Advaita Vedānta

These commentators ground the devotee's freedom from hatred in the vision of non-difference: he sees all beings as the Self, so there is no other to hate, and the scripture is cited, what delusion, what grief for one who sees oneness. On this reading the verses describe the worshipper of the imperishable, formless Brahman (akshara), the seer of non-difference whose task is accomplished. The wider context is read as a deliberate teaching strategy: the earlier censure of the hard path of the imperishable was not meant to reject it but to praise the easier worship of God with attributes for the duller candidate, who first steadies his mind on the with-form Brahman and then has the formless reveal itself, the adjunct gone. One commentator works out a careful difficulty, that the worship of the imperishable and the performance of work cannot both belong to one person at once, since the seer of non-difference experiences no agency, so this catalogue of virtues belongs strictly to such a knower, though the parts not contradicted are meant for all. The renouncer here is the supreme-renunciant wanderer who gives fearlessness to all beings.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the freedom from hatred rests not on seeing all beings as one undivided Self but on a specific way of seeing the injurer: the devotee dwells on the thought that those who hate and harm him do so conforming to his own past wrongdoing and prompted by the Lord, so there is no one to resent. Mine-ness is dropped toward the body, the senses, and what is connected with them, and ego is the conceit of taking the body to be the self, the self being in truth distinct from matter. The pleasure and pain he is even toward are called imagined, the gladness and agitation at their coming; forbearance is named separately as steadiness even at the unavoidable pleasure and pain born of bodily contact. These commentators add that the seven marks are not seven separate disciplines but seven aspects of one single dear-devotee disposition, into the whole of which the candidate is to grow.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as the opening of a list of the qualities by which the devotee swiftly draws the supreme Lord's grace to himself, describing the kinds and natures of devotees. One arranges the three social marks by rank: empty of hatred toward those above him, friendly toward equals, full of pity toward those below. The freedom from hatred toward those who hate is grounded in seeing the harm as the fruit of one's own past action that must inevitably be borne, and in the absence of mine-ness toward son, wife, and the like and of I-ness in the body, so that hatred bears no fruit anywhere; one cites that the devotees of Narayana fear nothing and look with an equal eye on heaven, liberation, and hell alike, and another grounds the friendliness in the thought that these beings have the Supreme Lord as their ground. The Marathi commentator gives vivid similes for the impartial love: the devotee is like the earth that sustains high and low alike, like the life-wind that abides in king and commoner without distinction, and like water that quenches the thirst of cattle and tigers without turning to poison for either.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the marks as the defining signs of pushti, the way of grace, and stress that the deepest cause of such a devotee's dearness is the Lord's own causeless grace rather than his practices, citing the Bhagavata that it is grace at the root that opens an end to the round of becoming. One gives a distinctive ground for the absence of hatred: since all beings are the very stuff of the Lord's play, the devotee is free of hatred even on seeing another's superiority. The social marks are sorted by the other's relation to devotion: friendly toward devotees, compassionate toward those without devotion, knowing for certain the misery of the round of becoming and filled with pity to give them instruction; the word and is read to imply he is never hard-hearted. Mine-ness drops away after the giving of instruction, and ego is emptied by the knowledge of his own pre-eminence; the lofty qualities that arise he does not claim as his own. Pleasure and pain that he is even toward are read as union and separation.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives compact definitions. Friendliness, and likewise compassion, is the freedom from envy. The sense of mine has the form these things are mine, and the sense of I has the form I am noble, I am full of fire, I am forbearing; both of these are absent in him. Patience is a mind free of hatred even toward an enemy who has done him harm. He notes further that such a one is always a yogi, because his inner organ stays at peace even in the midst of ordinary worldly dealings.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators give applied and devotional readings. One calls the eight verses the Amritashtakam, the nectar-octave describing the sage or Bhagavata, and turns it into instruction: God is all-merciful, so one who would commune with God must himself become all-merciful, putting himself in the sufferer's place and feeling the pain himself, and offering all beings full security of life. He uses the same impartiality similes: the devotee is like the sun shedding light equally on palace and cottage, like the river anyone may drink from. The non-sectarian devotional reading roots everything in seeing one's own Lord pervading every being, so that there is no one left to be at odds with, citing Tulsidas, seeing the world as filled with their own lord, with whom should they quarrel. It reframes the four attitudes of the yoga tradition, friendliness, compassion, gladness, and indifference, as folded by the Lord into just two, friendliness and compassion, the devotee being friendly toward both the happy and the virtuous and compassionate toward both the suffering and the sinful; indeed the one who causes harm deserves greater compassion than the sufferer, since the sufferer is being freed of old wrong while the doer is making new wrong. Even the harm done to him is seen as the Lord's auspicious ordering, destroying his old bad karma; and forbearance is read as holding no desire for retribution, wishing that not even God should punish the wrongdoer. It adds a doctrinal note: every being is in its very nature a portion of God, so the least hatred toward any being is hatred toward God himself, and complete love for God cannot stand while any hatred remains.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas