Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'akshara' as the partless, attributeless supreme Brahman, and they make a careful point about how a vision with form can reveal the formless. One develops it as the saguna (with-attributes) form indicating the nirguna (without-attributes) reality, like a fingertip pointing out the moon: the cosmic form with all its expanse is not the final object of knowledge but a pointer to the formless Brahman to-be-known by Vedanta, not merely worshipped. On this reading the verse layers several levels at once: the imperishable supreme Brahman, the universe's dissolution-place as cause, the deathless Lord, the guardian of Vedic dharma as the cosmic Hiranyagarbha, and the 'eternal Person' as the individual Self, so that the cosmic vision is grasped as the oneness of the individual self and Brahman. One source argues from imperishability that the Lord alone is worth knowing: whatever is other than the Imperishable is perishable and is to be abandoned, leaving only Brahman as the true object of knowledge.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here 'akshara' and 'purusha' are read as the supreme Person disclosed in specific Upanishadic texts, the 'two knowledges to be known' and 'the great Person' and 'the Person higher than the high.' These commentators do not collapse the Lord into a formless absolute. They unpack 'avyaya,' undecaying, in a distinctive way: in whatever own form, whatever qualities (gunas), and whatever glory the Lord is, by that very form he abides always, so imperishability belongs to a Lord who genuinely has form, qualities, and glory. The 'eternal Person' is read as the very Lord beheld directly, named with the supreme honorifics, the ornament of the Yadu line now seen face to face. The vision yields not just awe but firm theological naming and recognition.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators insist on the grammatical gender of the terms to fix the doctrine. One reads 'akshara' as a qualifier of Brahman, to be known by the knowers, and links it to 'that thou art' and to 'sanatanah purushah,' arguing that the unmanifest cause here is marked precisely as 'purusha,' masculine, and is therefore not the feminine-gendered unmanifest nature (avyakta-prakriti) that some other schools name as ultimate; the very designation refuses any confusion of the cosmic imperishable with prakriti. The other develops the verse as a sequence of the Lord's own-forms: the imperishable own-form is the cause of all arising; the supreme moksha-formed receptacle is where the world is laid down; the guardian protects eternal dharma; and yet the Lord is not made of the gunas but is imperishable and eternal, the chief and settled view being that he is the sanatana Purusha, the Purushottama, the highest Person.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator frames the verse first as method: the meaning taught in the previous chapter is here asked about so as to be made directly seen, because a meaning grasped through the sequence of instruction becomes clear only when it is borne up by direct awareness, which is the very purpose of these speeches beginning with 'You are the imperishable.' He then reads 'guardian of the eternal dharma' as guardian of the dharma of the Satvatas, the people in whom there is a true reality (sat) consisting in the non-appearance of any difference between action and knowledge, a reality at once of pure being and of the nature of light; their dharma, bent on the unceasing taking-up and laying-down, has creation and dissolution for its field and rises above every path, and that is the dharma the Lord guards. He calls this the secret of the chapter, grasped of itself by those of sympathetic heart who have the instruction.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as the devotee's discovery that the supreme Brahman of the Upanishads stands before him as the personal Lord. One puts it directly: inside the cosmic form the devotee finds that the very supreme Brahman of the scriptures is present as Vasudeva, and the cosmic form does not displace the imperishable but confirms it. They keep the standard glosses, 'to be known' by the liberated, the 'resting-place' as the place of dissolution, but anchor the 'eternal, ancient Person' in scriptural mantras about the cause and lord of the lords of causes who has no begetter and no lord above him. One renders the whole in soaring devotional terms: the Immutable Brahman beyond the syllables of Om, the original home in which all space dwells, the very life-blood of religion, the Eternal Supreme Person now seen, the crown of all known essences.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators keep the verse close to the seeker's practice and experience. One expands 'treasure-house' as abode, refuge, and substratum of the universe, the reason all beings are preserved and protected, the inexhaustible source to whom the devotee turns at all times, and warns that those who ignore this divine treasure-house and chase the shadow of sense-objects are deluded; he reads 'to be known' as known by aspirants through hearing, reflection, and meditation, and 'avyaya' as inexhaustible, unchanging, undying. One states the verse plainly as Arjuna's considered judgment that the Lord is the ultimate Knowable, the imperishable Brahman, the support of the cosmos, and the protector of the permanent religion. One identifies the imperishable Brahman as the bliss-natured (paramananda) imperishable that is known through the Vedas, shastras, Puranas, smritis, and the words of saints and liberated knowers, and is called the formless and attributeless (nirguna-nirakara), affirming that the Lord alone is that.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas