Chapter 15 · Verse 10·Spoken by Arjuna
उत्क्रामन्तं स्थितं वापि भुञ्जानं वा गुणान्वितम्।विमूढा नानुपश्यन्ति पश्यन्ति ज्ञानचक्षुषः
utkrāmantaṁ sthitaṁ vāpi bhuñjānaṁ vā guṇānvitam vimūḍhā nānupaśhyanti paśhyanti jñāna-chakṣhuṣhaḥ
The deluded do not see it as it departs, as it remains, or as it experiences, joined with the gunas. Those who have the eye of knowledge see it.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
he verse describes the same indweller, the jiva or Self, in three conditions: departing from the body at death, staying within a body, and enjoying sense-objects such as sound, while it appears joined with the gunas. The gunas are the three strands of nature, sattva, rajas and tamas, and being 'joined with the qualities' means the indweller seems accompanied by their effects, namely pleasure, pain and delusion. The point is that across all of these states it is one and the same Self that is present, and in every one of them it is genuinely there to be known.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
Even though the Self is right here and fully fit to be seen, the deluded fail to see it. The deluded, called vimudha, are those whose minds are dragged off by the force of enjoying objects, seen and unseen, who identify the Self with the body, and who therefore lack the power to discriminate the Self from what is not the Self. Their vision is pulled outward into their own enjoying, so even when the indweller is most near and most obvious, they do not perceive it.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
Several commentators hear in this line the Lord's own note of compassion. The cry 'alas, what a calamity' is read as Krishna grieving over how ignorance keeps the most accessible truth hidden, since the Self could not be nearer and yet remains unseen by those bound to the senses.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri
The contrast is the heart of the verse: those who have the eye of knowledge, the jnana-chakshus, do see the indweller in every one of these states. This eye is not the physical eye but a discerning vision born of a valid means of knowledge and of scripture, the vision that separates Self from body. By it the wise behold the Self as distinct from the body and the senses, untouched even at the moment of out-going. So the verse names an asymmetry: one and the same Self is invisible to the sense-bound and transparent to the knower, and the difference lies entirely in the seer's eye.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the Self as in truth motionless and changeless, so its 'departing,' 'staying' and 'enjoying' belong only to the conditioning adjuncts, not to the Self itself. One uses the images of the sun reflected in a pot or the sky enclosed in a pot: when the pot moves, the reflection seems to move, but the sun and the sky never move. In the same way the apparent motion belongs to the body, mind and prana, while the Self lacks all motion. The knowledge-eye sees the motion of the conditioning, not any motion in the unconditioned Self. The non-perceiving is caused by delusion alone, and the verse establishes the Self as distinct from body and senses by showing it present through every state.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here the indweller is the individual self conjoined with a particular 'lump,' a specific arrangement of a human or other body which is itself a transformation of the quality-made nature of sattva and the rest. The deluded are precisely those who take the self to be that bodily lump, who have the conceit of self in the body. What knowledge reveals is that the self is of a wholly different kind from the body: it is of the single form of knowledge, set apart from the lump in every state. So the discerning vision is the discernment of body and self as distinct realities, and the seeker's task is to cultivate this jnana-chakshus so as to see the self in its movements and operations.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators read the verse mainly as answering a structural question: why, after all that has been said, is the indweller still not seen, and why is the teaching restated here. The restatement is not idle repetition; it makes clear that delusion is the cause of the non-perceiving, and it forms the connecting link to the verses that follow. One notes that this rules out a misreading: it is not that there is some governor in the body other than the soul, nor that the soul is simply absent; rather the soul is there and the failure to see it lies wholly in delusion.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the indweller against the backdrop of devotional life. One frames the very departing and staying in terms of bhajana-rasa: the self may pass out of a body no longer useful for devotion, or go on to one fit for it, or even remain in the same body, while its enjoying is the making-manifest of the rasa of objects. The cause of blindness is named concretely as the absence of sat-sanga, holy company, while the eye of knowledge is gained through sat-sanga and by it one recovers one's own true form. So the deluded are the body-self imaginers who, even having seen, do not see, and the discerning are those who through holy company see the self in every condition as having a form set apart from the body.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators stress the epistemic claim directly: the migrating, indwelling, enjoying jiva is invisible to the sense-eye even when it lives in this very body, yet wholly transparent to the knowledge-eye even at the moment of out-going. One develops this with a chain of images: as the wind is known by the shaking tree though it is not itself the tree, as a reflection in a mirror or in the sea does not mean the original came into being or perished, as the sky stays in the sky though it seems to lie reflected in the water, so the soul ever abides in its own place while only the bodily functions come and go. The knowledge-eye named here is described as the eye of long-cultivated, discriminative knowledge by which the wise experience the self as distinct from the body and the senses.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators bring the verse close to lived experience. One invokes the Katha Upanishad: the senses were made outgoing, so people behold the external world and not the inner Self, but some wise ones turn the gaze inward and behold the Self in the heart; and the Self moves the body as a magnet moves iron. Another stresses that the constituents, the gunas, are why the Self even seems to depart, stay or enjoy, while in itself it does none of these. The most developed reading explains the three actions psychologically and physiologically: out-going is the jiva leaving with the subtle and causal bodies while the prana, not the changeless consciousness, actually moves; staying is the subtle body taking the shape of one's last contemplation like an image developing on a plate; and enjoying makes a man think himself alert when he is in truth deluded. Across all three states the self only seems mixed with the gunas and is in truth always untouched; the deluded, being tamasic since delusion is the work of tamas, take their own changeless self to change along with its actions, while the knower sees that all change is in the perishable body and not in the unchanging self.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the Self is right here in this very body and perfectly fit to be seen, why is it that ordinary people, looking at a living person, simply do not perceive it?
The obstacle is not distance but the direction of attention. The deluded fail to see precisely because their minds are dragged outward by the pull of enjoying objects; they identify themselves with the body and so lack the discrimination that separates the self from what is not the self. Nothing could be nearer than the indweller, yet a gaze locked onto external forms looks straight past it.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
What blocks perception is therefore a missing faculty, not a missing object. The self becomes visible through the jnana-chakshus, the eye of knowledge, a discerning vision born of a valid means of knowledge and of scripture, not through the physical eye. The same self that the sense-bound cannot find is transparent to the knower, even at the moment of out-going, which is why the verse turns on the eye of the seer rather than on the nearness of the seen.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Lokmanya Tilak
The reason this eye reveals what the senses miss is that the self only seems to move and act; in truth it is changeless, and the departing, staying and enjoying belong to the body, senses and prana. People mistake the movement of these adjuncts for a movement in the self, like taking a swaying tree for the wind itself or a reflection's coming and going for the original's birth and death. The knowledge-eye sees that all such change is in the perishable body, while the self remains forever untouched.
Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak
Contemplation
Try this simple observation. Notice that you remain the very same you through every kind of activity: through waking and sleeping, working and resting, every pleasure and pain. The actions change, but the one to whom they happen does not. In the same way, the self stays one and unchanged through departing the body, staying in it, and enjoying objects; all the change is in the activities, never in you. To see this plainly is what it means to have the knowledge-eye. So begin to watch what is actually changing. See that no thing, person, or situation you can perceive stays still even for a moment; everything is continuously passing out of view. Once your seeing settles on this ceaseless change, your footing in the changeless naturally follows, for what never changes is the only steady witness to which all this change appears. You do not have to manufacture stillness; you have only to stop mistaking the movement of body, senses and circumstances for a movement in yourself.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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