Chapter 18 · Verse 4·Spoken by Krishna
निश्चयं श्रृणु मे तत्र त्यागे भरतसत्तम।त्यागो हि पुरुषव्याघ्र त्रिविधः संप्रकीर्तितः
niśhchayaṁ śhṛiṇu me tatra tyāge bharata-sattama tyāgo hi puruṣha-vyāghra tri-vidhaḥ samprakīrtitaḥ
Hear my firm conclusion about relinquishment, Arjuna. Relinquishment, indeed, has been declared to be of three kinds.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna now stops surveying other people's opinions and gives his own ruling. The verse opens with 'hear my settled judgment' (nishchaya), and the commentators stress that this is the turning point of the discussion. In the previous verses different thinkers had been quoted disputing what 'relinquishment' (tyaga, giving up) and 'renunciation' (sannyasa, the formal abandoning of works) really mean. Because those disputants only voiced partial or confused views, none of them could settle the matter; so Krishna himself speaks the decisive word. The address 'best of the Bharatas' marks Arjuna as fit to receive this conclusion.
Braided from 12 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Krishna's first ruling is that tyaga, relinquishment or giving-up, is of three kinds, and that this threefold division follows the three gunas, the three strands or qualities of nature: sattva (purity, clarity), rajas (passion, restlessness), and tamas (darkness, dullness). So there is a sattvic giving-up, a rajasic giving-up, and a tamasic giving-up. This is not yet the full definition of each; the verse only announces the sorting, which the chapter will then unfold. The point is that 'giving up' is not one simple thing: the same outward act of letting go can be done in three very different inner spirits.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Several commentators stress that this subject is genuinely hard to know, which is why Krishna alone is qualified to settle it. On the surface 'giving up works' looks like common knowledge, so a reader might think there is nothing new to hear. The commentators forestall exactly that thought: the real nature of relinquishment is subtle and hard of access, and no ordinary disputant can reach certainty about it on his own. This is why the verse frames the teaching as Krishna's authoritative determination, and why anyone who wants release from suffering must grasp what true renunciation actually is rather than rest in the surface meaning.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar
Because only the sattvic kind is genuine relinquishment, the practical aim of laying out all three is so the seeker can choose well. Several commentators read the threefold sorting as a teaching device: the rajasic and tamasic kinds are described not to be adopted but to be set aside, and by placing them beside the sattvic kind the superiority of the sattvic stands out clearly. The seeker is to take hold of sattvic giving-up and let go of the rajasic and tamasic kinds. So the verse is oriented toward action: it is meant to guide the seeker's own conduct on the path to deliverance.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
For this school the words tyaga (relinquishment) and sannyasa (renunciation) mean one and the same thing: the giving-up. Krishna takes them as synonyms, both naming the act of letting go, not as two technically distinct disciplines. On this reading the threefold sattva-rajas-tamas division belongs only to one who is still qualified for action and ignorant of the self; for the seer of the highest truth, who has realized the self, relinquishment is not threefold at all but stands beyond the gunas. One commentator within this school works this out in fine detail: the sattvic giving-up is to keep performing action while relinquishing the aim at its fruit, and this purifies the inner organ and gives rise to the desire to know; the genuine renunciation proper to the knower, the giving up of action itself, lies outside the scope of Arjuna's actual question and is treated separately as the knower's renunciation.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This school reads the threefold division along a different axis. The three kinds of relinquishment are not sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic but rather relinquishment by way of the fruit, by way of the action, and by way of agency. To relinquish the fruit is to think 'the result, heaven and the rest, is not to be mine'. To relinquish in the matter of the action is to give up the sense of 'mine' toward the work itself. To relinquish agency is to give up the sense that one is oneself the doer, recognizing that agency rests in the Lord of all. This school grounds the reading in Krishna's earlier instruction to cast all actions upon him, free of longing and the sense of mine, and fight.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
This school turns the verse toward harmonizing scripture rather than defining the threefold kinds. Sacrifice and giving (including the giving of fearlessness) must necessarily be performed by everyone, even by the highest renunciants, the paramahamsas; otherwise there would be a conflict with remembered scripture which directs that one who seeks release should resort to the highest order of life. Those highest orders themselves consist of the sacrifice of knowledge, learning, the giving of fearlessness, celibacy, and austerity. So whatever word here seems to mean otherwise must be construed by a difference of qualification. This school explicitly refutes the view that the whole section speaks only to those qualified for action and ignorant of the self, and not to the supreme renunciants.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
This school accepts the threefold sattva-rajas-tamas sorting but reads the true, genuine relinquishment in a devotional key. Real renunciation is to offer all action into Krishna the Lord, to refer one's agency to him as the inner ruler, to act with the understanding 'I do this only by his power on which I depend', and so to give up doership, ownership, and the fruit of the work that is performed. Done otherwise, relinquishment becomes only a secondary, lesser form. One commentator in this school also reads the address 'tiger among men' as praising Arjuna's fitness: man alone has the title to loving worship of the Lord, and he is strong enough, once he has heard, to enact what he hears.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This voice first lays out the rival schools whose views Krishna is settling: the Sankhya thinkers who would abandon action because it involves harm and so sin, and the Mimamsa ritualists who hold that injury forming part of a prescribed rite is not really injury at all. Against both, the learned are those who take their division of what is to be done and not done from scripture alone. Then comes the conviction itself: because of the variety of the gunas, relinquishment carried out by a mental state made of sattva, rajas, or tamas takes on the color of that quality; but in truth, for the knowers of the supreme Brahman, what 'relinquishment' really names is the carrying-through of actions with evenness toward success and failure, by dropping attachment and aversion and the longing for any fruit. For this reason rajasic or tamasic relinquishment yields no fruit of relinquishment, the sattvic person gains the fruit of upholding the meaning of scripture, and only for the sage free of the gunas is the very word 'relinquishment' truly well grounded.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
A Seeker Asks
If giving something up is just letting it go, why does it matter so much in what inner spirit I do it, and how can the very same outward act count as wise in one case and as darkness or evasion in another?
Because Krishna's ruling is precisely that giving-up is not one simple thing. The verse declares relinquishment to be of three kinds, sorted by the three qualities of nature: clarity (sattva), restless passion (rajas), and dull darkness (tamas). The same outward letting-go can be done in three different inner spirits, and that inner spirit is exactly what the verse asks you to attend to.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
This is why several commentators insist the subject is harder than it looks. Giving up works seems like common knowledge, so it is tempting to think there is nothing here to learn. But the real nature of relinquishment is subtle and hard of access, which is why Krishna alone settles it and why anyone seeking release must grasp what true renunciation actually is.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda
The practical payoff is that the three kinds are laid out so you can choose. The rajasic and tamasic kinds are described not to be adopted but to be rejected; only the sattvic kind is relinquishment in the strict sense. By setting the lesser kinds beside the genuine one, their difference becomes clear, and the seeker is to take hold of the sattvic giving-up and let the other two go. So the inner spirit matters because it alone decides whether your act of letting go actually carries you toward deliverance.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
Contemplation
When you face something you mean to give up, notice that the act of letting go is not the whole story; the spirit in which you let go is what decides everything. The teaching here lays out all three kinds of giving-up for one reason: so that you can take firm hold of the sattvic kind and quietly let go of the other two. Test your own renunciation the way you would test the worth of any thing, by holding it up beside its lesser imitations. Is this giving-up clear and dispassionate, or is it really driven by fear of trouble and weariness, or by mere dullness and avoidance? The superiority of true relinquishment only stands out when you are honest enough to see the rajasic and tamasic versions for what they are. Let that recognition itself guide your choice.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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