dharma. Therefore do not grieve, do not make the grief 'how, set in the war, shall I be delivered from the calamity occasioned by the slaying of kinsmen and the rest'. The having-the-Lord-as-refuge is of three grades, 'his I am', 'mine alone is he', 'he alone am I', accomplished by the ripening of the practice of the means, expounded in detail in the Bhakti-rasāyana. In this Gītā treatise the three standings, in a means-and-end relation, are intended: the action-standing concluded at 'worshipping him by his own action the man gains success', the knowledge-standing at 'then, having known me in truth, he enters thereafter', and the devotion-standing, being the means and the fruit of both, concluded here at 'relinquishing all dharmas, go to me as sole refuge'. The Bhāṣyakāra holds 'relinquishing all dharmas' to be a restatement of the renunciation of all action and 'go to me, the one, as sole refuge' to conclude the knowledge-standing.Madhusudana Sarasvati

The purport of the next verse. By the qualification 'dharmas', the permission of adharma is barred. For the knowledge-steadfast seeker of liberation, dharma and adharma are alike to be abandoned, as sruti and smriti show. 'Abandoning all dharmas, take refuge in Me alone', for there is nothing other than Me. Arjuna, being a Kshatriya, is not primarily qualified for the knowledge-steadfastness reached through renunciation; but he is addressed because, through him, the teaching is meant for those who are qualified, so there is no contradiction. The Lord, by removing your bondage and so protecting you, leaves no room for grief.Anandagiri

Thus, by salutation-sacrifice-worship-meditation order, Sankhya-firmness stated (earlier by 'in dhyana they see Self in Self'). Now, by 'others, not knowing this, having heard from others, worship; they too cross death, supremely sruti-bound', mere-upasana-firmness, yoga-named, He says: 'all.' All (varnas, ashramas, body-sense-intellect's) dharmas (agnihotra-etc.), pleasures-pains-etc., dropping, take refuge in Me alone (the all-Lord, all-power; conditioned or un-conditioned partless single-essence bliss-mass supreme Self). 'Refuge' (refuge-place, the destroyer of nescience-etc.-kleshas), 'refuge-supreme-goal,' go. Be Me-alone-refuge. As 'eating food only one is satisfied, not by drinking water alone,' cause-meaning of ktva-suffix. By all-dharma-renunciation, take refuge in Me alone. As said: 'by non-Self-non-seeing alone, the supreme Self we worship.' Fruit of this Lord-refuge: 'I.' I (the inmost Self, sun-etc.-inner-controller, Narayana, free of all sins), well-known, from all sins (accumulated and being-done, even gotra-killing-etc.-born), I will release you. Do not grieve. The truth-knowledge's fruit (sin-non-touch and grief-crossing) is universally scripture-known. Sruti of Narayana in sun (Chandogya): 'He, from all sins risen, rises; from all sins, he who knows so; the Self-knower crosses grief; what delusion, what grief for the oneness-seeing?' 'Risen' (gone-up, sins-transcended-gone, sin-less), sruti-purport. By Chapter Six-told yoga, with caste-stage-etc.-dharma-renunciation, dropping body-etc.-dharmas, non-conceptual Self-realizer, no karma-stain, is the sense.Nilakantha

More secret still than even that, the Lord now states. 'Sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja; aham tva sarvapapebhyo moksayisyami ma sucah'. Sridhara reads the verse as the next step beyond the 'manmana bhava': there 'I am to be served along with the prescribed disciplines and rites'; here, the firm conviction 'by my devotion alone all will come about' is itself the act. With that firm conviction, give up the one-pointed clinging to enjoined performance and become 'mat-eka-saranah', of me alone as refuge. Behaving in this way, do not grieve, thinking 'on account of giving up of works there may be sin', do not let sorrow arise; for you, become 'mat-eka-saranam', I shall release from all sins. Sridhara is careful not to dissolve dharma but to relocate its centre: the practitioner has not been told to abandon the conduct of dharma in a worldly sense, but to abandon the dependence on prescribed works as the binding warrant of his release, and to lean wholly on the Lord. The act of taking refuge in the Lord alone is itself the highest dharma, and the Lord's pledge, 'I shall release you', is its binding force. The carama-sloka stands here as the deepest secret because it shifts the cause of release away from any act of the agent and places it in the Lord's pledged grace, while the agent's part is the conviction by which he gives up his self-reliance on any other means. In Sridhara's hand the verse is the soul of the Subodhini's reading of the Gita: works are not condemned, but the heart of the matter is the giving up of the self as ground of one's deliverance and the entry into the Lord as that ground.Sridhara Svami

Giving up all dharmas, take refuge in me alone. I will release you from all sins; do not grieve.Dhanapati Suri