Advaita Vedānta

These commentators ground the evenness in the seeing of one Self without a second. The reason pain and pleasure are equal is that the knower is free of the seeing of duality and so abides in his own Self alone; pleasure and pain are non-self properties and ultimately unreal. One reading notes that from the standpoint of the true knower the very distinction of dear and undear is strictly impossible, so the verse speaks of them only by resorting to the ordinary worldly view. Another draws a finer scheme: in deep absorption (samadhi) he is even in pleasure and pain, and only when he rises from it into ordinary activity does the evenness toward clod, stone, and gold appear; firmness is likened to a hero who, struck by sharp pain, by sheer steadiness experiences it without being bewildered, so the sage experiences pleasure and pain without being moved. On this last reading the three verses together map the marks of the living-liberated, both as he feels them in himself and as others see them in his conduct.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here sva-stha is read as abiding in his own self because his own self alone is dear to him, so he is of even mind even toward the pleasure and pain belonging to birth, death, and the like of his son and others who are other than the self. Toward blame and praise he is even because the merits and faults that occasion them arise from the conceit of being a man and the like wrongly fixed on the self, and he dwells on the fact that none of these has any real connection with himself. Steadiness here means being skilled in discerning the difference between insentient nature (prakriti) and the self. This school explicitly reads the present verse together with the next as a single seven-fold list: the inner field of pleasure and pain and self-abiding, the material field of clod, stone, and gold, the affective field of dear and undear, the verbal field of blame and praise, the social field of honor and dishonor, the relational field of friend and foe, and the field of agency where all undertakings are given up. The one whose inner stance has come to rest across all seven is called gunatita.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators treat the meaning of even-mindedness as already settled in earlier verses and so comment briefly. Their distinctive concern is to head off a misreading: the words 'alike in sorrow and joy' do not teach an attitude that regards pleasure and the like as in every way the same. What is taught is the sense carried by the word for sameness as already qualified earlier (in the manner of the phrase 'for the most part'), that is, a measured evenness of attitude, not a flat doctrine that all experiences are identical in nature.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

This school keeps the language of evenness but recenters it on the Lord and on devotion. For one reader, clod, stone, and gold are alike not by a stoic leveling but because all of them are of the form of the Lord (bhagavad-atmaka); the pleasant and the unpleasant, framed as meeting and parting, stand equal because only the Lord's will (bhagavad-iccha) is primary. On this reading the pair of pleasure and pain becomes the devotee's even-mindedness in union and separation, the very pair around which the taste (rasa) of devotion turns, and dhira names the bearing of the sharp pain of separation (viraha) on which the devotee's rasa stands; even blame from the wicked is, for one who is a devotee, almost of the form of praise. Another reader stresses that the evenness is that of the self-abiding one whose center has shifted off the guna-objects altogether, so the equality is the equality of his inner stance, not a claim that the objects are interchangeable.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators read the evenness as the natural state of one who has returned to his own ground, not the strained equanimity of a struggling practitioner; he is even in these because he is already settled in his own form. Steadiness is read as being skilled in discriminating nature (prakriti) from spirit, and the merits and faults behind blame and praise are seen as not belonging to the Self at all. One of them dwells at length on the vision behind it: the wise one sees that there is nothing in the whole universe but the one Self, as there is nothing in cloth but the thread running through it; the Lord gives equally to friend and foe, and so the sage holds pleasure and pain like a balance with two equal pans. In such a one pleasure and pain abide quietly in the body without making themselves felt, as the noise of a river subsides when it falls into the sea; praised as a god or slandered as base, he is like a heap of ashes that neither burns nor goes out, and from him neither praise nor blame of others issues, as in the house of the sun there is neither darkness nor a lighted lamp.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These voices restate the verse in plain terms and draw out its practical edge. One offers homely images: as day and night have no meaning to a post fixed in the ground, so pleasure and pain have no meaning to a sage who dwells in his own Self; cowdung or gold, jewel or stone are of equal value in his eyes, and he is free of the very idea of giving and taking. Another reads sva-stha as steady in one's own place and lists the same evennesses without elaboration. A third develops the verse at length around the idea that the labels of gunatita are only pointers seen in his so-called body and mind, not the gunatita himself, since whatever has marks belongs to the gunas. He explains that pain and pleasure are the favorable and unfavorable situations that come through past karma (prarabdha), that blame and praise fall mostly on one's name and honor and insult fall on the body, with both of which the gunatita has no identification, so neither dejection nor elation arises in him. He even turns it to counsel: blame thins one's demerit and praise thins one's merit, so the seeker should rather welcome blame; and since each person speaks according to his own nature, we have no right to demand praise rather than blame from anyone.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas