Chapter 15 · Verse 5·Spoken by Arjuna
निर्मानमोहा जितसङ्गदोषा अध्यात्मनित्या विनिवृत्तकामाः।द्वन्द्वैर्विमुक्ताः सुखदुःखसंज्ञै र्गच्छन्त्यमूढाः पदमव्ययं तत्
nirmāna-mohā jita-saṅga-doṣhā adhyātma-nityā vinivṛitta-kāmāḥ dvandvair vimuktāḥ sukha-duḥkha-sanjñair gachchhanty amūḍhāḥ padam avyayaṁ tat
Free from pride and delusion, having conquered the evil of attachment, ever devoted to the Self, with desire stilled, released from the dualities known as pleasure and pain, the undeluded reach that changeless state.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his verse lists the inner qualities of the people who actually reach the supreme, imperishable abode. Arjuna is speaking, naming the marks of the qualified seeker. The list runs through several terms. They are free of 'mana' (pride or conceit) and 'moha' (delusion). They have conquered 'sanga-dosha' (the fault of attachment). They are 'adhyatma-nitya', ever fixed in the contemplation of the inner Self. Their desires ('kama') have wholly turned back. They are released from the 'dvandvas', the pairs of opposites named pleasure and pain. Being thus 'amudha' (undeluded), they go to 'padam avyayam tat', that imperishable step or station. The verse is essentially a portrait of the fit candidate, term by term.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
Each quality is read as the removal of a specific inner defect rather than a mere virtue added on. 'Mana' is taken as ego, conceit, or the demand to be honored. 'Moha' is non-discrimination, the failure to tell the real from the unreal, or error about one's own true nature. 'Sanga-dosha' is attachment itself, treated as a fault to be conquered, including attachment to son and the rest, and the affection-and-aversion that arises near the dear and the undear. The thrust is consistent: these are the very obstructions that keep one bound, and the seeker who reaches the goal is the one in whom they have fallen away.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas
Several terms are read as describing the renouncer who has given up all action through discrimination and dispassion. 'Vinivritta-kama', desires wholly turned back, is taken to mean one whose desires have ceased without residue, so completely that no trace or taint is left; such people are the ascetics, the yatis or sannyasins. Some note that desire ('kama') is named separately from attachment ('sanga') because attachment can be toward things already obtained while desire reaches for the not-yet-obtained, so both have to be addressed. The picture is of an inner emptying so thorough that the senses and their objects can no longer take a stand before such a person.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
Freedom from the pairs of opposites is read as steadiness through every changing circumstance. The 'dvandvas' are named pleasure and pain, and are taken to include cold and heat, hunger and thirst, honor and dishonor, censure and praise; they are called by the name pleasure-and-pain because they are the causes of pleasure and pain. To be 'vimukta', freed of them, is to stay unmoved whether the favorable or the unfavorable comes. Being 'amudha', undeluded, is the crowning mark: it is the secured self-knowledge, the right cognition that has destroyed ignorance. Only such a one, free of delusion, goes to the imperishable, non-returning station.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Rāmānujācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak · Sant Jñāneśvar
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as the path of the knower and renouncer who attains liberation through right discrimination. The qualities listed are the inward outfit of the seeker who has cut the world-tree of samsara and now walks to its root. Being 'amudha' is the having gained right cognition, the self-knowledge secured by the valid knowledge born of the Vedanta means of proof, which removes ignorance. The imperishable station is reached by this destruction of avidya. The list is no detachable side-line but the actual equipment of the one fixed in atma-jnana, ever absorbed in pondering the true nature of the supreme Self.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators frame the whole verse as the description of one who has come to the Lord for refuge. The 'moha' is specifically the delusion that is the conceit of self in the non-self; the attachment conquered is attachment to the quality-made (material) enjoyments; 'adhyatma' is the knowledge that is in the self, meditation on the self. To reach the undecaying abode is to attain the self abiding as it truly is, of the form of unbounded knowledge. One source counts these as five qualifications that describe the candidate fit to reach, with the imperishable station naming the destination. Crucially, for those who have taken refuge in the Lord, by His grace alone all these engagements become easy to do and to carry to completion.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the goal as Vaikuntha, the Lord's own abode, not a featureless absorption: the supreme step is itself the Brahma-named, aksara, all-pervading station of Vishnu. One source keeps the gloss brief since the verse only lists, but marks that the qualities are 'means' for those who would reach it. The other goes further: without 'sharanagati' (taking refuge) the defects do not cease, and without their ceasing the station is not gained; so the listed marks are not autonomous moral attainments that, once earned, deserve the abode. They are the absence-of-defects that refuge alone can bring about. The devotee does not climb to the supreme abode by self-purification; he reaches it because his refuge has emptied him of the obstructions, and the refuge itself is the very manner of the seeking.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Dvaita
These commentators read the verse very briefly as Krishna stating a further means. One notes only that with 'free of pride' he gives an additional means. The other explains why a further means is needed at all: the means to the knowledge of Brahman is the consideration of the universe, and the means to that is taking refuge in Him, so the whole has already been stated; the point of what follows is that it supplies yet another means toward the same end.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Bhakti
Among these commentators two distinct emphases appear. Some take the verse as the further sadhanas for attainment and as the seeker's inward equipment, illustrating the dropping of pride, attachment, and dualism with vivid images: pride and infatuation clearing like clouds at the end of the monsoon, activity falling away like a plantain that has borne its fruit, desires fleeing like birds from a tree on fire, and the purified one merging in the Supreme like pure gold mingled with pure gold. Others read the verse (taking 'na tad' from the next breath) as already describing what the supreme abode is like: free from the suffering of heat and cold, self-luminous, the non-inert supersensuous radiance that illumines all things. They support this with scripture, that there the sun does not shine nor moon nor stars, and that by His light all this shines; the abode is the Lord's own glorious nature, self-luminous with a body of consciousness, attained by those who have surrendered.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
These commentators present the verse as a practical map of the liberated character available to any sincere seeker. One glosses the terms plainly: pride is stiff egoism, 'sanga' is the 'kartritva-abhimana' or 'I am the doer' idea, the pairs of opposites include honor and dishonor and censure and praise, and only those who have destroyed ignorance and gained Self-knowledge reach the eternal goal. Another renders it tersely as the desireless 'Scients' who reach the inexhaustible Seat. The most expansive reads it through devotion: pride for honor arises only from taking the body as oneself, and the devotee whose belonging is wholly in the Lord has no such pride; every favorable or unfavorable circumstance is received as the Lord's own gracious gift, so the pairs of opposites lose their grip. To take ever-changing samsara as stable is delusion ('mudhata'); the undeluded reach the imperishable station and never return, though in truth every person already stands in that station and only a turned-away gaze hides it.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
Is this verse handing me a checklist of virtues I must perfect by my own effort before I can reach the goal, or is it describing what naturally falls away in a life already turned toward the highest?
Read one way, the verse is indeed a list of qualities to cultivate: free of pride and delusion, attachment conquered, ever fixed in the Self, desires turned back, freed of the pairs of opposites. Several commentators take it just this way, as the inward equipment of the seeker, even drawing the lesson that one must therefore cultivate these qualities. So the verse is not meant to be admired from a distance; it names the actual condition of the one who arrives.
Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
But the items are consistently read not as virtues bolted on from outside but as the removal of specific defects: pride, non-discrimination, attachment, scattered desire, and the swing of pleasure and pain. They are absences, not acquisitions. So the question is less about adding good traits than about what gets emptied out.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Ramsukhdas
And on the deepest reading the emptying is not finally your own achievement at all. Where the heart has truly come to refuge in the Lord, the defects cease by His grace, and all these engagements become easy to carry to completion. One commentator is emphatic that these marks are not autonomous attainments that, once earned, deserve the abode; the devotee does not climb there by self-purification but reaches it because his refuge has already emptied him of the obstructions, and the refuge itself is the road. So both readings hold together: the checklist is real, but it is fulfilled in you as you turn fully toward the highest, not crossed off by force beforehand.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
When an unfavorable circumstance arrives and the mind starts to churn, try receiving it as the gracious arrangement of the One you love, not as something to fix or fight. The teaching is to keep your gaze on the kindness behind the situation rather than on the situation itself. With the simple inner stance, whatever happens is for my real good, the pairs of opposites lose their grip and fall away on their own. There is a quiet image for why this works: when our train sits still and the train on the next track begins to move, we feel ourselves moving; only by looking out at the steady platform do we see that our own train never stirred. In the same way, by leaning on the ever-changing world we take ourselves to be changing with it. Turn the gaze back to your own unchanging nature, and you find you have always been still, already standing in that imperishable place, never having left it.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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