Advaita Vedānta

These commentators take the verse as the opening of a careful sorting that turns on who is qualified for what. They insist the whole question concerns only those fit for action and still ignorant of the self; the knower who follows the path of knowledge is set entirely outside the debate, because for him the giving up of all action is already true and complete. On this reading the kind of 'renunciation' that Krishna will praise in the sattvic case is not the primary, total giving up of action, but only the relinquishing of the fruit of action by people who act without yet knowing the self. The censure that comes later, of those who drop action out of delusion or out of fear of bodily strain, falls on the ignorant agent, and serves indirectly to praise the one who keeps acting while letting go of the fruit. Some in this group note that the word 'renunciation' in its primary sense means giving up all action, and that this primary sense is reserved for the knower alone; the statements about it being impossible to drop all action serve only as praise of fruit-relinquishment, not as proof that total renunciation is impossible for the knower.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse straightforwardly as the naming of two contrary positions that the Lord will mediate. The first position, held by the Kapilas and the Vedic followers of their view, is that all action of sacrifice and the rest binds, like the fault of passion, and so is to be relinquished by the seeker of liberation. The second, held by the learned, is that such action is not to be relinquished. One source frames the split as between a leaning toward withdrawal from action and a conserving of active sacred duty, and stresses that the Lord's coming answer will mediate between the two rather than simply endorsing one side.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators argue that, because the verse honors the first camp with the word 'the wise' (manishinah), that first view should not be rejected outright; rather, it must be read charitably. So understood, the two halves of the verse do not actually conflict. The 'giving up' urged by the first camp is the giving up of the fruit of sacrifice and the rest, not the giving up of those acts in their own form; the acts themselves are kept. Read this way the position agrees with Krishna's own settled view that sacrifice, gift, and austerity must indeed be performed, and it is confirmed by the later verse praising the one who relinquishes the fruit of action. On this reading there is finally a single, harmonious view, and the appearance of a clash was raised only as the seed of a doubt for Krishna to clear.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators hold that both camps are partly mistaken and partly right, and that the honorific 'the wise' points to the redeeming insight in each. The first camp, the Sankhyas, seem at first hearing to abandon the Veda, but in truth they do not: when they say desire-driven (kamya) acts are to be given up, the prescription of desireless (akamya) acts is implied, and the word 'wise' marks this saving qualification. The second camp, the Mimamsakas, hold that sacrifice, gift, and austerity are not to be given up because the Veda enjoins them, citing scriptural passages that call each of these supreme; yet by such talk they come close to making action itself the Lord, and so they too do not really know. Neither party wholly abandons the Veda, and the discerning person will perform these acts as duty stripped of their fault-character.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators set out the first camp's view precisely in order to demolish it, holding that for the unwise it is the relinquishing of fruit alone, never of action itself, that 'tyaga' rightly means. One develops the technical clash at length: the Sankhyas argue that since injury is possible in any action that needs materials, and since the prohibition 'injure no being' and the injunction to offer the sacrificial animal operate on different objects, all action whatever is mixed with impurity and is to be relinquished; the Mimamsakas answer that within the proper sphere the particular injunction blocks the general prohibition, so the fault does not attach and the standing rites are not to be given up. The other source, in vivid images, says those who cling to fruit and cannot let it go are like a sick man blaming the food or a leper angry at the flies; they condemn action itself as wicked, while the wiser side insists that just as gold must pass through fire and a mirror needs ash to be cleaned, action must not be neglected because it purifies the mind.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators present the verse as the plain statement of two opposed schools that Krishna will now settle. One reads it closely with the classical Advaita frame: the Sankhyas say all action is to be abandoned as evil even by those fit for the path of action, while others say sacrifice, gift, and austerity should not be given up; and the whole dispute concerns only the active seeker, not the one who has gone beyond action. Another, surveying the chapter as a whole, places this verse among four distinct philosophical positions on what 'renunciation' and 'relinquishment' mean: the first and third (this verse's first camp included) are positions about sannyasa, the path of knowledge, where action or desire-driven action is dropped; the second and fourth are positions about tyaga, the path of action, where only the fruit is dropped or where sacrifice, gift, and austerity are expressly kept. On this fuller mapping each of the four positions is incomplete, and Krishna's own teaching, stated in the next verses, surpasses all of them by calling for the giving up of attachment and the fruit while the duty itself is performed.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas