Chapter 2 · Verse 45·Spoken by Krishna
त्रैगुण्यविषया वेदा निस्त्रैगुण्यो भवार्जुन। निर्द्वन्द्वो नित्यसत्त्वस्थो निर्योगक्षेम आत्मवान्
trai-guṇya-viṣhayā vedā nistrai-guṇyo bhavārjuna nirdvandvo nitya-sattva-stho niryoga-kṣhema ātmavān
The Vedas deal with the three qualities of nature. Rise above the three qualities, Arjuna. Be free of the pairs of opposites, ever poised in purity, free of all concern for gain and safekeeping, established in the Self.
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
rishna first names what the Vedas, in their ritual portion, actually deal with: the realm of the three guṇas. 'Guṇa' means the three strands or qualities that make up all of nature (prakṛti): sattva (purity, light, harmony), rajas (passion, motion), and tamas (darkness, inertia). 'Traiguṇya-viṣaya' means 'having the three guṇas for their object or field.' So the action-section of the Veda speaks to people moved by these strands, to desire-driven agents, and lays out the connection between rites and their fruits, such as heaven. This is not the whole of the Veda but the part that bargains in worldly gains, and it is the part Krishna has just been holding at a distance.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The command at the heart of the verse is 'nis-traiguṇyo bhava': become free of the three guṇas. The most widely shared reading is that this freedom is desirelessness. The strands hold you through craving for their fruits, so to rise above the strands is, in practice, to stop wanting what the rites promise. Several commentators even hear a pun on Arjuna's name and tell him to live up to it. The reasoning is plain: the rites give fruit only to one who performs them wanting that fruit, so where the desire is gone, the binding fruit is gone too, and the very objection that action by its own nature must drag you back into the world falls away.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
The verse then strings together a set of supporting qualities, and most commentators read them as a connected ladder, each one the means to the one before. 'Nirdvandva' means free of the pairs of opposites: cold and heat, pleasure and pain, gain and loss, honour and dishonour, friend and foe. To be free of these is to keep an even mind through them by bearing them. 'Niryoga-kṣema' means free of acquisition and preservation. There is near-total agreement on the gloss here: 'yoga' is the gaining of what one does not yet have, and 'kṣema' is the guarding of what one already has. One churned by the pairs, busy grasping and hoarding, and heedless cannot possibly rise above the guṇas; so these qualities clear the way. The verse closes with 'ātmavān,' possessed of the Self, which most read as being heedful, watchful, established in one's own true being rather than scattered out among objects.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Puruṣottama
A striking practical assurance recurs in several commentators: if you give up the anxious work of acquisition and preservation, you need not worry how you will then live, because the Lord himself will see to it. The inner-controller, the Self present as the manager of one's gaining and keeping, carries that burden. This is why 'ātmavān' can be read not only as self-possessed but as 'one for whom the supreme Self is the object of meditation and the sustainer of the body.' The verse thus does not leave the seeker stranded; it transfers the load of survival from the restless ego to God.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Lokmanya Tilak
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read 'nitya-sattva-stha' as 'ever established in sattva,' taking sattva here as steadiness, fortitude, or courage, or as the pure quality of goodness itself. The point is endurance: unwavering sattva is named a synonym of courage, and one whose goodness is overcome by rajas and tamas thinks 'I shall die of this pain' and turns from duty, while one who stands firm in sattva can bear cold, heat, and even unbearable pain. On this reading there is no contradiction with 'be free of the three guṇas,' because resting in pure goodness alone, untouched by passion and inertia, is precisely the path by which one finally rises above all three strands.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Modern
These commentators reject reading 'nitya-sattva-stha' as the sattva-guṇa, arguing it would make no sense to ask Arjuna to transcend the three strands and in the same breath cling to one of them. They take 'sattva' in its sense of eternal truth or the ever-abiding real, the paramātma-tattva, so 'nitya-sattva-stha' means established in eternal Truth, a synonym of being beyond the three constituents. One holds that the inferiority shown of Vedic ritual is the inferiority of the desire-prompted reason behind it, not of the ritual itself, which should still be performed for inner purity and the world's welfare once the craving for fruit is dropped. The other insists the verse is no censure of the Veda at all but the praise of the desireless attitude, the way glass might be described beside a diamond only to make the diamond shine; the Vedas also describe the supreme Self and the means to reach it.
Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Bhakti
These commentators read 'nis-traiguṇya' as becoming a devotee: turning from the means to worldly ends and taking refuge in devotion alone, which is itself free of the guṇas. The guṇa-made injunctions of knowledge and action declared in the Veda are not to be performed, but the injunctions of devotion, also declared in the Veda, are to be observed in every way; for it is by guṇa-free devotion alone, not otherwise, that the three strands are finally conquered. On this reading 'nitya-sattva-stha' may even mean ever abiding among the eternal pure beings, the Lord's own devotees, and the freedom from acquisition and preservation follows because, absorbed in the savour of devotion, the devotee simply takes no thought for them while the Lord, the lover of his devotees, bears that burden.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrī Puruṣottama
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This commentator gives 'traiguṇya' a distinctive sense: it denotes people in whom sattva, rajas, or tamas predominates, and out of sheer tenderness the Veda makes known to each kind the means suited to it, so that even those bent on lower fruits are not lost in pursuing non-means. 'Nis-traiguṇya' is then read not as escaping all three strands but as ceasing to be 'full of the three guṇas mingled with one another': Arjuna, already one in whom sattva predominates, should increase just that and not feed the mixed dominance of the three. 'Nitya-sattva-stha' accordingly means abiding in sattva ever-grown and free of the other two, and the discipline of giving up acquisition and preservation is what makes rajas and tamas perish while sattva grows.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
These commentators are anxious to block the inference that 'be free of the three guṇas' means abandoning the Veda. Their key claim is that the Veda has a hidden, indirect import: its surface talk of heaven and the like, bound up with the three strands, is only the apparent meaning, for scripture says 'this Veda speaks indirectly.' The real and entire object of the Veda is Vishnu, who is sung everywhere in scripture; dharma is what He enjoins and adharma what opposes Him. So Krishna's counsel is not to discard the Veda but not to be deluded by its merely apparent surface sense; the standing and authority of the Veda itself stand undenied, and the surface meaning is set aside only because, taken as final, it is opposed to yoga.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
For these commentators the transcendence asked for is establishment beyond the pull of the strands, not the negation of the strands themselves. The 'traiguṇyas' are the souls brought forth in the three-stranded creation, and the Veda's range is that creation; it does not reach the Lord's play-creation (līlā), which lies beyond the strands and is itself nirguṇa, strand-less. The very form of the supreme Person beyond the strands is no object even of the Veda, which is why scripture resorts to 'not this, not this' and says words turn back from Him. So Arjuna should become strand-free as a devotee, moved by the strand-less, steady in the eternal essence beyond the strands, possessing self-knowledge.
Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya
A Seeker Asks
If desire-driven Vedic ritual only keeps me bound to the realm of the three guṇas, is Krishna telling me to throw out the Vedas and their rites altogether?
No. What Krishna names as the field of the three guṇas is specifically the ritual, action-bargaining portion of the Veda, which speaks to desire-driven people and ties particular rites to particular worldly fruits like heaven. The criticism lands on this transactional, fruit-hungry use of scripture, not on scripture as such.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri
Several traditions go further and insist the Veda's deeper word is never abandoned: it has a hidden import that points beyond the apparent talk of heaven to the supreme reality, and its true authority stands undenied even as the merely surface meaning is set aside. The Vedas themselves also describe the supreme Self and the means to reach Him, and the devotional injunctions they contain are to be kept in every way.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Viśvanātha
And the rites need not even stop. One commentator argues plainly that what is inferior is the desire-prompted reason behind the ritual, not the ritual itself; performed without craving for fruit and offered to God, the same acts purify the mind and serve the world. So the real instruction is to drop the wanting, not the worship: become free of the strands by becoming desireless, even-minded, unburdened by getting and keeping, and awake in the Self.
Lokmanya Tilak · Śaṅkarācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Carry this verse as four small turnings of the heart rather than a doctrine. First, loosen the grip of wanting: let go of the craving for the world that is the work of the three strands, and you begin to rise above the world rather than being tossed inside it. Second, watch the pairs. Liking and disliking, attraction and aversion, are the real foes that bind a person, so meet cold and heat, praise and blame, gain and loss with one steady mind. Third, stop the endless errand of getting what you lack and guarding what you have; trust that what is truly needed is held in larger hands than yours. And fourth, stay awake in your own being, alert and present to the ever-abiding real, rather than scattered out among objects. None of this is the rejection of scripture; it is scripture's diamond, the desireless heart, set free to shine.
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.