Chapter 18 · Verse 67·Spoken by Krishna
इदं ते नातपस्काय नाभक्ताय कदाचन।न चाशुश्रूषवे वाच्यं न च मां योऽभ्यसूयति
idaṁ te nātapaskyāya nābhaktāya kadāchana na chāśhuśhruṣhave vāchyaṁ na cha māṁ yo ‘bhyasūtayi
Never speak this to one who lacks austerity, who is not devoted, who has no wish to listen, or who speaks ill of me.
Word by Word
Saved for this reading session
Three movements · tap a label to switch
Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
Synthesis · a glossed leaf
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
aving finished teaching the whole Gita, Krishna now states the rule for passing it on. The teaching is precious, so it is not to be handed to just anyone; the verse lists four kinds of person to whom it must not be told. The first is the 'atapaska', the one without austerity, that is without tapa. Several commentators give a concrete sense to this tapa: it is not bodily mortification but the steady, willing performance of one's own duty, bearing the natural distress that arises in doing it. One reads it as not performing the duties of one's own station; another explains that without such tapa the inner instrument (antahkarana) is not made pure, and an impure mind cannot hold the good things it hears.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Ānandagiri
The second exclusion is the 'abhakta', the one without devotion. The commentators specify that this is devotion both toward the teacher (guru) and toward God. The point is pressed hard: even a person who genuinely practises austerity, if he lacks devotion, is still unfit, and the teaching is never to be given to him 'kadachana', in no condition at all. Devotion is treated not as an optional ornament but as a fixed requirement, because the heart that does not love and trust will not receive the truth as truth.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The third exclusion is the 'ashushrushu', the one with no wish to hear and to serve. Even a person who has both austerity and devotion, if he has no eagerness to listen, is not to be taught. Several commentators tie this 'wish to hear' closely to service of the teacher and willingness to act on what is heard. One warns that a hearer who listens without any will to obey turns the living word into a mere doctrine and leaves its life out. The same image recurs across the sources: a pearl without a hole cannot be threaded, food offered to one already full is wasted, rain falling into the ocean is lost. A truth bears fruit only where it is wanted.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Dhanapati Sūri
The fourth and gravest exclusion is the one who 'abhyasuyati', who cavils at or finds fault with Krishna. The commentators explain this as taking Krishna, Vasudeva, to be an ordinary man, not knowing his godhead, and so imputing to him faults such as self-praise; he reviles the Lord because he cannot bear his lordship. This fault is so disqualifying that even a person possessed of every other quality, austere, devoted, and eager to hear, must still be refused if he reviles the Lord. One commentator notes that the shift in grammatical case in the verse is meant to mark such a person as utterly to be avoided.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Dhanapati Sūri · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Read together, the four denials imply their positive form: the teaching IS to be given to the one who has austerity, who is devoted to teacher and Lord, who is eager to hear and to serve, and who carries no fault-finding toward God. The repeated negatives are deliberate; the absence of even one qualification makes a person unfit. Most importantly, the commentators insist these restrictions are not divine pride or cruelty but a protection. They guard the unprepared soul from a truth it cannot yet bear, and guard the teaching itself from a soul who would not honour it. A secret given to the unfit harms the giver, the receiver, and the word alike.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators draw out a subtle qualification embedded in the verse: elsewhere scripture says the teaching may be given 'to a learned one OR to an ascetic', offering the two as alternatives. So austerity and learning are themselves optional, either one will do, but devotion to the teacher, attachment to the Lord, and willingness to serve are a fixed and non-negotiable rule. Thus the fit hearer is a man of austerity joined with devotion and the wish to hear, OR a wise man so joined; neither austerity nor learning alone suffices, and neither is strictly required so long as the other is present, but the devotional qualifications can never be waived.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Advaita Vedānta
This commentator grounds the rule of transmission in a scriptural precedent, citing the words of knowledge personified appealing to a brahmin: 'protect me, I am your treasure; do not speak me to the uncontrolled, the un-upright.' He also cites the teaching that the deepest matters are revealed only to the great soul whose supreme devotion is directed to the deity, and to the teacher as to the deity. He reads the verse as concluding the Sankhya-yoga and karma-yoga distinction shown in Chapter Two, presenting this as the prescription for handing down the tradition of knowledge.
Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Advaita Vedānta
This commentator places the verse at the close of a long reasoned confirmation of the Gita's purport, that Self-knowledge alone removes beginningless ignorance and yields liberation, with action belonging only to the domain of the ignorant. On this reading the eligibility rule matters because the two steadfastnesses, of knowledge and of action, belong to different qualified persons; the teaching of liberating knowledge is therefore reserved for the one prepared by service, devotion, and freedom from cavilling, austere and of good intelligence, not for one without devotion.
Śrī Ānandagiri
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator alone reads the four conditions not as a checklist but as a single developing ladder of inner ripening. Austerity comes first, because once the knot of sin is worn apart there comes a readiness turned toward the wholesome. From austerity is born faith, and that faith is itself devotion. But faith, even when it springs up, can flash and vanish like lightning; only when it grows on does the wish to hear arise. He then gives a distinctive analysis of fault-finding: it arises in two ways. One falls into a dry Sankhya-type knowledge that has no Lord and no real object; or, even granting a Lord, one so longs for a personal fruit that one makes the fruit primary and demotes both the Lord and oneself into mere vessel-and-tool for that fruit. Citing the Jaimini-sutras ('the person is for the sake of action', 'actions are for the sake of a fruit'), he says that in both cases the result is, toward the Lord, simply a disregard, which is the fault-finding the verse forbids.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Śuddhādvaita
This commentator reads the word 'kadachana' (ever) with a particular force: the teaching is not to be given even to a genuine devotee if he keeps company with the un-devoted, for such association endangers him. He also reads 'atapaska' as lacking both austerity AND right conduct, and explains the fault-finder as one who, from outwardness and crookedness, slanders Purushottama (the Supreme Person) with imputed faults. The whole rule is framed as serving the world's uplift: Krishna sets the way of teaching so that the truth spreads rightly.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
Sant Jnaneshwar develops the verse through a chain of vivid images, all making the single point that a truth bears fruit only where it is honoured. A flawless pearl with no aperture cannot take the thread; the deep ocean still wastes the rain that falls into it; food should be given to the hungry, not to one already full. He is especially severe on the reviler: however lustrous his other qualities, they are like a lamp-stand with no flame at night, a beautiful golden house barred by a venomous cobra at its door, fine food laced with poison, or malice hidden inside friendship. Such a person must not be allowed even to touch the Gita; even were a slanderer as worthy as Brahma the creator, the teaching is not to be given to him, even in jest. He also extends the reviling to include those who revile Krishna's devotees, not Krishna alone.
Sant Jñāneśvar
A Seeker Asks
Does this gatekeeping make the Gita an elitist secret, contradicting its own universal compassion, or is restricting a sacred teaching actually an act of care?
The commentators are nearly unanimous that the restriction is protective, not exclusionary. It guards the unprepared soul from a truth it cannot yet bear, and it guards the teaching itself from a soul who would not honour it; a secret given to the unfit is said to harm the giver, the receiver, and the word alike.
Vallabhācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
The four conditions are not marks of social rank or inborn privilege but of inner readiness, all of which a person can cultivate: willing performance of duty, devotion to teacher and Lord, eagerness to hear and serve, and freedom from fault-finding. The barrier is not who you are but whether your heart is yet able to hold the truth.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
The repeated images make the same point as care rather than snobbery: a pearl without a hole cannot be threaded, rain wasted in the ocean, food offered to one already full. The teaching simply bears fruit only where it is wanted, so withholding it from one who has no regard for it is not a denial of compassion but a refusal to waste what is sacred.
Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
Read positively, the verse is an open invitation, not a closed door. It implies that the teaching IS to be given to anyone who has austerity, devotion, the wish to hear, and no cavilling toward the Lord; and the whole Gita is itself the record of Krishna patiently preparing one such hearer, which means the preparation is available to all.
Śaṅkarācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Take the verse as a description of the heart that can receive, and then turn it on yourself rather than on others. The fit hearer is the tapasvi, who bears the natural distress of doing his duty with cheerfulness; the bhakta, in whom love for the Lord stirs; the one with shushrusha, the eager wish not only to listen but to obey; and the one who carries no asuya, no habit of raising objections to win an argument. Notice that the word is given to the heart that is ready to bend, not to the mind that wants to be proven right. So the practice is simple and inward: do your duty willingly, let love grow, listen in order to live what you hear, and set down the impulse to find fault. The whole Gita, after all, was Krishna's patient preparation of Arjuna into exactly such a hearer; the same preparation is open to you.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.