Advaita Vedānta

Yoga here is squarely the evenness of mind, and the verse's purpose is to make action a purifier that leads to knowledge. These commentators take 'success' to be the knowledge born of purity of being and 'failure' its opposite, so the very aim of desireless action is inner purification ripening into liberating knowledge. A fine point they press: even when acting 'for the Lord,' one should drop the subtler attachment of wanting 'let the Lord be pleased with me'; the action is to be emptied of every craving for fruit, seen and unseen. One of them adds a sharpening of scope: an earlier verse spoke of evenness in pleasure and pain only to establish the duty of war, the topic at hand, whereas here, by demanding the surrender of all fruit whatever, the verse establishes the obligatoriness of all action.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This reading keeps the verse close to Arjuna's concrete situation. 'Giving up attachment' means giving up clinging to kingdom and kinsmen, and the action to be performed is war and the like; the success and failure to be met with evenness are the victory and defeat actually contained in that action. Yoga is then defined plainly as 'the settling of the mind in the form of equanimity toward success and failure.' The accent is on a stabilized, composed mind held steady within real duty, rather than on action as a route to a separate inner knowledge-fruit.

Rāmānujācārya

Dvaita

These commentators read 'established in yoga' as established in the means, and they make a precise logical point about the verse's two phrases. Abandoning attachment to the fruit is the cause; becoming even in success and failure is its effect. The two are not separate, independent qualities but stand in a cause-and-effect relation, so naming the evenness alone as yoga is enough: the abandoning of attachment is grasped along with it, because grasping an effect carries its cause. One of them argues at length against treating 'free of attachment' and 'even in success and failure' as two loose modifiers; the dull may imagine them as separate, but the Lord, asked 'what is yoga,' answers with exactly these, identifying the evenness as the yoga and including its cause within it.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

Here the verse is read through loving dependence on Bhagavan. To be 'established in yoga' is to have a mind whose sole end is the Lord, and the works are to be done as forms of His command; because the work is His command, evenness toward its fruit or non-fruit naturally arises, and that very evenness makes one's dependence on the Lord manifest. One of them then offers a distinctly devotional turn: read 'established in yoga' as union with Bhagavan, and read 'success' as continuous union and 'failure' as the separation the Lord himself grants after union. Even that separation, on this reading, is itself supreme bliss for one who knows its taste, since it comes from the Lord, falls within union, and is an aid to union; so one is to stay even and let no dejection set in even there.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

The focus falls on why fruitless-seeming action is not fruitless and on exposing a hidden trap. Be engaged in mere action, not in its fruits; the objection that fruit inevitably follows any action is answered by saying that action becomes a cause toward binding fruit only when one is pervaded by the turbidity of craving for fruit. To one free of such wishing, the fruit that was not prayed for, namely knowledge, is not denied. Sharper still: the attachment that takes the form of non-action, a tight, grasping refusal to act, is itself of the nature of false knowledge and is simply to be given up.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

For these commentators yoga is single-pointedness on the Supreme Lord, and the practical key is to act by way of refuge in and offering to him. One defines yoga as single-pointedness on the Supreme Lord and says to abandon the inner insistence on agentship and perform purely by taking refuge in the Lord, offering even the fruit of knowledge to him; another says whatever is attained by one's duty should be dedicated to the primeval Supreme Being, and only then is it truly complete, even when outwardly incomplete. One reads the verse as the desireless action that ripens into the yoga of knowledge. The most developed in this group gives a two-fold reason both attachments must go: longing for the fruit is only a sinking into Maya, while insisting 'I am the doer' is a theft of the Lord's own property, his characteristic of independence, and so a disturbance of his Maya; therefore both are to be abandoned.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These modern voices restate the verse as the core of Karma-Yoga in plain terms. One names the path directly: to act steadfast in Karma-Yoga is to perform action while looking on its being fruitful or unfruitful as alike, and that equable mental state is what is called yoga. Another fills in the inner mechanics: in any action, any result, any time, place, circumstance, or instrument, one must hold no attachment, for only then can action be done in non-clinging, and only such non-clinging action becomes liberating; and from giving up attachment, evenness in success and failure arises. A third keeps the Advaita gloss of the fruit: the success is attainment of Self-knowledge through purity of heart won by acting without expectation, and failure is the non-attainment of that knowledge when one acts with expectation.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas