Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'purusha' as the self-luminous witness, the changeless Self lying hidden within the city of the body, which merely illumines pleasure and pain as not-self things and so cannot really be altered by them, as the sun is not stained by faults in the eye. The verse becomes the platform for a metaphysical case: bondage is not natural to the Self but is made by adjuncts such as the inner organ, an appearance like the redness a hibiscus flower casts on a clear crystal; therefore bondage is unreal and ends through the knowledge of the Self's identity with Brahman, the cessation of the ignorance that is the root of all sorrow. On this reading the verse also answers rival schools: against those who make the Self a many, one per body, equipped with qualities like pleasure and pain, they reply that pleasure and pain arise in the perishable inner organ, not in the all-pervading Self, so the variety of experience comes from the variety of inner organs without dividing the Self; and the singular word 'person' is taken to refute a plurality of selves. Here equanimity is preparatory: it is the qualification that fits the seeker, endowed with the fourfold means, for the liberating knowledge.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

For these commentators the means to immortality is the prescribed action itself: the man steady in mind performs the action suited to his class, war and the rest, with no eye to its fruit, and the harsh and soft contacts found within that action, the touches of falling weapons, do not trouble him. He wins immortality precisely as a doer of duty, unlike one who cannot bear pain. The forbearance taught is a special, reasoned one, not the mere toughness even thieves can show. One explains carefully why such endurance is worth cultivating: it brings no visible good, since pain is genuinely felt; it is not unavoidable, since one could simply withdraw from the battle; and the alternative, killing teachers, is heavy with wrong. The right way to bear unavoidable pain is to treat it like pleasure, as a person swallowing bitter medicine treats the discomfort as helpful, or a merchant bears the toil of a sea-crossing for wealth: the one seeking the end of suffering and supreme bliss takes the pain attached to the means as itself agreeable. The point that the selves are eternal is what makes grief unwarranted and the duty obligatory; failing to undertake it brings no fruit, plus the fault of abandoning one's dharma.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators read 'purusha' simply as a qualifier marking one who is connected with a body, since without a body no one is afflicted at all; it is not a claim about a special metaphysical witness. The man is unafflicted by being even-minded toward pain and pleasure, and he becomes even-minded through steadiness. One develops the logic with care: the word 'man' cannot mean a special class barring women, since immortality is heard of for women such as Maitreyi too, so it means merely being joined to a body; and it guards against the wrong inference that since even ordinary beings feel no affliction in deep sleep, they would thereby be liberated. He also corrects a misreading of the previous verse: 'endure' there does not mean simply 'bear,' since on restating it only the rendering-fruitless of the contacts is meant, that is, abandoning the false notion so the consequent pain has no hold. Notably, sense-pleasure is not to be embraced any more than pain is: pain is no human aim and pleasure is actually opposed to immortality, so holding the two alike means superimposing agreeableness on neither, and steadiness is the effort that checks the elation and dejection that arise once pleasure and pain appear.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhedabheda

This commentator focuses on the mechanics of the means. The 'matra' are the functions of the senses, by which objects are measured, and their 'contacts' are the conjunctions with objects, the causes of pleasure and pain occasioned by cold and heat. These are impermanent, shown by their very coming and going, and they are not permanently inherent in their causes the way heat is inherent in fire; cold and heat are named only as illustrations of a wider field, since suffering is threefold, pertaining to oneself, to the gods, and to other beings, and pleasure likewise. Because these contacts are impermanent, their cessation can be brought about by a means, and that means is endurance preceded by knowledge: one bears them, and that knowing endurance is what makes one fit for immortality.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

This commentator opens a devotional door alongside the standard reading. The one for whom pleasure and pain are equal, whom union and separation meet alike, whom these touches do not shake, is qualified for moksha; but, he adds, such a person may instead become fit for the state of liberation through bhakti, loving devotion. By holding sorrow as equal in spirit, the devotee comes to see in the Lord's will only sheer bliss, so that what looks like pain is received as the play of grace. The address 'best among men' is read as marking one capable of independent striving for liberation.

Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators present patient endurance, rather than fighting back against circumstance, as the indirect doorway to liberation, fitting precisely because of its great fruit. One frames it as a settled practice: through repeated reflection, when the habit of bearing each experience is established, the objects in their season no longer cause pain, and once they cause no pain the liberation of the Self is near. Another stresses the specifically dutiful setting: bearing the pain that comes through performing one's hard duty is itself a cause of later happiness, so the steady person, free of the wilting and elation that pleasure and pain bring, is fit for liberation, while one who swoons under them is not. The thirteenth-century Marathi voice widens the verse into the next: the one not entangled in sense-objects is touched by neither happiness nor sorrow and is freed from rebirth, and the wise, like a swan separating milk from water or fire purifying gold from its alloy, sift the unreal changing world from the one eternal Self and fix their gaze on the real alone.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the verse to drive a wedge between the Self and the disturbances. The unsteady grieve even over impermanent states, cold and heat, pleasure and pain, which are produced by the 'contacts' the word 'measure' denotes, the connections of the self with objects by way of the senses; the steady do not grieve so. He offers a pointed alternative gloss: these contacts are had by the 'measures,' the senses, and are not direct contacts with the supreme Self at all. 'Coming' is arising and 'going' is destruction, and the instruction is simply to bear those things that are joined with this coming and going, since they never reach the Self itself.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators read the verse through the diagnosis of false identification and the cure of equanimity. One names the cause as 'dehadhyasa,' identifying the Self with the body: the more one identifies instead with the immortal, all-pervading Self, the less the pairs of opposites can affect one, and 'titiksha,' the power of calm endurance, builds willpower and is one of the sixfold virtues and a condition of right knowledge, though by itself, only when joined with discrimination and dispassion, it becomes a means to immortality. Another holds that the Jnanin alone, even toward happiness and pain because he sees the named-and-formed cosmos as illusory and the Self as a non-doer, becomes capable of the immortal Brahman; the one who wrongly attributes pleasure and pain to the Self suffers, while the dvandvas belong to the Maya-world, and one reaches Brahman only by peacefully bearing these couples and releasing the reason from their grip; he also reads 'matra' as the external objects measured by the organs rather than the organs themselves. A third locates the whole matter in standpoint: it is only by the working of the inner instrument that pleasure and pain appear as two distinct things, and the conscious person becomes their enjoyer only by being seated in material nature, so when he is established in his own true nature there is no one left to enjoy pleasure and pain and he is naturally even toward them.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas