Advaita Vedānta

For these commentators the verse describes the threshold of the standing in knowledge, where action itself is finally given up. The tyagi, his mind refined by selfless action, comes to know the Self as actionless and changeless, his very own being. The doubt that is cut is specifically the doubt born of ignorance: it is the settled conviction that abiding in the Self alone, and nothing else, is the supreme means to the highest good. One of these voices presses the point sharply: such a person truly knows the triviality of action and the greatness of renunciation, and so would not stay even a moment longer in action than a man scorched by summer heat would linger in a burning pond when the cool Ganges lies near. On this reading the verse marks the very purpose of the karma-yoga taught earlier, which is to ripen the mind until all action can be set aside in pure knowledge. Some among these voices add that the medha, the wisdom here, is the immediate knowledge of the identity of the individual soul and Brahman, awakened by the great sentence 'I am Brahman' or 'That thou art', and free of the three obstructing errors of doubt, of thinking it impossible, and of contrary conviction.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators keep the verse within the discipline of action and do not read it as the renunciation of action itself. The tyagi has relinquished attachment, fruit, and agency, but not the deed's own form. The doubt cut off is read as an inner certainty, the settled stance of one who knows the truth as it stands. One of these voices reads akushala karma in a particular way: it is the inadvertent sinful or ill action, and he points to scripture that says one who has not ceased from ill conduct cannot reach the Self by insight. So he is even toward both kinds because he has given up the sense of mine in all action and surrendered every fruit other than Brahman. The conclusion is explicit: what scripture intends is the relinquishment of agency, attachment, and fruit, not the relinquishment of action's own form.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse together with the next and stress that the relinquishment is inward while action continues. The genuine tyagi does not hate the inauspicious act, because it too is the Lord's command and becomes a means when its time comes; nor does he cling to the auspicious act, because he recognizes as the higher truth only what the Lord enjoins. He has set aside every fruit other than the joy of the Self, and set aside the very sense of being the doer. One of these voices grounds his evenness in a clear insight: pleasure and pain alike come by the Lord's will, so the clear-witted person, free of doubt, is free of both hatred and attachment in his acts. For an embodied being, action cannot be given up to the last residue; eating, drinking and the great sacrifices that sustain life are unavoidable, and among these the one who gives up the fruit, with fruit standing also for doership and mine-ness, is the very tyagi praised in scripture.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators dwell on the inner steadiness and the dissolving of duality. One reads the cut doubt as the severing at the root of a false notion: the idea that bodily pleasure is truly attractive and bodily pain truly repulsive. Where a person can bear deep wrong from another's contempt and let go even of heaven-bound pleasures, what is this momentary pleasure or pain that he should rejoice or shrink? The other voice gives a vivid image: the actions that come to him by past deeds dissolve before his serene vision as clouds dissolve in the sky, so they can no longer entangle him in pleasure and pain; he no longer wavers about them, just as a person who has woken does not dwell on things seen in a dream. On this reading the relinquishment that knows no duality of 'action done' and 'doer' is the sattvic relinquishment, and actions given up in this way are truly given up.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators present the verse as a practical and testable standard for the seeker. One stresses that all actions are equally welcome to such a person: he is not elated at pleasant work nor put off by unpleasant work, and because he is free of likes and dislikes, the very motives that drive worldly action, he can act calmly for the welfare of all beings, like an ocean staying calm beneath stormy waves; he even reads Arjuna's own journey into the verse, from shrinking at a duty that looked disagreeable to acting with doubts gone once its meaning was understood. Another makes the verse a mirror for self-examination: the kushala and akushala here are not about a deed's own nature but about its outer turn, how easy or hard, pleasant or unpleasant it feels; the test is whether one stays even across both, holding the same sense of duty, or is quietly choosing the easy and avoiding the hard. Where sattva pervades the mind, discernment is bright; where discernment is bright, doubts are cut.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas