Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'embodied being' (deha-bhrit) not as everyone with a body but specifically as the ignorant person who takes the body for the self. On this reading the verse draws a sharp line. The one who still identifies 'I am this body, I am a man, I am a householder' carries the conceit of agency that drives him ceaselessly into action; for him, with the whole bundle of attachment and aversion still present, total renunciation of action is impossible, because where the causes are present the effect cannot be dropped. Such a person is to do the obligatory works while giving up only the fruit, and is then called a tyagi by way of praise, in a secondary sense, since he is still in truth one who acts. But the knower of the supreme truth is, on this view, not a 'body-bearer' at all: he no longer thinks the body is the self, and so the binding notion of agency has fallen away from him. For him alone is the renunciation of all action, without remainder, genuinely possible. This rests on the earlier teaching that one who knows the Self as indestructible and unborn cannot truly be an agent. So this verse, for them, quietly contrasts two persons: the qualified ignorant who renounces fruit, and the realized seer who renounces action itself.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read 'embodied being' as everyone who carries a body, without the Advaita split between the ignorant and the seer. The verse plainly closes the door on any reading that calls for renouncing action itself: even the realized are embodied, and the body must be upheld by eating, drinking, and the great sacrifices and obligatory rites bound up with sustaining life. Genuine tyaga is therefore the giving-up of the fruit while the actions continue, and this is supported by scriptural texts such as 'by relinquishment some have reached immortality.' Importantly, 'relinquisher of fruit' is offered here only by way of indication: as the earlier teaching declared tyaga to be of three kinds, the true renouncer gives up attachment to fruit, the sense of personal agency, and clinging to the action, not merely the fruit narrowly. One source also raises and prepares to answer the worry that scripturally enjoined rites are tied to fruits like heaven, so that performing them might seem to bind even the unattached and obstruct liberation; the verse begins the reply that fruit-renunciation, not action-abandonment, is the path for the liberation-seeker.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators treat the verse as a logical clincher for the definition of renunciation given just before. Krishna's 'for no embodied one can give up action' is read as the reason why no other sense of 'tyaga' will fit. The Lord had already stamped his settled conclusion ('this is my view, O Partha'), and this line is supplied precisely to dispel the opponent's position that tyaga means dropping all action. Since the embodied simply cannot abandon action entirely, the definition of tyaga as giving-up of fruit is the only coherent one, and the verse functions to root out the seed of the contrary view.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse as preserving the unbroken offering of every act to Krishna. One treats this verse as a single passage with the one before it: the embodied cannot give up action in its entirety, so the genuine tyagi is the one who relinquishes the fruit while continuing to perform the obligatory work, which lets one keep offering every act to the Lord without pretending to a renunciation the body cannot bear. The other presses the inner logic of the little word 'hi' ('indeed'): as long as there is identification with the body there is craving for fruit and dependence on the world, so outright renunciation of action could never be carried through; therefore the one properly called tyagi is the one who does not hanker after the fruits of what he has done.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators answer head-on the seeker's hope that dropping all work would let knowledge settle more easily. It cannot be done: as scripture says, no one abides even a moment without doing some work, and natural bodily acts like breathing continue even in sleep and even in one who tries to perform nothing, so neither the living nor the dead escape activity. Aversion to action while in a body is therefore foolish, like a pot hating the clay it is made of, or a flame resenting its own light. One source then adds a distinctly devotional path forward: there is only one true escape from the grip of activity, and it is to dedicate the fruit of action to God. When the fruit is offered to God, knowledge dawns by His grace, and that knowledge destroys ignorance together with its actions the way knowing the rope dispels the illusion of the snake. The relinquishment that arises this way is the regular and proper one, and such a person alone is the great and true relinquisher in all three worlds; merely refusing to act would be like calling a faint a restful sleep, or trading blows from a cudgel for blows from a fist.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators stress the verse as the decisive turn from external to internal renunciation. One puts it bluntly: anyone who has a human body yet grumbles at having to act is a fool, for fire cannot wish away its heat; what must be abandoned is the idea of agency and the craving for fruit, and then no action binds, while the ignorant who clings to body and doership cannot drop action at all and must instead do his duties while releasing their fruits. Another reads the half-verses as a two-part argument: the first half closes the door on the rajasic and tamasic positions, both of which try to drop the action itself, which is impossible for the embodied; the second half opens the door on the sattvic position, where the tyagi is precisely the one who has dropped attachment and fruit, so that tyaga in the Lord's own teaching is always internal, never external. A third notes that the man who has become such a tyagi, by giving up only the hope of fruit without giving up action, is thereafter untouched by the bondage of any action whatsoever.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas