Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read giving up all undertakings as genuine renunciation of action itself. The gunatita is the renouncer who abandons all action except what the mere maintenance of the body occasions. On this reading the portrait belongs to the path of knowledge and renunciation: the very traits described, once practiced by effort and then made firm, are the mark of the ascetic, the one liberated while still living, who has crossed the gunas and is known to his own awareness.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri

Modern

This reading openly rejects the renunciation interpretation. Giving up all undertakings means only that the man's desire-driven activities have ended, because he has realized that it is nature (prakriti) that does everything; it does not mean he stops acting. These marks are the same as those of the steady-in-wisdom of chapter 2 and the devotee of chapter 12, and several of the very adjectives recur in all three places, which shows that whatever path one follows, the perfected person looks the same. Since the firm doctrine that no one can escape doing desireless action holds throughout, the gunatita, like the steady-in-wisdom and the devotee, belongs to the path of action (karma-yoga). On this view the renunciation-school reading of these descriptions as independent and supporting their own doctrine is inconsistent with the surrounding context.

Lokmanya Tilak

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the four-verse portrait as the gunatita of the path of knowledge, and they understand the verse itself in a devotional key. Honor and dishonor are even taken as honor shown by the Lord (Bhagavan) and its opposite, treated alike because everything is received as his own; friend's side and foe's side are alike because both are referred to the Lord, the foes being those the demons consider to belong to him. Giving up all undertakings is read not as an asceticism that drops every action, but as the devotee's relinquishing of all initiative launched for an apparent worldly result; the undertakings dropped are precisely those begun for a seen purpose. This relinquishing is the very mark of one who lets the Lord's will alone be the one who initiates. One of these commentators notes that this fourth verse seals the knowledge-path portrait, after which the Lord will turn to describe the devotional path's own gunatita.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This commentator gathers the whole run of pairs into one closely reasoned chain. The gunatita is even toward pleasure and pain because he abides in his own self, which alone is dear to him, and so is undisturbed by the joys and sorrows of son and others who are not the self. For that very reason he is the same toward a clod, a stone, and gold, and the same toward what is dear and undear. Being skilled in discerning nature from the self, he is even toward praise and blame of himself: the qualities and faults that come of the conceit of being a man and the like have no real connection with his true self, so he dwells on their absence in himself, and therefore the honor, dishonor, friendship, and enmity built on them do not touch him. Likewise he gives up every undertaking occasioned by being embodied. The discernment of self from non-self, not renunciation as such, is the spine of the reading.

Rāmānujācārya

Bhakti

This commentator paints the marks in vivid images. Whether the gunatita is worshipped as God or tormented as a thief, made a king or attacked by enemies, his mind takes on no stain, the way the sun's splendor knows nothing of night or dawn, or the sky stays unaffected though the seasons come and go. He is never seen doing any action as such; the knowledge he has gained becomes like fire that burns the fruit of all his actions and removes the very root of activism. Notions of spiritual or worldly take no root in his heart, so he accepts with resignation whatever comes in the natural course, feeling neither pleasure nor pain, his mind as if turned to stone. Such a one alone, who conducts himself in this way, is above the gunas.

Sant Jñāneśvar

Dvaita

This commentator reads the word for sameness carefully, to head off a wrong impression. The teaching that the gunatita is alike in sorrow and joy and the rest is not saying that he literally regards pleasure and pain as in every way identical. The sameness is to be taken in the qualified sense already indicated earlier by phrases like for the most part. So the equanimity is real but not a flat denial of all distinction between agreeable and disagreeable experiences.

Śrī Jayatīrtha

Advaita Vedānta

This commentator places the verse at the fourth and highest stage of attainment, where the person has no absorption-bliss to feel and so no marks he feels in himself, only marks others can perceive. He gives a striking comparison: like an examiner of forged coin who feels neither joy nor despair over its gain or loss and does not strive to acquire it, while the deluded man is pained and strives to get it, so the wise one, seeing the whole manifold as a mirage-pool, stays equal in honor and dishonor or friend and foe and does not strive to gain or remove either. This not-striving is why he is called beyond the gunas.

Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha