Advaita Vedānta

For these commentators the steady wisdom in question is specifically the settled, direct knowledge 'I am the supreme Brahman,' the realization of one's identity with the absolute. The sthita-prajna is the one in whom this non-dual insight has become firm and unshakable. On this reading the verse opens an inquiry into the liberated-in-life, the one already free while still embodied, and the marks asked for are simultaneously taught as the means of liberation for the seeker, since the very signs of the one who has arrived can be cultivated by effort. One of these commentators argues at length that the question concerns a single figure, the knower of truth in samadhi, and rejects the idea that a separate type of yogi marked by breath-restraint is meant; he cites the Yogavasishtha to show that the knower's samadhi is inward stillness independent of any breathing exercise or fixed posture.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This reading keeps close to the plain sense of the words: Arjuna asks what term denotes the man of steady wisdom established in concentration, what the nature of his form is, and what manner of speaking and the rest belongs to him. The emphasis falls on the logical link between conduct and nature: because telling of the sage's particular conduct also tells what he is, the conduct is what gets spelled out in the answer to come. There is no insistence here on an identity-with-Brahman formula; the question is read straightforwardly as an inquiry into the recognizable form and behavior of the established one.

Rāmānujācārya

Bhedabheda

This commentator frames the verse as a turning point: the two immediately preceding verses had set forth the unwavering character of the understanding, and finding this occasion to turn Arjuna toward the Supreme Self, Arjuna asks his question. The accent is on the goal toward which the steady understanding points, namely union with the Supreme Self and the attainment of the station free of affliction. The four-fold question about description, speaking, sitting, and moving is read in this forward-looking frame.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse with close grammatical care and a distinctive concern to defend Arjuna against the charge of ignorance. The word bhasha is taken as the defining mark, that by which a thing is spoken of, and they hold that Arjuna is restating a mark already given in the previous verse precisely in order to signal that he understands it and is now asking for a further mark, one that holds in every instance and so is useful for recognizing the sage universally. On their account Arjuna's questioning does not betray ignorance at all; the established kings and divine sages of old also asked about dharmas, not from not knowing but for conversation, for instruction, and to draw out secret meanings that, in scripture, become clearly manifest only through the framing of question and answer. These commentators also offer their own etymology of Keshava, grounding it in a Harivamsha passage in which the name is derived from Krishna's setting in motion the cosmic powers ka and isha; they explicitly reject the rival etymology offered by other commentators that takes ka, the syllable cha, and isha as the divine 'hairs' or limbs of the Supreme Self.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the question as concerning the candidate or aspirant of steady wisdom, opening the long sthita-prajna section. One of them adds a devotional note in the address Keshava, hearing in it an appeal to the Lord who grants liberation even to those overrun by the ungoverned gunas, the qualities of nature; Arjuna asks accurately and for the sake of his own liberation. This commentator also probes the questions sharply: how does the wise person speak when there is nothing to be heard from outside, and what would he say, given that one can still hear one's own speech; how does he sit, rise, and walk.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator does not gloss the verse as a question about the marks of the sage in the usual way. Instead he reads the surrounding language of 'what is heard' and the yoga-buddhi as pointing to a mark of recognition tied to scripture: when the yoga-buddhi is gained, the plain sign is the thorough attainment of the whole of scripture, both what is to be heard and what has been heard and longed for. He treats Arjuna's earlier seeing of fault where there is none, such as in the destruction of the family, as the work of deceptive impressions left by scriptural hearing in one fallen into ignorance, impressions that fall away when the high regard for such injunctions falls away.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as an inquiry into the yogi or the liberated-while-living whose samadhi has become natural and whose wisdom is therefore settled and unshaken. They take 'of steady wisdom' and 'settled in samadhi' as two designations of one and the same liberated person. They tend to make the three behavioral questions vivid and concrete: what would such a person say, aloud or even to himself, when praise and blame, honor and dishonor, or affection and hatred arise; how does he hold his senses still among external objects when he sits; and how do his senses move among those objects when he moves. The question is read to range over inward state and outward conduct alike.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators read the verse in a practical, seeker-facing register. One identifies steady wisdom as the settled knowledge of one's identity with Brahman attained by direct realization, and notes that the marks of the sage and the means of attaining that steady knowledge are described together in the verses that follow. The other reconstructs the psychological flow of Arjuna's questions: having been told that crossing delusion and the confusion of conflicting scriptural voices brings yoga, Arjuna first raises this personal doubt about what his own marks would be once he becomes a sthita-prajna, and only later returns to his unfinished doubt about action and intellect, so that the occasion for this teaching on the sage would not be lost.

Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas