Chapter 16 · Verse 21·Spoken by Krishna
त्रिविधं नरकस्येदं द्वारं नाशनमात्मनः।कामः क्रोधस्तथा लोभस्तस्मादेतत्त्रयं त्यजेत्
tri-vidhaṁ narakasyedaṁ dvāraṁ nāśhanam ātmanaḥ kāmaḥ krodhas tathā lobhas tasmād etat trayaṁ tyajet
Three are the gates of this hell, the ruin of the Self: desire, anger, and greed. So one should give up these three.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna names three faults as the gate of hell: kama (desire or lust), krodha (anger), and lobha (greed). To call them a 'gate' (dvara) is to say they are the way in, the cause, the passage by which a person enters hell. Several commentators stress this causal sense exactly: the door is the road, the means of arriving. So the verse is not loosely warning that these vices are unpleasant; it is saying they are the actual mechanism by which a person reaches naraka (hell), or by which one is procured an exceedingly low birth.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
These three are called 'nashanam atmanah', the destroyer of the self. The point is sharper than ordinary blame. By entering this gate the self perishes, in the sense that it is made unfit for any human goal: it becomes unable to do the right exertion that would attain the aims of life. Commentators read 'destroyer' as the carrier-down to low wombs, the one that pushes a person into samsara and ruin. So the warning rests on self-interest, not only on morality: one abandons these three for one's own preservation, because they are self-destroying.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
This triad is the compressed root of the whole demonic nature (asuri sampad) described across the chapter. The commentators raise an objection on the reader's behalf: the demonic endowment has endless varieties, so how could anyone ward it all off, even across a full lifetime? Krishna answers by giving the brief, the root. Abandon these three and the entire demonic nature is abandoned with them, because the whole many-branched evil grows from this one source. This is why the chapter's long portrait now narrows to a single point of attack.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Ramsukhdas
The verse turns the chapter into practical instruction: 'tasmad etat trayam tyajet', therefore one should give up these three. The closing imperative is the operative teaching. Having heard the long description of divine and demonic traits, the listener who wants to be free of the demonic nature is now told exactly what to do: renounce this triad, and do so completely. Several commentators frame this as the answer to a direct question, what is the seeker actually to practice, and the answer is the abandoning of kama, krodha, and lobha.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the abandoning of the triad as a work of discrimination (viveka), and they analyze it in two stages. First comes the obstruction of the effect of what has already arisen, that is, checking the fault once it appears; beyond that comes the non-arising, so that the fault no longer springs up at all. They also note that giving up these three accomplishes two things at once: the un-cessation of bad conduct and the obstruction of the good would both come to an end. The 'destroyer of the self' language raises a worry of its own here, since for this school the true Self is eternal and cannot be destroyed; the comment is that 'destruction of the eternal Self' is only spoken of for some, in the sense of being made unfit for the goal, not a literal perishing of Atman.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri
Bhakti
This stream treats v.21 as the hinge on which the whole chapter turns: the twenty-six divine virtues and the heads of demonic fault alike are gathered into one terse triad of root-faults, and from this verse onward the chapter becomes a sadhana-text, the practical instruction for one who has heard the long portrait and now wants the single point of attack. One commentator vividly pictures the triad as a three-pointed spear forming the very threshold of the worst hell, posted like road-guides by all the world's miseries to lead beings down, and says hell is not even known apart from scripture until these three arise in the mind; therefore the triad must be rooted out at all times, completely. Another notes the consoling backdrop: the Lord has reassured the listener that he is born to the divine wealth, and this triad is not the listener's true nature.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
Śuddhādvaita
For this school the verse is the chapter's moral and devotional centre, and one of its commentators reads the triad not as three abstractly-bad psychological states but as a triplet of upsurges (kama as the wish for one's own delight of rasa, krodha as causeless heart-burning, lobha as the wish to gain another's wealth, the destroyer of all good qualities) that arises in the devotee through the company of the asura. On this reading the verse is a teaching about sanga (association) as much as about psychology: the word 'tyajet', let one abandon, is supplied as the renunciation of asura-sanga, the company of the wicked, and the gates of hell close by withdrawing from the company that opens them. The other commentator of this school confirms the verse as the gathering of the entire demonic list into the single imperative to abandon the triple gate.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
These commentators give a close psychological anatomy of how the three interlock and feed each other. One traces them to a single root: of the six inner enemies (kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada, matsara) Krishna here names three, but they are all of one metal, and kama is the chief, since when the mind's movements turn toward enjoyment it is kama, when they turn toward hoarding it is lobha, and where either meets obstruction krodha arises; when all three grow great, delusion (moha) sets in, then tamoguna takes hold, and then the whole demonic nature arrives. He adds a practical key, that to uproot any one of the three is to weaken all three, and to feed any one is to feed all three, and points to the cure given earlier in the Gita: in the object of each sense, liking and disliking are seated, and the seeker must not act under their direction. The other modern commentator names the three as highway robbers and fountainheads of misery, the enemies of peace, devotion, and knowledge, and observes that in their root they are self-blindness and ignorance, since there are no such cravings in the pure Self at all.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
A Seeker Asks
If desire, anger, and greed run so deep that they grow from a single root in the mind, is the command simply to 'give them up' really something a person can carry out, or is it just a counsel of perfection?
The command is meant to be doable precisely because the three are not endless and separate; they are one root wearing three shapes. Krishna deliberately compresses the whole sprawling demonic nature into this single triad so that the seeker has one point of attack instead of an unwinnable war on countless faults. That compression is itself the gift: master the root and the branches fall with it.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas
Giving them up is described as a graded work, not a single heroic act. It begins with discrimination checking a fault that has already arisen, and only afterward matures into the fault no longer arising at all. So the instruction is a path with a first step a person can actually take today, not a demand for instant perfection.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri
Practically, the leverage runs the right way. Because the three interlock, to weaken any one is to weaken all three, and the concrete method is small and repeatable: when liking or disliking rises before a sense-object, do not act at its direction. That single refusal, made again and again, is the whole of the practice, and it is within a person's reach.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
Contemplation
Do not try to crush all your faults at once; learn how the three are really one. Watch how, in front of any sense and its object, liking rises as desire and disliking rises as anger, and hoarding rises as greed, all from the same root. The whole practice is not to come under their power, that is, not to act at their direction. When the impulse comes, you do not have to obey it. And take heart from the structure of the thing: because the three are bound together, to weaken any one is to weaken all three, just as to feed any one is to feed all three. So you are never asked to win every battle at once. Refuse the single impulse in front of you now, again and again, and you are loosening the whole knot. This is why the teacher returns to this verse so often: it is the warning the seeker most needs to keep before him.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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