Chapter 2 · Verse 44·Spoken by Krishna
भोगैश्वर्यप्रसक्तानां तयापहृतचेतसाम्। व्यवसायात्मिका बुद्धिः समाधौ न विधीयते
bhogaiśwvarya-prasaktānāṁ tayāpahṛita-chetasām vyavasāyātmikā buddhiḥ samādhau na vidhīyate
In those who cling to pleasure and power, whose minds are carried away by such words, the one-pointed discernment needed for deep absorption does not take hold.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his verse names the people who cannot reach the steady, single-minded understanding Krishna has just praised, and it explains why. They are people 'attached to enjoyment and lordship.' 'Enjoyment' (bhoga) is the experience of pleasure through the senses and the body, and 'lordship' (aishvarya) is the wealth, possessions, and power that let one feel like a master. Commentators spell this out concretely: bhoga is pleasure through sound, touch, form, taste, and smell, through bodily comfort and through the fame of a good name; aishvarya is the gathering of money, houses, and goods to fuel that pleasure, and the very pride that says 'I am the master, the lord of these things.' Those whose fondness and sense of importance are fixed here are the subject of the verse.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
What has done this to them is the 'flowery speech' described in the previous verses: the alluring ritual-promises of the Veda's action-section, which dangle heaven, celestial pleasures, and lordship as the highest goal. Their minds are literally 'carried off' by that speech. The commentators stress that the very faculty that should discern truth has been seized and veiled by these enticing words, so the seeker is turned outward, toward objects to be won, rather than inward toward the Self. This is why the verse links the two halves so tightly: the attachment and the captured mind are two sides of one condition.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The result is the heart of the verse: in such people the 'resolute understanding' (vyavasayatmika buddhi), the firm, one-pointed, decisive intellect, simply 'is not formed' or 'does not arise.' Grammatically the line is read in the karma-kartari form, where a passive construction stands for the agent, so the plain sense is not that someone refuses to enjoin it but that it just never takes shape in them. The reason is structural: when the whole inner faculty is already dedicated to chasing enjoyment, nothing is left over to be steadied. A mind divided across countless cravings cannot gather itself to a single resolve.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
From this the commentators draw the practical lesson that the verse is really pointing at: the steady understanding and bondage to pleasure cannot coexist, so the seeker of liberation must not let the heart cling to desire-driven action. Several put it as a direct warning. One says outright that the liberation-seeker should form no attachment to such desire-prompted works. Others note that these very people do attain the heavenly fruits their rituals promise, yet because their desire keeps straying from one object to the next they never reach release, however many times they may reach heaven; the human birth is given for this higher aim, not for enjoyment, and to squander it on perishable pleasure is to live no differently from an animal.
Rāmānujācārya · Lokmanya Tilak · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read 'samadhi' here not primarily as a trance-state but as the inner instrument itself, the understanding or mind, called samadhi because it is the place where all things are gathered together for a person's experience. In one who clings to pleasure, that whole gathering-place is given over to enjoyment, so the resolute understanding never gets set in it. The resolute understanding is further glossed as the intellect that bears on Sankhya (the path of discriminative knowledge) or on yoga (disciplined action); one of these writers adds that for the detached person the intellect at the time of practice becomes 'pure-consciousness-shaped,' which is exactly what fails to happen for the pleasure-bound. One source works through a series of objections, for instance whether mere purification of the inner organ might suffice for liberation, or how a negation can apply when the injunction to form the two understandings is supposedly un-occasioned, answering each to show why the resolute intellect cannot arise in the outward-turned mind. Another notes that the founding commentator deliberately did not split the resolute understanding into two separate readings, abiding as 'I am Brahman' and one-pointedness toward the Lord, because both are already contained within the single determinate intellect of Sankhya-and-yoga.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here 'samadhi' means the mind, called so because it is where knowledge of the Self is concentrated. The resolute understanding that fails to arise is specifically the understanding whose object is liberation-bound action preceded by the certain knowledge of the Self's true nature; in the pleasure-bound it never arises at all, because their very knowledge of the Self has been carried off by the ritual-speech. From this the explicit conclusion is drawn: the seeker of liberation should form no attachment to desire-prompted actions. This reading also opens a pointed question that the next verse will answer: if the Vedas, which tend us with a care greater than that of a thousand mothers and fathers, nonetheless prescribe these slight-fruited, rebirth-breeding actions, then why do they prescribe them, and in what sense can what the Veda teaches be called something to be given up.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
These commentators read the resolute understanding as the intellect whose nature is the firm determination of truth by sound reasoning, right ascertainment through discrimination. They draw a definite sequence: such reasoned ascertainment must come first, and only for those who have thus rightly settled the matter does the right composing of the mind on the Lord come about, and that composure is the means to liberation. So in the pleasure-bound, because reasoned ascertainment is absent, composure on the Lord is absent too, and therefore liberation is absent, which is the gravest censure of all. One of them defines this reasoned ascertainment precisely as the discrimination of what is to be discarded from what is to be accepted, leading to the actual abandoning of the one and taking up of the other. They support this with scripture, citing the Bhagavata's teaching that even the most excellent words taken at face value do not suffice to grasp the Lord's truth for one whose own mind has not, by sense and reflection, come to see worldly pleasure as a thing to be abandoned, like a pleasure dreamt in a dream.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Bhakti
For these commentators 'samadhi' means one-pointedness of consciousness oriented to the Supreme Lord, and it is precisely this fixed concentration on Bhagavan that does not take shape in the pleasure-bound; their resolute understanding simply does not arise. One of them notes the karma-kartari grammar, the action standing for its agent, so the verse's force is that such an understanding never comes into being at all. A fuller Bhakti voice paints the tragedy in images: by harboring passion for enjoyment, these people debase the very religious merit they earn, as when camphor is piled up only to be set on fire, sumptuous dishes are mixed with poison, or a pitcher full of nectar is kicked over; engrossed in debating the meaning of the Vedas, they carry evil desire in their hearts.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
This commentary dwells on the self-defeating waste in such people more than on the technical meaning of 'samadhi.' They do gain real merit by their efforts, yet they forget the Almighty in whom all sacrificial rites center, and by attaching a passion for enjoyment to their good works they spoil them. The images are vivid and concrete: it is like setting fire to carefully piled camphor, or poisoning rich food, or kicking over a pitcher of nectar. Such persons are called unlucky because they do not even realize what they are throwing away, like a fine cook who prepares the best dishes only to sell them off for money.
Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
The modern commentators restate the verse in the language of attention and life-purpose. One puts it simply: those who cling to pleasure and power cannot have steadiness of mind, cannot concentrate or meditate, because they are forever busy planning projects for wealth and power and their minds are never at rest. Another, reading the people as knowledge-less ritualists of the Mimamsa path, calls the faculty in question the Reason that decides between the doable and the not-doable, and stresses that to win release this Reason must be steadied on a single point; he backs this with the Upanishadic verse that fools who think ritual alone is meritorious return to the mortal world after their spell in heaven. A third develops the point most fully and distinctively: the real aim of human birth is to attain the Supreme, and that firm resolve cannot form while impressions of pleasures enjoyed, expected, and merely heard about leave an impurity in the intellect; notably, this voice insists that worldly objects themselves do not block the path, only the importance and relish (ruchi) we grant them does, so that wherever there is still a taste for enjoyment, gathering, honor, and comfort, not even one firm resolve toward the Supreme can stand. He adds that even the learned, who hoard knowledge and feel 'I am the knower,' enjoy a pleasure of pride that equally keeps the single resolve from arising.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If even people who succeed at their disciplines and earn real merit can be quietly disqualified just by enjoying the rewards, is any ordinary, comfort-seeking person locked out of the steady mind the Gita asks for?
The verse is not condemning enjoyment as such or shutting any person out; it is describing a structural fact about attention. When the whole inner faculty is already committed to chasing pleasure and power, there is simply nothing left over to be gathered into a single steady resolve. The lock, in other words, is not on the person but on the divided mind, and a divided mind is something that can change.
Śaṅkarācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda
What disqualifies is not having pleasures but being carried off by them, letting the discerning faculty itself be seized so that one turns permanently outward toward objects to be won. The same people do attain the heavenly fruits their efforts promise; they only miss release, and they miss it because their desire keeps straying from one reward to the next and never settles. So the issue is the wandering of desire, not the mere presence of comfort.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Lokmanya Tilak
That is why the most practical commentator locates the obstacle precisely in the importance and relish we give to pleasures, not in the pleasures themselves. An ordinary person is therefore not locked out at all; the door opens as the inward taste for the perishable loosens, after which the firm understanding does not have to be manufactured but begins to arise on its own. The human birth is held to carry exactly the power of discernment needed to make this shift.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Notice where the obstacle actually sits. It is not in money, comfort, a good name, or the pleasures around you; it is in the importance and relish you hand to them inside your own heart. Two tastes cannot both rule at once: as long as there is a taste for enjoyment, possession, honor, and ease, the single clear resolve to turn toward the Supreme cannot take root, because your energy and attention have already been carried off into seeking and storing. So the work is gentle and inward. Begin to treat whatever circumstance arrives, favorable or unfavorable, as material for your practice rather than material for enjoyment. Remember that this human birth carries a rare power of discernment given to lift you above pleasure and pain; to spend it only on perishable comforts is to live no higher than the animals, who are also busy enjoying. Even pride in your own learning is a subtle pleasure that keeps the resolve from forming, so let that go too. As the relish for the perishable loosens, the firm understanding the verse speaks of stops being something you force and begins, on its own, to arise.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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