Dvaita, through the Gītā

No distinct reading is offered; this commentator's text begins only at verse 2.11.

His words are not wise at all but mere conceit, sprung from his own opinion, not from scripture and teacher.

Madhva, Jayatirtha; restraining a hater of the Lord is not unrighteous.

The souls' real eternity is the point proved; the Lord's undisputed eternity is brought in only as the example.

The single second-half clause is read by supplying 'just so,' the certain case carrying the doubtful one.

The verse proves a self distinct from the body exists, as the perceiver of the states, really many and distinct.

The body cannot experience anything, as a corpse shows; deep sleep shows mere cognition does not prove a self.

Contact alone gives no pain; it wounds only when joined to conceit and the sense of 'mine,' as one's own house burning grieves but another's does not.

Madhva and Jayatirtha; 'endure' is read as 'render fruitless' by dropping the body-identification.

'Person' just means one joined to a body, since without a body none is afflicted; pleasure is no aim and is opposed to immortality, so one superimposes agreeableness on neither.

Steadiness is the effort that checks the elation and dejection arising once pleasure and pain appear.

Asat means unmanifest prakriti and sat means Brahman; the verse declares both are beginningless and never cease to be.

The self is a reflection of the immeasurable Lord, so its medium can never be broken; it is its own revealer and so does not vanish when the body falls.

The verse denies the soul's independent agency, not all agency; like a reflection, the soul acts only through the Lord's action.

Denying self-standing agency while affirming God-dependent action.

The self is unborn because it shares the Lord's unborn form; its destruction-free nature mirrors his.

Reads the line as a cited Vedic authority confirming Krishna's teaching.

The descriptive words carry two distinct senses each, marking the Self as both undestroyed and free of fault.

The focus is precise grammar and the Self's freedom from taint, not total renunciation.

It teaches discernment of body from Self, giving a sharper contrast than the childhood-youth-age example does.

An illustration by indication of an already-stated truth.

It cannot be cut because it shares the Lord's form as His reflection and portion.

Closes off even special causes, like a saw or sacrificial circumstance, not just ordinary ones.

Eternality and all-pervasion belong first to the Lord; the soul shares them as His reflection and portion.

Unmovingness denies only worldly action, not the Lord's genuine activity.

The verse describes the Lord; he is 'unthinkable' because his glory is immeasurable, not because he is unseen.

On the reading that the subject is the Lord.

The Self's eternality is never surrendered; only birth and death as union with and separation from a body are conceded.

Used to refute the Mayavadin reading that Krishna here grants non-eternality.

The consolation is the plain fact of the unseen-to-seen-to-unseen passage and must not be stretched into a theory that birth and death are unreal.

Deliberate restraint; a practical ground, not a metaphysical settling.

Wonder means simply something rarely won; the Self is rare because it bears the Lord's form, and even its seer is a rare reflection of the Lord.

Wonder as worldly hard-won prize.

Sankhya means the discernment of the Self's truth and yoga means the means; these are not the Kapila and Patanjala schools.

The named schools are even censured in the Mokshadharma.

Resolution means being settled as authoritative; only views grounded in valid knowledge agree and so count as one.

Reads the verse as an epistemic answer to conflicting doctrines.

The censure targets those who wrongly say all Vedic rites without exception yield only heaven, missing that the Veda's veiled subject is the Lord.

Vedic doctrines are not unresolved; desireless rites dedicated to the Lord are for knowledge.

The fault is that they treat enjoyment and lordship as the only fruit of the Veda, denying that liberation is its fruit.

Reads 'gati' as attainment of enjoyment, not as understanding.

Resolute understanding is reasoned ascertainment of truth, which must come first; without it, composure of mind on the Lord cannot arise, and so liberation cannot follow.

Sets a strict sequence: discrimination, then composure on the Lord, then release.

Do not discard the Veda but its merely apparent surface sense; its hidden import is Vishnu, sung everywhere.

The Veda's standing and authority stand undenied.

The knower's fruit wholly contains the Vedas' fruit, but is vastly greater, like ocean to well.

Inclusion sharpened: knowledge and ritual are emphatically not equal.

Worldly desire is censured, but longing for the Lord's grace, devotion, and knowledge is to be actively cultivated.

The fruit-talk of desire-texts is only bait to draw the unready into action.

Abandoning attachment to the fruit is the cause and evenness is its effect, so naming the evenness alone as yoga includes its cause within it.

The two phrases are not loose separate modifiers; the Lord answers 'what is yoga' with exactly the evenness, its cause grasped along with it.

Buddhi-yoga is the means marked by knowledge; 'take refuge in buddhi' means take your stand in knowledge.

The knower gives up only unwelcome merit; the great fruit born of worship endures, and his liberation is a real, differentiated bliss.

Restricted to merit whose fruit would be an ordinary human birth and the like.

There is a strict order: fruit is offered to the Lord without desire, yoga yields knowledge, and knowledge yields release.

Action frees only indirectly, through knowledge, never on its own.

You attain the fruit of scripture, since hearing about the Lord keeps yielding bliss even for the wise.

Reads nirveda as 'thorough attainment,' not dispassion, and grounds a gradation among the liberated.

The yoga is sinking unmoving into supreme bliss through direct seeing of Brahman, so complete that even kettledrums cannot disturb it.

The buddhi, once opposed to the Vedas, is settled by ascertaining the Veda's meaning against false scriptures, then ripens into direct blissful vision.

Arjuna restates a known mark to show he understands, then asks for a further mark that holds universally; his questioning is not ignorance.

Defends Arjuna against the charge of ignorance.

Contentment comes by the Supreme Self's grace alone; favorable desire for devotion rightly remains.

"By the Self" means the Supreme Self; casting-off is for the most part, not absolute.

These qualities are means to knowledge, cultivated by effort in the seeker but naturally established in the knower.

Means of knowledge, not of liberation.

The word everywhere keeps this from repeating the prior verse; it negates aversion rooted in no fondness anywhere.

Resolves the apparent redundancy with the previous verse's mention of freedom from anger.

Fasting removes only the power to enjoy, not the core relish, which can even grow stronger; genuine sense-conquest takes great effort and direct knowledge of Brahman.

Citing Bhagavata 11.8.20 that relish intensifies in one who fasts.

Only common restraint and discriminative knowledge are present; lacking direct self-knowledge, the body-identified man still loses.

Distinguishes lower grades of effort and knowledge from higher ones.

"Me" is the Lord distinct from the devotee, higher than all; constant joining of the mind on Him alone, not bare discrimination, is the supreme means of conquering the senses.

Rejects reading mat-parah as non-dual knowledge; senses won only by great effort joined to the Lord.

Sammoha is not a swoon but a settled craving for unrighteousness, a fixed desire for what should not be done.

Rejects the swoon reading as not fitting the context.

Removing liking and aversion yields conquest of the senses, and that conquest in turn yields knowledge as a mediate fruit.

Serenity belongs to the mind, not the self, so the next verse says 'serene mind'.

The mind comes to right standing through direct vision of Brahman, the supreme Lord distinct from the soul.

Calm is mainly a turning away from objects of itself, not the ease of satisfied desire.

Serenity is a distinct prerequisite; without it there is no yoga, and the peace named here means liberation itself.

Fixes 'peace' by the lexicon as release and supreme happiness.

The passive verb points to a hidden agent, and that agent is the Lord, who brings about the mind's following.

Reading the passive form anuvidhiyate as 'is made to follow'.

Restraint is the first rung of a ladder leading through serenity and yoga to knowledge.

Only the restrained reach serenity; only the serene reach the joined mind.

The 'night' is the Lord's own form, seen directly by the sage; the verse does not teach abandoning all action and does not restrict this knowledge to formal renouncers.

Even householder sages reach knowledge through hearing and reflection.

The verse shows how the knower lives among objects without swelling or drying; it praises him, since liberation belonging only to the knower was already settled earlier.

Praise of the knower, not a new doctrine.

Such a one alone is a true person; the four terms are read so none repeats, and women are not excluded from this attainment.

Glossing 'desires' as objects, egoism as doer-conceit, mine-ness as owner-conceit; not arguing the wider liberation doctrine here.

Brahman is the supreme Lord Narayana with real form; release may be delayed until begun karma is lived out.

Rejects the view that the knower is always freed the instant the body falls.

Desireless duties of withdrawal outrank desire-driven works like battle, so it is unfitting to be commanded to fight.

Contrasting desireless renunciant duties with action done for a heard fruit.

He asks for one unmixed statement, insisting Krishna his Lord and friend did not really bewilder him; the fault is his own.

Leans on scripture exalting renunciation, that immortality is reached by renunciation alone.

One and the same person can be settled in knowledge while still acting; those who hold office by the Lord's will are fit for knowledge through their very duty.

Madhva, Jayatirtha.

Knowledge alone, never the non-doing of action, frees you; desireless action purifies the mind and ripens the dispassion knowledge needs.

An embodied person always acts, so inaction could free only insentient things.

The single point is that action cannot be wholly given up; it makes no claim here about knowledge or about omitting sacrifice.

It lays groundwork for the later restriction at 3.9 of the rule that the creature is bound by action.

Bondage and freedom belong to the mind, not to the doing or dropping of action, so it is the mind that must be restrained; body-sustaining acts cannot be abandoned, though acts one is able to drop may be.

With a careful rule on which actions may be relinquished.

The mind alone binds and frees, so the mind is what must be restrained; action itself need not be abandoned.

Karma-yoga is praised in any station of life, not just one ashrama.

Do the work appointed to your class and stage of life; the 'therefore' simply rests on action already shown to be better.

A terse, practical reading of varna and ashrama duty.

Even a non-Vaishnava sacrifice binds; what frees is action whose attachment is gone and which is directed to Vishnu, so abandon only the quality of desire-prompted action, never action's very substance.

The Gita's qualified statement, being particular, overrides the general 'action binds'; fitting duties like fighting are to be kept up.

The verse is praise attached to the argument, commending the unconditional duty to act according to one's class and station.

Weight falls on the verse's commending function, not on naming Prajapati.

The substance offered is the food of the rain-cloud, whose god is strengthened by it; this is firmly anti-apurva, for admitting an unseen power would force abandoning the plain literal sense.

On why offering feeds the rain and which sacrifice is meant.

Taken literally, action truly arises from the supreme Brahman, for no insentient thing and not even the dependent soul acts on its own; all activity is preceded by the Lord.

Insists on the primary literal senses of the words.

The series closes back on itself, so it is truly a wheel; the man whose life is given over to sin alone refuses to turn it and is in effect its destroyer.

On why the cycle is rightly called a wheel and the gloss of aghayuh.

He delights in the supreme Self, and his duty lapses only during the objectless trance beyond cognition, not at all other times.

Only during nirvikalpa samadhi, the deep absorption beyond cognition.

The verse forbids rising from deep absorption to perform rites when their occasion nears; even for a knower, forbidden action still bears unwelcome fruit.

Calibrated to Arjuna and the one abiding in trance beyond cognition.

Freedom from duty belongs only to one settled in objectless trance; since you are plainly not in that state, you must act.

The exemption is set apart as a special case; this rule with its fruit applies to all others.

Action by itself never liberates; release comes from direct knowledge of God alone, and 'by action' must be read as 'while doing action.'

Janaka and the rest first acted, then gained knowledge, and were freed by that knowledge.

A teaching that is truly a valid means of knowledge, but not yet honored by the world, the great one makes recognized as authoritative simply by treating it as binding himself.

Resolves how a standard can be 'made' if it is already valid or not valid.

The soul is a genuine agent, yet a dependent one; its real agency must be told apart from nature's, which acts only as subordinate instrument.

Distinguishing soul, Lord, and nature as the relata.

The soul truly acts, yet not on its own; the word "thinking" shows a real knower who denies only independent agency.

On the soul as a real but dependent agent.

Here guna means more than the three strands; it covers objects, the senses and the rest, so delusion is identifying with the senses, and 'guna-karmas' means the objects and the actions together.

Rejects restricting guna to sattva alone, since an agent and a substratum cannot be one thing.

The actions were only mistakenly laid on the soul; surrender means releasing them back to the Lord, who is their sole doer, thinking 'the Lord does it, I do not.'

These commentators reject the rival view that the actions merge into the Lord's own being.

Even bare desireless action releases by way of knowledge, so how much more the one who sees the Lord directly.

Read as refuting the idea that knowledge and action stand together as one combined means; "too" means "how much more so."

They misread how action and knowledge relate to the goal; the one direct means is the sight of the Lord, which needs nothing further, so the contrary view falls away.

Set against the wrong impression that withdrawn action becomes a path to freedom.

Though root-nature might seem one, each being's nature is its own particular load of carried-over attraction and aversion, differing from soul to soul.

On why nature is each soul's own.

Restraint is to be done as far as your strength allows; even where no result shows, it comes about through utmost effort, so effort genuinely matters.

Effort to the measure of one's power.

This verse caps Krishna's reply to Arjuna's fear of war: act you must, yet act without fierce, unavoidable attachment and aversion, and so the recalled objection is set aside.

Stress falls on the flow of the argument rather than on the metaphysics of svadharma.

Among anger and the other well-known foes and desire too, ask which is the strongest, so that the seeker can aim his great effort against it.

Weighing the six foes plus desire.

Desire and anger stay utterly different; anger always rises from desire as its cause, but never is desire itself.

On the literal identity claim.

Three different realities are veiled: the Lord by the fire, the mind by the mirror, and the bound soul by the caul.

Each image maps to a distinct reality, not one repeated point.

Even knowledge already gained from scripture, once veiled by desire, fails to shine into the direct vision of the supreme Self; so this verse says more than the last.

Harm is in fact greater in the fool who follows desire than in the wise one who fights it.

Krishna answers Arjuna's unspoken question, naming the seat so desire can be slain there; the intellect ranks first.

The senses are named precisely as desire's instruments, so restraining them is taught as the very means to slaying desire.

Clarifies why senses are mentioned at all, since Arjuna had only asked which is stronger; reads it can be made to perish.

Beyond the intellect is the supreme Lord, higher even than the unmanifest, for it is the vision of the Supreme that turns the taste for objects away.

Not the individual soul and not desire.

The lineage shows this withdrawn dharma was actually practised by the ancients, so it is to be practised by Arjuna too, not merely heard.

The recital points to practice, not only transmission.

The succession is told to show that the ancients practiced this dharma, so Arjuna too must practice it.

Reads the verse for its place in the chapter's argument, not metaphysics.

The ancients did not merely receive this withdrawn dharma but practised it, and Arjuna too is meant to practise the same.

Jayatirtha: how the verse connects to the chapter's argument.

He asks to learn the Lord's greatness from its very source, confirming through valid means the accepted distinction between the worshipped Lord and the worshipping soul.

Madhva, Jayatīrtha.

Knowing Arjuna's real intent behind the question, the Lord draws the contrast in knowledge on purpose; the clause is precise and never idle.

On why Krishna adds 'and you do not know it'.

Both his self and his body are imperishable; governing his own nature he is merely perceived as if born, never actually changing or suffering.

Creative prakriti fashions beings' bodies; the deluding power Durga makes the unborn Lord seem born; maya here means his own knowledge.

He could do all this without birth; he takes birth freely, moved by play and his own nature, not by any need.

Answers whether there is any rule that rescue must be done by birth at all.

Knowing birth and action alone does not free, since that is knowledge of one aspect; 'in truth' implies complete, all-round knowing joined with constant worship of him and of no other.

This verse supplements, does not replace, the rule that full knowledge plus worship frees.

Made of Me means abounding in Me, having the Lord as inner ruler; the freed see all things as wholly dependent on Him, never merged into Him.

Flatly denies identity; the verse points ahead to more.

He grants release only to true knowers and a lesser, proportionate fruit to the rest, serving them by giving fruit, never by dependence.

Those who worship other deities gain heaven, not liberation.

That action's fruit arrives at all, swift and plainly seen, is itself the proof that the Lord alone is the real enjoyer and director of every act; the souls are dependent, and the gods only seem to give.

Reads the verse as supplying the argument for the previous claim that all paths reach the Lord.

He alone is the real maker of the order, doer and yet non-doer because he stands free of attachment within the act, not because the work is false.

Agency real but free of attachment.

The Lord wishes yet never clings; his very desire is knowledge, unlike the world's grasping.

Liberation is universal by stages, though the souls are endless and not all freed at once.

Even those who already know act here as conduct, with longing for fuller release; action does not produce their liberation.

For knowers, action is example, not cause.

Action proper is to be performed; inaction and forbidden action are to be known as things to shun, included here only by implication.

Tied to the prior command 'do action' and the next verse on vikarma.

Knowing action, non-action, and forbidden action is strictly necessary for release, and the three are known by discerning each from the others.

Knowing the Lord's action is required for His sight.

While acting you think 'this is Vishnu's action alone; I, a reflection of consciousness, do nothing,' and in deep sleep you see the Lord ceaselessly performing all.

The seeing is about agency: the Lord's is independent, yours wholly dependent on Him.

The burning is not pretending deeds are unreal, but knowing the Supreme Lord alone is the real agent and one never acts independently of Him.

The view that knowledge cancels action by treating it as unreal is rejected as wrong.

He holds a specific true vision: that he is of the same form as the Lord, who is ever content and rests on nothing. The word eternal marks the wrong knowing to be removed, the failure to see that I too am ever of this Lord-like kind.

Knowledge as corrective vision of one's likeness to the Lord.

The verse states the means to giving up desire; 'self' here is the mind that is restrained, and letting go of possession is the absence of mine-ness.

Corrects reading 4.20's 'does nothing' as figurative, not as actions being unreal.

All this is called Brahman because its being and activity wholly depend on the Lord, who is the inner ruler of everything, not because it shares his form or is non-different from him.

Dependence and inner-rulership, identity denied.

The whole verse is worship of the Lord; the 'divine' is the Lord himself, and the word sacrifice denotes Him, Vishnu the deity.

Against both 'gods only' and self-becoming-one-with-self readings.

Here "self" means the mind, and the disciplined restraint of the mind is itself the fire into which the offering is made.

A focused gloss fixing grammar and referent, no larger doctrine built on this verse.

What makes any of these acts a sacrifice at all is the inner thought of dedicating it to the supreme Lord.

The offering lies precisely in turning the act toward God.

All the clauses describe one thing only: holding the breath still in retention, since inhaling and exhaling merely serve that holding.

Reads 'eva' (just, only) as deliberately turning aside the three-stage interpretation.

By a strictly measured diet the breaths are dried up and offered into the breaths, and slight eating itself counts as a sacrifice of its own.

Adds a second, scripturally grounded reading from the Katha Upanishad, treating restraint in food as a distinct sacrifice.

Rather than the promise and warning, this reading weighs a technical question carried over from nearby verses: whether restraint in food, drying up the breaths, counts as a separate sacrifice.

Comments on the offering of breath into breath, not the verse's surface teaching.

Since even the contemplation you might retreat into is itself action, abandoning your own enjoined duty is no shortcut; do your appointed work for the sake of release.

"Mouth of Brahman" means the supreme Self; knowing all is action returns you to duty.

Completion means fullness and fruitfulness, present wherever knowledge is present; it never licenses the dropping of action once knowledge has arisen.

Blocking the inference that action ceases.

Arjuna already knows; his delusion is knowledge overpowered, not knowledge absent, so a greater knowing is enjoined to lift what overpowers it.

Recovering a knower who is overpowered.

You behold all beings in Krishna, who is their very self and inner ruler, resting in him yet distinct from him; the knowledge, never the delusion, is the means by which you already see this even now.

The Lord as distinct inner controller in whom beings rest; not identity.

The fire is the experience of one's own self together with the supreme Self, and it burns both good and sinful works, not sins alone.

The already-fruiting karma is greatly worn down yet kept fixed by Hari's will, so the good path may be propagated in the world.

This single utterance rounds off the topic of knowledge and organizes the verses that follow, which unfold its means, its opposite, and their fruits.

Treats the verse as a structural summary line, not an independent statement.

This verse states the positive track, faith and the rest bearing the fruit of peace, so the next verse can expound the opposite track of ruin.

Paired with the surrounding verses as two contrasting utterances.

There is one discipline, action enjoined for your station offered to the Lord with desire renounced, so the real puzzle is why fighting is enjoined.

Sannyasa here is the inner renouncing of desire, not abandoning all works.

The renunciation named is not the monastic order but the householder free of aversion who offers his work to the Lord; the ranking itself proves action, not formal renunciation, is meant.

Sannyasa and yoga here mark the ascetic and householder orders, with worship being action offered to the Lord.

Renunciation means abandoning aversion and the like; recalling its meaning here grounds the earlier teaching.

Read as fixing the established sense of the word to substantiate the preceding claim.

Both Sankhya and yoga are inner aids to knowledge, indispensable to its arising, so neither is demoted and there is no conflict between them.

The children are those who take desire-driven ritual as the highest path, or deny that action is internal to knowledge.

Action is a means to knowledge, and by that knowledge alone the yogins too cross over and attain liberation.

Established by elimination, since scripture says there is no other path than knowing the supreme and forbids placing anything before knowledge.

Without yoga, renunciation yields only the pain of conquering desire and no fruit of release; joined with yoga it bears the great fruit, so yoga is the superior means.

Reading the verse as proof that yoga is superior.

The Self that has become his self is the supreme Lord, indwelling and lord over the devotee, not the soul raised to identity.

The difference among all selves stands; 'of all' guards against identity.

What you give up here, stated plainly for the first time, is the intention and the sense of personal will behind the act, not the truth that the embodied self acts at all.

Renunciation of intention, not denial of the embodied self's action.

Beyond the non-doing already taught, the verse adds the further giving-up of intention and design, the sankalpa behind the act.

On what 5.9 newly adds to the earlier teaching.

This restates the fruit already given for one united in renunciation and yoga, repeated to fix the rule firmly and to block any soft, merely figurative reading of the means.

Reading the verse as a rule, not a new idea.

Krishna adduces the right conduct of one united in renunciation and yoga together; the verse is about combining both paths.

Reads the verse as endorsing the combination of paths.

Yukta is read tightly as yoga and renunciation joined together, and those two conjoined are the sole means to liberation; abandoning either one fails.

The verse teaches a strict rule about means.

Two conceits are given up, both being the agent and being the instigator; the qualifier 'with the mind' proves the inner conceit is the target.

Clarifying the word 'renunciation' so it is not mistaken for dropping outward action.

The living being, master only over insentient things, is moved by the Supreme Lord, so even while doing and causing it does nothing by its own independence.

'Prabhu' points to the all-pervading Supreme Lord, not the individual soul.

The Lord truly does set nature upon the soul and cause it to act, yet only by His mere nearness, in step with the soul's beginningless disposition, so no sin or partiality clings to Him.

Where self and Lord stay distinct.

Two knowledges are distinguished: the soul's own essential knowing gets covered, and a second direct knowing uncovers it and reveals Brahman.

The one-knowledge-does-both reading is rejected; the verse marks the second, immediate knowing.

This points to the immediate means by which direct realization arises, not merely the remote preparation of hearing and reflection.

Distinguishes mediate (indirect) from immediate (freeing) knowledge.

What is seen the same is the supreme Lord present in all, who carries no gradation of good qualities and no fault in any being.

The next verse's 'for it is faultless' shows the Lord is the object seen; this seeing leads to direct knowledge.

The strong here-and-now language exalts the even-seer's state as praise; in praise an overstatement is admissible, not a flat claim of full liberation in the body.

Read cautiously as stuti to defuse internal tensions about even-sight as means and an earlier teaching allowing another birth.

The verse signals that from here renunciation, yoga, and knowledge are unfolded together, not split apart.

Reads it as a structural signpost; 'let him not rejoice' expands renunciation.

The self's happiness becomes imperishable only if the self is joined with the yoga whose object is Brahman, and not by renunciation alone.

Refutes any reading on which bare renunciation suffices for imperishable happiness.

The verse censures desire-driven enjoyment to support the path of renunciation, supplying the reason that the seeker of giving-up needs.

Frames the verse narrowly as a censure serving renunciation.

The surge can be conquered only here, in a human body, since higher worlds belong only to those who have already conquered desire.

Beasts and the like are unfit; the work cannot be deferred to some other world without circular dependence.

The inner light is the self-luminous Lord Viṣṇu shining in the heart; one becomes situated in Brahman, not identical, and knows Him.

"become Brahman" read as "situated in Brahman".

Doubt is cut by the sword of knowledge, the self here is the vast all-knowing mind, and worn taint is the cause whose effect is that the seer perceives Brahman.

Reads yatatman as the far-reaching, expansive knower.

Brahman is easily reached for such a person; this ease of attainment is itself a special mark of the true knower, in all places and times.

Reads 'abhitah' as 'everywhere,' the verse's fresh point being ease of attainment, which no other word in the line conveys.

Once the senses are withdrawn the outer objects are genuinely kept out; evening the breath means steady, motionless retention.

Liberation here is the praise of the meditative discipline, not its direct result.

Call him liberated as praise, not because meditation by itself produces release; valid knowledge is what frees, and the words must not merely repeat themselves.

Fitting the verse to the recognized means of valid knowledge.

The Lord is the object of meditation, so 'having known' means 'having meditated,' and his enjoyership and the rest are qualifiers of what is meditated upon.

Read literally with full force: even the formal renunciate has his own fire and action, Brahman as fire and worship as the deed, so one truly without fire and action is no renouncer or yogi at all.

Rejects the figurative reading and the household-praise reading alike.

Yoga here is the means to knowledge and the worship of the Lord, and renunciation is contained within that yoga; bare giving-up of resolve is not by itself the whole of it.

Takes yoga in its primary sense; sankalpa stands by implication for desire and the rest.

Stillness means samadhi, and even the perfected knower still abides in the Lord's deeds, the name, and His tale.

Objectless samadhi arises fully only when remaining prarabdha karma has worn away.

Effortless, complete non-attachment belongs to the one who has truly climbed; knowledge follows the ascent and is not the defining mark.

Distinguishing the arrived one from the aspirant whose senses are merely controlled.

The very word ascent commands that yoga be carried through by sustained effort and never abandoned midway.

Reading the verse mainly as an injunction to effort.

The conquered self is the mind, conquered by the living being through the intellect; an unconquered mind is called not-self because, though present, it gives no help.

Like a servant who, though present, does not serve and so is no servant at all.

The supreme Self stands well set, present near in the heart, and the calmed person becomes one of direct knowledge.

Madhva grounds it in vijnana, the distinct seeing of Vishnu's specific traits; Jayatirtha defends the handed-down text.

The sameness is the fruit belonging to the one who has ascended to yoga, his vision steadied by the Vaishnava scripture.

Close grammatical defense of the inherited reading.

Living beings are in themselves pure consciousness and faultless, their virtues and faults coming from the Lord, so hold an even sight toward all.

Equal sight, not equal worship; honor must still follow each one's qualities, and some inequality is real and eternal.

Join the mind to samadhi, the deep absorptive concentration; the general word for engaging is here narrowed to this one work.

Restated from earlier to teach the manner of practice.

The word yoga here means the yoga of samadhi, deep absorption; the instruction is to engage oneself in that practice in this place.

A terse gloss fixing the precise sense of the terms.

The peace here is the full freedom that comes after the body is given up, not merely liberation while still living; so nirvana marks the post-mortem summit.

Refuses to let peace and nirvana collapse into one and the same thing.

The ban on fasting and wakefulness falls only on the one unable to bear it; the capable practitioner may still set sleep and food aside.

Reads the prohibition as conditional, guarding the weak rather than condemning austerity itself.

Measured means serving as an aid: take food, movement, and the rest only so far as they keep off fatigue and never work against samadhi.

On what "measured" means.

The resting is not a collapse into one's private self but an abiding oriented toward the Lord, lest the verse clash with the Gita's words on reaching Him.

Guards the distinction between the individual soul and the supreme.

The yoga of the self is meditation directed at the Lord; the discipline has God as its object.

The grammar of 'yoga of the self' is read deliberately so that no word in the phrase is left idle.

With the mind, within the body, one sees the Lord; the seeing mind, the embodied place, and the supreme Lord stay distinct.

The three terms are kept apart, never collapsed into identity.

He does not swerve because this bliss in truth has the form of the Lord; the self is not the supreme, and its joy depends on Him.

The word 'in truth' rules out the gloss of self-Brahman identity.

The steadiness must be explained without collapsing the soul into Brahman, for the difference between self and the supreme holds even at the height of yoga.

Guarding the soul-Lord difference.

This yoga not only destroys pain already arisen but wards off the very arising of pain, and resolve here simply means one must practice, not hold back.

Reads severance as prevention, won from the wording's own excess.

All and without remainder mean not even one slight or occasional desire is kept back; the word alone states that the senses can be governed only by the mind and by no other instrument.

On the force of the emphatic words.

The same intellect both restrains the mind and turns the soul to delight in the Self.

Taking the buddhi to have a double, balancing function of curbing and gladdening.

The mind is to be brought under control with the Self alone for its object, withdrawn from the sense-objects themselves, not merely from the sense-doorways.

A close grammatical reading of 'from whatever' and 'in the Self'.

He sees and meditates on the supreme Lord himself, present the same by His lordship in Brahma, in a blade of grass, and in all between; not a merging of creatures.

Stated as the object of meditation for the highest qualified ones; sameness is the Lord's even presence, not identity.

Seer and Lord stay distinct. The Lord ever bears the devotee's gaining and keeping, and the devotee is ever His. The figure of non-loss is drawn from the master-servant idiom, where each truly performs his function.

Non-loss is a conventional figure, not a real merger.

Oneness means seeing one Lord everywhere, not becoming Him; liberation is sure, yet difference and degrees of bliss remain real, so righteousness still has weight.

On real difference even when freed.

The sameness must be read carefully so it does not flatten the real distinctions among souls and between the soul and God. Here its object includes the devotee who follows the Lord, restating an earlier verse to block an over-reading.

On the reading that guards sameness against collapsing real distinctions.

What lacks a firm standing is the yoga itself, not the equality; yoga is the principal topic and equality only subordinate to it.

A grammatical resolution: the pronoun is fixed to yoga because equality is expressed in the instrumental case.

The mind is never restrained of its own accord; taming it stands within right disposition toward the Lord, and without that wish for the good there is no release at all.

The word for him means simply one who does not strive, not someone outside the renunciant stage of life.

A grammatical guard on the word ayati.

The seeker in question is not the formal renunciate established in the fourth order, but the one who does not strive; that keeps the doubt's subject correctly fixed.

Narrowing who the doubt is about.

The 'fallen' one of the earlier verses is not someone outside the orders of life, but simply one who does not strive.

A brief guard against misreading the earlier verses, not this one's main claim.

He goes beyond the Vedic commands and reaches the supreme Brahman itself, not merely outranks the ritualists.

Reading the crossing as actual arrival, since the next verse promises the supreme goal.

A mere wish to know yoga cannot suffice; the seeker, having known, makes the effort and, perfected through many births, becomes a man of direct knowledge and enters Narayana.

The superiority asserted is only of yoga-knowledge over the other disciplines, never over the knowledge of Brahman, where superiority would be impossible.

Faces the objection that knowledge is yoga's own fruit; supports the ranking with Puranic authority.

The qualifiers describe the knowing, not the Lord, and one knows so that the whole Lord is reached just as He is.

Explicitly rejects reading them as descriptions of the Lord, since the entire Lord cannot be fully known by any other.

This knowledge has the Lord for its object and realization is knowledge of particulars about him; the two terms stay sharply distinct, not merged into one being.

Resists the non-dual gloss of realization.

The rarity is stated to raise the hearer's regard for this knowledge, with realization rarer still than knowledge.

Answers the objection that rarity seems a trivial thing to teach after promising knowledge.

Though the great principle is not named in the list, it is not absent; it is folded inside the word ego, the effect implying its cause, so the scheme stays complete.

Where the great principle goes.

The higher nature is Shri, the divine consort, of the very form of consciousness, who indwells all beings and sustains their breath.

The higher prakriti is the goddess, not the ordinary jiva.

The verse expands the Lord's sovereignty, not any identity with the world; he is its source as the ever-blissful enjoyer of its arising and passing.

Explicitly denies the Lord shares the world's arising and dissolving.

He alone is the higher principle, one and not manifold; the verse denies any rival who could hold superiority over the Lord.

The comparative form and the word 'other' would be pointless unless they negate a second high principle.

Even here the difference holds: he is the regulator and enjoyer of taste, named in worship-language where non-difference speech is normal though real difference remains.

The taste is the substance's essential core, and his enjoyment is restricted to the pure.

The pure qualities depend on the Lord and are his enjoyment, and he works on the qualities themselves, not only their bearers.

Reading the verse as real dependence, not identity, with the properties picked out for worship.

The qualifiers show the Lord is to be worshipped only in pure, dharma-aligned things, and never in what is impure or against dharma.

Treats the passage as the Lord's supernatural greatness, not mere knowledge.

The states and their bearers are genuinely real and distinct from him, dependent on him and enjoyed by him; he works deliberately within the very properties of things, not as a side-effect.

A real difference of persons is preserved.

Reading 'made of the gunas' as identity, the verse corrects those who, seeing even Brahma's guna-body, wrongly assume Vishnu too has such a body; the Lord is wholly free of the three gunas.

Sets the man of knowledge apart from the deluded mass by the word 'this'.

Maya is the Lord's real deluding power, crossed only by Vishnu's grace, and 'alone' stresses refuge in him without forbidding reverence to the teacher.

'Alone' is emphasis, not a ban on revering the teacher.

Knowledge is the very nature of the jiva, here overpowered by maya; only souls of false knowledge born of unrighteousness are meant, not the good, and people fail to take refuge from their own fault alone.

Knowledge as the jiva's intrinsic nature; only the lowest souls meant.

The evildoers fail to turn to God purely from their own fault, deluded by false knowledge, not because refuge is no means of crossing maya; this sets off by contrast the good who do turn.

Answers an objection carried over from the prior verses rather than glossing the four.

Single devotion means devotion to the one Lord alone and to nothing else, on the authority of the Garuda Purana, with the accent falling on strict exclusivity of the object.

A grammatical and scriptural defining of eka-bhakti as the one Lord and no other.

It is an idiom of exceeding dearness, like calling a beloved "my very self," not a literal collapse of the worshipper into the worshipped.

Difference between devotee and Lord is preserved even in liberation.

One attains the Lord only after knowing through many births, and the Lord and the soul stay distinct.

Realization comes the moment knowledge arises, not after a further delay.

Their own nature alone, meaning the particular individual disposition and latent impression of each soul, is what governs them, not the one root Prakriti taken in general.

A close lexical gloss of 'by their own nature,' answering how the one Prakriti can be called individual.

The form here is Brahma and the other deities, whose worshippers gain only a finite fruit, and not the Lord's own forms as Rama and Krishna, whose devotees gain endlessness.

Refers to lesser deities like Brahma, not the Lord's own forms.

The finite fruit belongs to worshippers of lesser gods like Brahma, not to those who grasp the Lord's own root form; an incarnational body such as Rama or Krishna yields no finite result.

Distinguishes which form is meant, separating the supreme form from the lesser deities.

He is called bodied only in a secondary sense; he merely seems to have an effect-body but is never subject to one.

On the seeming body.

He hides by his own will; yoga is his power as means and maya a distinct power beside it, two real things and not one collapsed term.

Reads 'by yoga' and 'by maya' as naming two things, against the Advaitin gloss that yoga itself is maya.

Two doubts are set aside: maya does not bind the Lord into ignorance, and 'no one' rules out even the highest being like Brahma knowing him by their own power.

The decisive qualifier is 'by his own power'; grace-given knowing does not contradict the praise of the man of knowledge.

From the time of creation, while there is a body, desire is present; before that there is only ignorance, so the delusion of the pairs is an intermediate cause, not the root.

On the delusion as an intermediate cause, not the root.

The verse names a distinct class of those free of pair-delusion, preserving the path of liberation that universal delusion would otherwise wipe out.

As interpretive precision.

This desire is named only to set aside lesser cravings; motiveless love that asks for nothing stands higher than desired release.

The Self is known only to the one the Lord chooses.

The chapter teaches what is to be done at the hour of death and the path then reached, all of it the Lord's own greatness.

Stating the chapter's subject rather than parsing terms.

The verse belongs to the chapter on death, the duty owed at death, and the goal reached, and it sets out the greatness of the Lord as that goal.

Places the verse by the chapter's architecture rather than word-gloss.

Svabhava is the living being's own constant being, distinct from the changing inner organ and from the Lord; karma is the Lord's own creative activity.

Adds 'supreme' to bar Veda and prakriti; rejects tying karma to the unseen merit of cake-offering.

The categories stay real and even the unmanifest falls under the perishable; the qualifier in this body is added precisely to remove the inference that the lord of sacrifice is anything other than the Lord.

Guarding the reality of the distinctions while affirming the Lord as enjoyer of all sacrifice.

You attain a being in the Lord, a bliss free of all pain, never identity with Him on whom you always depend.

'My being' must be qualified by 'free of pain,' or it would not be a newly won fruit.

The wise one, treating the body all along as a thing to be cast off, feels no pain at death and departs with awareness intact, so remembrance does not fail.

Answering how anyone can remember amid death's agony.

For the wise one who all along treats the body as a thing to be cast off, death brings no pain to wipe out remembrance, so no doubt about the final thought remains.

On the simultaneity of remembering and dying.

The words divine and supreme fix the object as the Lord Himself and rule out any lesser cosmic deity like Hiranyagarbha.

On the reading that anchors the object by scriptural etymology.

Every mark belongs to the supreme Self alone and to no lesser being; his omniscience and upholdership are uniquely his by scripture, and his grace carries beings to the goal.

On each epithet as a qualifier of the Lord in particular.

The breath-fixing is the special path of the breath-conquering yogi, not a rule for all; the devotee complete in knowledge and love is freed without it.

On whether breath-conquest is universal or one practitioner's route.

The goal is the supreme abode of Vishnu, the reality reached by seekers of release, not the syllable Om itself.

Resists reading the verse as gradual release through Om-worship.

"In the heart" means Narayana himself, not a bodily organ; where the breath is, there the mind and the Lord rest.

Without the channel of Brahman one departs elsewhere and reaches another place without release.

Breath-restraint is named again because here the channels through which the breath moves are taken up; 'iti' is read as 'because', and the soul departs upward to the sun.

Works mainly at the grammatical and structural level.

Ever-joined and yogin are kept distinct: ever-joined means one who always holds the means, and yogin means one whose yoga is thereby complete.

Madhva, Jayatīrtha.

From Brahma's seat on Meru and the human world downward there is no escape from return, but worlds above that do not return; even so, release comes only by reaching the Lord born of Vasudeva.

Reads the phrase as a downward boundary.

Here "thousand" means simply "many"; the verse points to the supreme dissolution at the close of Brahma's whole lifespan, and even the Lord's own actionless state can be called His night.

On Madhva and Jayatirtha's reading of sahasra as "many" rather than a literal count.

The dissolution chiefly meant is the great one at the close of Brahma's life; since the supreme Hari has no day or night, his actionless state is the night and the Self is the beginningless cause of both.

Lifts the verse from cosmology to the supreme Lord; 'thousand' means simply 'many'.

Only at the great dissolution is every effect undone; the supreme Brahman, being eternal, has no literal night.

Scope of the dissolution; day and night belong to Brahmā, not the eternal Brahman.

The unmanifest names the personal Lord Vishnu Himself, and the abode in the companion verse is His own luminous form, not an impersonal ground.

The word unmanifest denotes Him, by scriptural usage and the back-reference to having come to Me.

The word 'unmanifest' truly denotes the Lord himself, not merely fitted to him by reasoning, and 'abode' is what lets the unmanifest be called his own seat.

Reading the sense back from the earlier verses on 'coming to Me'.

The word supreme is doing real work here, declaring that devotion stands above every other means and is not merely one among them.

On why the verse repeats devotion.

Time means the presiding deities of time, by whose passing the departed go to return or non-return; fire and smoke are included alongside the time-divisions.

Each stage is a genuinely distinct presiding deity, the half-year's deity distinct from the months', and the soul goes standing together with each one as it is led to Keshava.

Stresses the real distinctness of the conducting deities.

Knowing the paths alone does not free you; you must know their means and actually practise them, for the verse names a yogin, one who practises.

The delusion is forgetting the Lord; its cure is attaining Him through practised means.

The praise falls on the Lord himself, who rules the senses from within; his greatness is learned from scripture, never from perception.

Read as a portrait of God rather than a method.

He pervades everything by a form beyond the senses, so the Lord fills all places and still goes unseen.

Read as the answer to why the all-pervading one is not visible everywhere.

Beings do abide in the Lord; what is denied is touch, for nothing reaches him through the senses, and he is known by scripture alone.

For the reading that keeps the Lord and souls eternally distinct.

Beings truly abide in the Lord, yet no quality of theirs passes over to him; the supported stays genuinely other than its support.

On the reading that the simile exists to rule out any exchange of attributes.

The verse stands apart from its neighbors, unfolding for its own sake the knowledge that the Lord causes dissolution by taking hold of his own nature.

Read as an independent teaching, not as proof of the surrounding argument.

He leans on nature as a strong walker leans on a staff in play; the genuine doer creates from freedom, never from need.

For a Lord whose power is nowhere lacking or hindered.

He is not literally indifferent, for agency is his very nature; his freedom lies in acting with no attachment, no concern, no effort.

On the reading that the world and his action in it are fully real.

He is no cause in name only; he himself sees and actually prompts nature, which has no independence whatsoever.

On the reading that overseeing names an act, not a standing-by.

The body only appears human; the maker of all bodies is never bound by one, and his descent-forms are full and beginningless.

On the reading that nothing material ever touches the Lord.

Nothing a hater of the Lord hopes for arrives, and no other god can grant him liberation; hatred is never a path to the Lord.

For those settled in enmity toward the Lord.

The highest order of souls, the gods, are shown here so that their very nature establishes that they never hate the Lord.

On the reading that souls stand in a fixed, graded order.

Knowing him as one means the one Nārāyaṇa present everywhere, never the soul's identity with God; the distinction stays real.

On the reading that a contemplation of identity is itself false.

He is the indwelling essence and supreme controller of every element named, never its flat identity with him.

On the reading that 'I am the sapidity in waters' sets the model.

The goal means the destination of the liberated, and every role stands on a cited scriptural word, not on derivation alone.

For seekers of liberation rather than the fruits of works.

Effect and cause are both real and both under his control, while Brahman himself stands beyond the existent and the non-existent.

For the worshipper who must never collapse the Lord into the world.

Though the Lord enjoys every rite, worship offered knowingly to Krishna wins a fruit higher and more excellent than the rites of the three Vedas.

For weighing the devotee's reward against the ritualist's.

Even though the Lord is the enjoyer in every sacrifice, His own worshippers reap a fruit higher and more excellent than anything the Vedic ritualists obtain.

On the reading that the verse answers a doubt about the Lord being every rite's enjoyer.

To think of no other is one-pointedness, not oneness; the servant beholds a Lord forever distinct, and that seeing is his gain and his security.

For those collected in one-pointed service of him.

Even worship of other gods is received by the Lord, so he remains the enjoyer of every sacrifice while the fruits still differ.

Read as the defense of the earlier word that he is the enjoyer everywhere.

Each kind of worship bears its own fruit, and every worshipper goes to the very object chosen.

Read as an elaboration of the chapter's earlier teaching on differing fruits.

Devotion alone satisfies Him, yet the offering must truly be made to Him and not given however one pleases.

For the weak who fear His greatness puts worship beyond their reach.

The line states a conclusion: since the means of reaching Govinda have already been laid out, therefore offer whatever you do.

Read as the settled conclusion of the chapter's argument.

To be in him is to be in his power; worship turns an unchosen dependence into a deliberate, meditative belonging.

On the reading that every soul is always dependent on the Lord.

Hardly ever; real devotion and vile conduct resist each other, and only one whom old merit has ripened into devotion is meant.

On the reading that 'even if' guards against a false impression.

Real devotion and great evil never dwell together, so the swift change here belongs to gods, their portions, and great sages, not the crooked pretender.

On the reading that devotion itself causes bad conduct to subside.

The glories are spoken for worship, and the Lord himself fashions the surpassing excellence found in intellects and seers.

For the hearer whose grief has given way to delight in the Lord's words.

Since no knower in any world has ever known a birth of his, he has none; the Lord is wholly unborn.

On the reading that 'origin' here means his origination of the world.

'Beginningless' is no bare negation; the Lord is the impeller and origin of all, and his lordship is what parts him from souls that may also be called unborn.

Read as guarding the eternal difference between the Lord and the soul.

Knowledge is cognition, intelligence the settling of what to do; calm is the intellect resting on the supreme Self, restraint the curbing of sense.

On the reading that no word in the list repeats another's work.

Only contentment asks fresh explanation here, the settled sense of having enough; the rest stands explained already.

Read as continuous with the list begun in the verse before.

'Of My being' means born from Me alone; Krishna is the inner controller of Brahmā, so even Brahmā's mind-born sons are born from Krishna, the doorway never the source.

Read as a statement of causation, not of dwelling within the Lord.

Everything from Brahmā down to the smallest creature depends on the Lord for being, action, knowledge, and power, and knowing this dependence makes devotion grow.

Voiced here by Baladeva, since the dedicated Dvaita commentator left no comment on this verse.

The fruit of knowing is stated a second time on purpose, to plant firm faith in what the previous verse already promised.

Read as confirmation rather than repetition.

The fruit already promised is told again so that the hearer comes to trust it.

For the hearer whose faith in the promise still wavers.

Brahman names the wholly full one, great and making others full; the Lord is all-pervading because by his own power he becomes manifold.

Read through the grammatical derivation of the divine names.

Each title is weighed with exact care: the Lord is supreme Brahman, great and making full, other than Brahmā, lord by mighty becoming and all-pervading by becoming manifold.

Read as a precise derivation of the names the verse rests on.

The Lord is the supreme Brahman, great and making all full, who by His own might becomes manifold and so pervades all.

Read at the level of the words themselves, with grammar and scripture as guides.

He is unborn from beginningless time, and He afflicts the round of rebirth; that is what the name Janardana declares.

On the reading that scripture alone fixes what the name means.

The meaning of the name Vishnu itself: the one who pervades all things, enters into them, and strides across them.

On the reading that the verse unfolds why this name fits the supreme.

Kapila is the Lord himself; the very name says bliss, the protector, the one into whom the world dissolves.

Read as a hidden teaching about the supreme Lord.

Jayatīrtha's comment here continues the unfolding of the name Kapila from the neighboring verse and gives no separate reading of the horse, the elephant, or the king.

The name Rama itself names the Lord: bliss in form, without measure, the one in whom the whole world delights.

Read as an unfolding of the name rather than a choice between Ramas.

Its principal commentator passes over this verse in silence, leaving only the shared plain reading.

Beneath the clan name lies the root vas, to dwell: he who covers all, houses all, and dwells in all; even Vyāsa names the all-pervader.

Read as etymology rather than as a family name.

Nothing stands without him because his endless forms pervade all things, while he remains forever distinct from the world.

On the reading that dependence never erases the difference between Lord and world.

High gods like Indra and Rudra are joined to a mere fragment, but the Boar, Krishna, Rama, and Kapila are the Lord himself in essence.

Read alongside the scriptures that name these descents as the Lord in person.

Krishna's question discards nothing; it sets the knowledge of his pervading form above the still precious knowledge of his particulars.

Read as a familiar idiom of praise by comparison.

The brief word that the Lord upholds all with one fragment could not yet be meditated upon, so the chapter restates and displays His own real form in full, that meditation on it become possible.

Read as guarding against the notion that the universal form is something maya merely fashioned.

Calling Him Prabhu means the able one, the one whose surpassing power can make even what lies beyond the senses visible.

Read with the lexicon and scripture that set no being higher than that everlasting Person.

The Lord's body is itself non-material and can stand at once in countless places, so showing this form is no strain for him.

On the reading that grounds the name Hari in scripture.

The count must not be taken literally. 'Thousand' names the endless, and only conveys the idea, the way one calls a hero's valour comparable to Indra's. Scripture, which calls the Lord of endless splendour and beyond, governs the sense.

On the reading that scripture's settled wording must govern an ambiguous line.

It is literally true: scripture affirms a Lord of genuinely endless forms, each form itself beyond measure.

Read as a claim settled by authoritative texts, not by everyday inference.

Fire and sun were offered only as a help to the listener; the word immeasurable is set down precisely to keep no one from mistaking the comparison for a measured limit, since in truth the brightness is unbounded.

Read as answering whether the simile shrinks the Lord's glory.

That the moon and sun are his eyes names a relation of effect to cause, of supported to support, not plain sameness; the moon was born of his mind, the sun came to be from his eye.

On the reading that the gods rest in him without collapsing into identity.

The form is not fearful by its own nature; some delight in it, and the terror belongs only to some, at some time, from a particular cause.

On the reading that scripture records joy, not fear, in steady seeing.

Arjuna is not ignorant of who the Lord is; he has just called him Vishnu, the imperishable supreme. Like a man who knows another's name and face yet asks 'who are you?' to learn his station, Arjuna asks to learn some further attribute, not to question the Lord's identity.

On the reading that Arjuna already knows the Lord's essential nature.

Time is a name of Vishnu Himself, the dark Person who binds, severs, and knows, and grown great does not mean He ever increases, for He neither grows nor wanes.

For the One who is everlasting and beginningless, never swelling from small to great.

This is the last step of a layered reassurance: earlier verses showed gain on either outcome, and now even the apprehension of defeat itself is removed.

Read against Arjuna's doubt in 2.6 whether they would win or lose.

Lord of the senses carries a second sense: His hair is the rays of sun, moon, and fire, by which He awakens the world, and from that waking its gladness arises.

Read on the Mokṣa-dharma gloss of keśa as the regulated rays.

The world of existent and non-existent is called Krishna only because he gives it its being, not because it is the same as him; he stays the distinct bestower.

On the reading grounded in the Mahabharata, where dependence is causal and identity is blocked.

The world is called his only because he gives it existence and all depend on him; its total dependence is affirmed without its difference from him being erased.

For guarding against flattening every distinction into one.

The world is called Krishna because He gives it its existence, and in no other sense, keeping a real distinction between the Lord and the world He sustains.

Read with verses 37 through 40 together, guarding the surrounding sense.

The world is called the Lord because he gives it existence and it depends on him, not because it simply is him without distinction; he remains the everlasting reality the world rests on.

On the reading that the title must not contradict the surrounding verses.

Eka is not alone at all; split into its syllables it says the Lord alone makes everything act, there is no other agent, even here in the apology.

On the reading that the plain alone construction is strained.

Let there be no distress, for the slaying of Bhishma and the rest is the Lord's own act in his anger at their silence; the deed does not rest on Arjuna.

Read for why the reassurance is needed at all.

Both the cosmic form and the gentle form are equally his; the word own only registers how the milder shape looks to deluded eyes, not that the cosmic form is foreign.

On the reading that guards against inferring the universal form was not truly his.

My work is concrete loving service, building and tending the Lord's temple and grove and being steeped in the nine flavors of devotion; he attains the human-formed Krishna himself and no other.

Read in the devotional register that keeps the Lord distinct.

The unmanifest names a real being, Shri or Lakshmi, whose worship the Veda calls a means to release. The two worshippers serve the Lord and serve Shri, two distinct beings, not one reality read twice.

On the reading that taking both objects as one Lord would make the question babble.

The seven qualifiers describe māyā, primordial Nature, not Brahman; worship of her, rightly understood as resting on the Lord, still serves as a means to liberation.

On the reading that the markless principle named here is prakṛti.

The Imperishable here is not the supreme Lord but primal Nature; its worshippers gain liberation only in a derived sense, never matching the Lord's direct devotees.

Read so that the Lord's supremacy and His devotees' rank are preserved.

The unmanifest is only a door, never the end; worship of the Lord alone gives release, demands stringent means, and is eased because the Lord Himself supplies the means to the devotee.

On the reading that takes the goal here to mean the way by which one goes.

The one-pointed devotee, forever distinct from and dependent on the Lord, holds no other deity; the Lord alone is his goal, and such devotion carries no toil at all.

On the reading that 'undivided yoga' marks the absence of any rival worship.

The verse settles an earlier doubt: where the worshippers of the unmanifest are shown great toil, the Lord's own devotees, held in a regard given nowhere else, are spared that labor and lifted without long delay.

Read as the scriptural support that confirms the surrounding promise.

What is truly commended is renunciation joined with meditation, not bare renunciation; release does not follow mere letting go but meditation that carries it.

On the reading that the praise names relinquishment as meditation's helper.

Each mark names a continuing quality, not an occasional one, and none of them merely repeats a neighbor; the whole passage expands the earlier call to cast all one's actions on God.

Read as a defense that no term in the list is wasted or redundant.

The dharma is Vishnu himself and what does not swerve from him; the practice is nectar because it destroys death and rebirth, the very opposite of death.

On a word-analysis taking dharma as that which has Vishnu for its object.

The chapter gathers four scattered topics into one place, knowledge, the knowable, the field, and the person, and then carefully tells them apart, so the stress falls on real, sustained distinction among them, never on any collapse of the knower into the supreme.

Read as the chapter's plan for ordering four earlier topics.

The clause means from whom, not from what: by whose impelling the field is set in motion, since it has no motion of its own, and who he is then names that impeller separately so no word of the verse merely repeats another.

On the reading that every and in the verse must carry a distinct meaning.

It means Bādarāyaṇa's Brahma-sūtra treatise in its plain established sense, nothing more figurative.

Read so the three named sources stay distinct and the verse avoids pointless repetition.

Desire and the rest are the modifications; what was listed before them is the field proper. The verse sorts the long inventory into base and changes.

Read as a labeling key resolving which items the earlier summary left ambiguous.

The terms are glossed tightly with lexical authority: pretence is showing greatness while knowing one's own smallness, and uprightness is the agreement of mind, speech, and body, so that it works as a genuine means to knowledge by lying on the good path.

Read as an answer to why these marks, absent from the chapter's six announced topics, are introduced here.

The two terms are not synonyms: attachment is fondness, and clinging is that very fondness grown to its full pitch, one bond named at two stages of intensity.

Read as a precise lexical distinction between the terms.

Seeing the aim of truth-knowledge means the discernment of scripture, the reflective study of revelation that leads on to direct realization.

Read as supplying the word 'of scripture' so this study counts among the means and is not mistaken for knowledge itself.

'Anadimat' carries real force: free of beginnings, free of a body, senses, qualities, and activities; and there is no real difference between this Brahman and the personal Lord.

Read as fulfilling the chapter's promise to declare who he is and what his power is.

They affirm: He makes all the senses and their qualities shine forth, and the very word 'all' signals a real possession of power and distinction, not its denial.

On the reading where freedom from senses denies only ordinary worldly instruments, supplying the word supreme.

Among beings that are truly many and distinct, he alone abides as one, only seeming divided in each, sole everywhere by his own sovereign majesty.

On the reading that the difference between beings is real while he stays one.

The means to knowledge is placed early to show its inclusion among the modifications; the Lord's unworldly power is named beside it because that power needs the means of knowledge to come within the intellect's grasp.

Read as a question of why the teaching follows this order.

The field is everything other than the Lord, conscious and unconscious alike; nature here takes in the twenty-four principles, spirit means the individual self, and the qualities are named separately on purpose though they too belong to the field. The three strands are both effect and not effect, not merely pleasure, pain, and delusion.

Read as a statement made in brief, since the spirit is taken up again later.

Agency genuinely belongs to the conscious person, never to lifeless nature; where the verse credits nature it speaks figuratively, naming it as the transforming material, and experiencing belongs to spirit alone.

On the reading that the insentient can change but never act or feel.

The higher Person is the Lord, forever distinct from the individual self; the consenter actively approves each act, not merely permits it. Scripture's oneness is figurative, by reflection, never literal identity.

On the reading that the self is a dependent reflection of the Lord.

The goal seen is the Lord himself, and sankhya cannot mean Kapila's discrimination of nature and spirit, since that system is non-Vedic; it means scriptural knowledge of the Lord's own form. The ripening runs in a fixed order: the doer of action sees through hearing, then knowing, then meditating, and without this ripening no seeing arises at all.

On the reading that scripture fixes the sequence of stages.

Meditation and the rest are not means by themselves; the ascending paths are stated for seekers of differing stages, including those unable to attain the vision directly, who must also perform works.

Read as a correction of how the earlier verse's terms are taken.

The restatement isolates the Lord's own attribute, which is equality, from the shared attributes of nature and spirit, so it is not redundant.

Read as a verse that names the proper attribute of the Lord apart from the conjoined pair.

The word thus is not idle: to truly see the non-doer self is bound together with seeing the supreme Lord, so the two seeings stand as one.

On the reading that keeps the verse's precise construction intact.

The one in which all beings stand is Viṣṇu, and their spreading out is their origination from him; they are grounded in and arise from the personal Lord, who stays distinct from them.

For beings read as originating from the Lord.

The denials refuse only worldly doing and worldly form, not the Self's real being; being beginningless and not made of the qualities, it cannot perish or be smeared.

Read as ruling out the worldly mode alone.

The phrase means liberation from beings and from Nature, both real; the verse points to its means, the humility and the rest the chapter named earlier.

On the reading that splits the compound grammatically and keeps Nature real.

They cross beyond the connection with the strands by the means this chapter teaches, while the Lord stands throughout as the giver of knowledge who brings that means about.

Read as the announcement of the means, the chapter's governing subject.

The great Brahman is not inert ignorance but a conscious presiding power, the goddess who rules over matter and its qualities. 'My womb' does not name the Lord's own essential nature, which would make her his mother; it names his consort, the womb that holds the seed, a sense fixed by the rest of the verse. This conscious goddess is herself free of all suffering, her seeming sorrows only a staged showing.

On the reading that 'my womb' means the Lord's consort, not his own nature.

The binding is a genuine condition to be cut. Naming it first makes the soul recognize 'I am bound', and that recognition alone awakens the wish to learn the means of release.

Read as the doorway that motivates the practice of liberation.

Passion is the source from which craving and attachment arise, not the effect produced out of them.

For fidelity to the teaching that the strands are born of nature and produce their effects.

Unknowing is the effect, not the cause: darkness comes first, and ignorance arises from it.

On the reading that reverses the compound, supported by 14.17 where delusion springs from tamas.

The pain of rajas is a small happiness mixed with pain, not sorrow alone; otherwise tamas, which the next verse sends downward, could not be the more painful of the two.

On the reading that scripture grants rajas a measure of both happiness and pain.

The qualities are the proximate, changing agents within nature, but the ultimate independent doer is the Lord himself; the verse denies independent agency to the individual self, not to God.

Read so that no created thing is made the sole agent, against scripture's word on the Lord's agency.

The gunas are not the sole independent agents; the supreme Lord's agency must be upheld alongside their working, for scripture declares it.

On the doctrinal point that the gunas alone do not act.

Toward the gross, worldly effects he is mostly free of liking and hating, but he still longs for the subtle clarity whose object is the Lord.

On the reading that splits the strands into gross and subtle, and holds the subtle desire to remain.

He holds a measured evenness of attitude, not a flat doctrine that pleasure and pain are in every way the same thing.

Read to head off the misreading that all experiences are identical in nature.

His sameness in honor and dishonor is real equanimity, not a flat claim that pleasure and pain are in every way identical.

On the qualified sense of sameness signalled earlier.

Here Brahman means prakriti, called the Lord's womb in this chapter; becoming Brahman means becoming dear to Him as prakriti is dear.

On the reading that one thing cannot turn into another.

Here Brahman means māyā, not the supreme reality; saying I am its foundation shows the Lord stands above and distinct from what he supports, never collapsing into it.

On the reading that founder and founded cannot be the same thing.

The one on high is Viṣṇu, highest of all by scriptural authority, and the world is a real order that ever renews its pattern under him; that ordered constancy is its imperishability.

For the reading that grounds each word in grammar and scripture and keeps the world real.

The roots are not impressions of attachment and aversion at all; that reading breaks the sequence under way. They are the forms of the Lord and of nature, and the Lord too is called connected with action, since He gives each being its fruit according to its own deeds.

On the reading that the roots cannot be impressions without contradicting the passage.

The weapon is knowledge joined with non-attachment, the two as one instrument; cutting is discernment, not the world's destruction. Through it you perceive Vishnu abiding at the root as the tree's beginning, middle, and end.

On the reading that knowledge alone frees, and frees only the one who discerns.

Taking refuge in the Lord alone is the one indispensable means; the first-person phrasing is read as a command, let him take refuge.

On the reading that one must first take refuge in the root of the universe before inquiry into it can awaken knowledge.

Krishna is supplying yet another means toward the same end; the path to knowing Brahman runs through pondering the universe and through taking refuge in Him, and this verse adds a further means on that one road.

Read very briefly as a further means stated by Krishna.

The abode is the Lord's own form, neither a mere place nor a mere radiance, and attaining Him is the true human goal.

Read by supplying own form into a passage whose connection is otherwise unclear.

It is the Lord alone who, taking up the soul and its senses, carries it on; the self never migrates by its own power, but depends on him in gaining a body, in acting, and in departing.

On the reading that the word 'draws' must not be allowed to suggest the self's independence.

The Lord too enjoys through the senses, but only the pure quality in each object, never the impure, since sin does not reach the gods.

Read as speaking of the Lord and not the bound soul alone.

The teaching is restated here to settle why the indweller is still not seen: the soul is genuinely present, not absent and not replaced by some other ruler in the body, and the failure to see it lies wholly in delusion.

Read as the link that joins this verse to the ones that follow.

The repeated 'striving' simply rules out reading the yogins as some further, separate cause. And since a self cannot literally be uncreated or unmade, 'self' here means the intellect, and 'unmade' means impure, for the verb 'to make' is used elsewhere in the sense of cleansing.

For the line read as guarding against a misreading of its grammar.

The radiance displays the supremacy of the distinct inner-controller; the luminaries manifest His glory, and their light is never one with a single consciousness.

On the reading that keeps the Lord forever distinct from what He rules.

The Lord alone is the true cause of digestion, resting in the belly with the fire as his body and acting as its helper, while he stays distinct from the fire that does the work.

On the reading that keeps Lord and fire forever distinct.

Not author of the Upanishads but maker of the inquiry into Brahman: the ascertaining of the Veda's meaning is the Vedanta, and he founds it.

Read with care to block taking the title as authorship of the Upanishadic texts.

The imperishable is prakṛti, primordial nature itself, for souls undergo change through happiness and so cannot be the truly fixed.

On the reading that 'being' and 'person' apply to souls too, so the pair cannot mean matter against soul.

Perishable and imperishable must not be read as mere matter and soul; even the seemingly perishable can be called imperishable when free of the net of transmigration, and the Highest Person stands wholly free of that net.

On the reading that being and person apply to souls, not insentient matter alone.

Two stages. Becoming wise is knowing by indirect means; having one's task done is knowing by direct realization.

Read as a graded distinction within the single fruit the verse names.

Austerity here is taken as celibacy and similar disciplines, not the detailed bodily austerity of a later chapter, since reading it that way would make the rest of the list redundant.

On the lexicon's gloss that celibacy and the like is austerity.

Each term is fixed by lexical authority; freedom from slander forbids only harmful reporting meant to injure, so naming a pupil's fault for his instruction is not slander at all.

On the reading that the defining mark is the intent to harm.

Forbearance is the not returning of anger, fault, and injury to one who has wronged you, kept distinct from the freedom from anger already named so neither term is wasted.

For the reading that fixes each quality by the lexicon to secure its distinctness.

Not born aiming at it but born as its mark: since Arjuna already holds the divine nature, he cannot be merely heading toward it.

On the reading that the verb cannot take the accusative directly.

The verse condemns all who refuse Vishnu as the world's cause, since the world's truth, foundation, and Lord are Vishnu himself. The asura denies mutual origination, which the Lord himself has taught, so the censure falls on the denial, not on mutual arising.

Read with the world's truth and foundation identified with Vishnu.

Insatiability belongs to desire essentially, never by accident, which is exactly why desire reliably drives a person onto the demonic path.

On the reading that dushpura is doing logical work, not decorating the line.

The Lord's indwelling and impelling does not excuse the asura; one who pleads it to justify his idleness or enmity only goes ever downward into unending fall.

On the objection that the inner causer should bear the doer's blame.

Scripture is authority because the Veda is faultless and not made by any person who can err; knowing the enjoined and forbidden, abandon the forbidden and do the enjoined for the welfare of the world.

On the reading that the Veda's authorless faultlessness is what grounds its command.

The one asked about is merely ignorant of the rule, never its hostile opponent; otherwise the threefold question and the chapter's threefold answer would make no sense.

For one who let the rule go only because he never came to know it.

Since ignorance is common to all these worshippers and so cannot distinguish them, Krishna divides instead by their faith, resting their standing on that.

Read as the logical move that answers the previous verse's question.

Sattva, here the mind, points past the mind to consciousness itself, so the verse teaches the nature of the living self who holds the faith, not merely the nature of faith.

On the reading that mind indicates the jiva behind it.

The changeless Lord cannot be made thin at all, so the tormenting is a defective seeing of Him: whoever fails to see the supreme Person rightly is called His tormentor and an exceeding sinner.

Read as a flaw in vision, not a literal wasting of the Lord.

Two near words are kept apart: priti is the love of the moment of eating, hridya the charm of mind that stays once tasting is over. And lasting does not mean the food endures; freshly and fully cooked at the time of eating, it confers its good on the body for long.

On the reading that the connective here means but, setting aside the obvious sense of lasting.

Silence is the state of the muni, the disposition to reflect and to investigate the meaning of scripture by reasoning.

For one who takes the direct sense of the word over an implied one.

Brahman here means the supreme Vishnu, and the name only manifests the beginningless Veda while it truly creates the brahmins.

On the reading that nirdesha is a name, not an act, and the Veda is authorless.

The word "Tat" applies to sacrifice and the rest just as it does to Brahman; the seeker forgoes the heaven and rewards the Veda promises while still doing those Vedic acts.

Read with the renunciation fixed as letting no fruit of the act be one's own.

Sad-bhava points to Brahman's power of bringing the world to birth; rites are images bearing His name, and when one utters Om without craving fruit, Brahman Himself comes to dwell in the work.

On the reading that the three names belong first to Brahman and only derivatively to the rites that image Him.

Both the steadfastness and the action carry Brahman as their meaning, so the name "Sat" points through them to the Lord.

Read tightly with the preceding verse on what "Sat" already named.

Faith here means devotion that aims the act at Brahman, the Supreme. The sacred designations bring Him to bear, so the act carries His form and, through His being pleased, becomes "sat"; an act with no aim at Him and no faith stays barren.

On the reading that faith is explicitly theistic, devotion to the Lord.

Both gather up in brief the means that is knowledge, and the chapter still breaks fresh ground in the three qualities to come.

Read as the final chapter drawing the whole teaching together.

Because the first camp is honored as wise, its view must be read charitably; what it drops is the fruit of sacrifice, not the acts themselves, so the two halves do not really clash.

On the reading that the honorific the wise forbids dismissal.

Sacrifice, giving, and austerity must be performed by everyone, even the highest renunciants, so any word here that seems to forbid them is settled by a difference of qualification, not by exempting the renouncer.

Read as harmonizing this verse with scripture on the orders of life.

The line is supplied as a reason: since no embodied one can abandon action, the definition of renunciation as giving up fruit is the only coherent one, rooting out the contrary view.

Read as a logical clincher for the definition already settled.

The verse simply praises relinquishment; the absence of fruit is release from rebirth itself, a release the Gita has already established earlier, not a new positive reward.

Read as resting on the chapter's prior teaching of peace through renunciation.

The self is a genuine agent but not the sole one; the conceit to drop is being the only doer, not agency itself.

Read as a fuller account of renunciation, against denying agency outright.

The doer here is Vishnu, the soul acting only by a dependent agency; so the fifth is not the indwelling Lord and not the helping deities, which the other factors already cover, but the adrishta, the unseen merit and demerit of past deeds.

On the reading that the soul has no agency of its own.

The supreme agency rests with the Lord, and the soul acts only in a dependent sense; independent agency is denied it, and effort of mind, working through past impressions, belongs among the genuine factors of every act.

On the deeper analysis of what the five factors are.

The word alone here means inactive, not solitary. Scripture calls the self pure for its actionlessness, and the rebuke implies the self works with an assisting power.

On the reading that takes kevala to carry the sense of inactivity.

From praising the one who knows himself to be the inactive non-cause; bondage tracks the residue of doership exactly, so even a slight conceit of being the doer leaves a slight binding.

On the reading that any remaining bondage marks remaining ego.

The soul truly acts, yet only in dependence on the Lord who dwells within as the real prompter; the triad is named the prompter only by figure of speech, for the soul's seeming independence holds over insentient things alone and its supposed self-rule is a conceit born of delusion.

On the reading that injunctions bind the soul because its agency is real but God-dependent.

Restating the guna-distinctions serves liberation, and the reckoning of the gunas ultimately points to the Vedic enumeration, not a merely sectarian authority.

On the question of what authority is being invoked.

The one being is Vishnu, the Lord, present in and across all beings. The verse does not assert a single self identical in all creatures; it points to the one God who is everywhere, the imperishable reality underlying the many.

For the question of which one being is meant when the word is left general.

The last mark names one who digs up another's long-past fault and points it out at the wrong moment out of envy, so the trait belongs with cruelty toward others, not with slowness.

Read as grounding why mere delay would mark a person as dark.

Wrongly here does not mean bound to be false; it means nothing guarantees it will be true. This intellect may hit the truth or miss it, with no rule either way. That very absence of any rule of correctness is what marks it as the middle grade and keeps it from collapsing into the lowest, darkened intellect.

Read as fixing why this discernment is of passion and not the lowest, darkened kind.

This perfection is not liberation but a perfection of yoga whose fruit is actionlessness, preparing the release named in the verse that follows.

On the reading that the next verse, entering the Lord, must still have something to give.

Knowing is not itself the means of reaching Brahman; the perfection of knowledge is only the qualification, and the actual means is what the next verses will name.

Read as a promise pointing beyond bare knowing.

The verse speaks in an oblique manner, and its phrasing about going to Him for refuge by His grace must not be taken to diminish that Krishna is himself the supreme Lord.

Read as guarding against a misreading of the indirect form.

What is given up is the fruit of action, not the action itself, since war is being commanded here and could not be enjoined if all action were to cease.

On the reading that 'relinquisher' means one who relinquishes the fruit of action.

They do not gloss the words but close with a prayer that the all-pervading Vishnu, before whom the weavers of illusion are as moths, be pleased with the work.

Read as the commentary's closing dedication.