Chapter 2 · Verse 59·Spoken by Krishna
विषया विनिवर्तन्ते निराहारस्य देहिनः। रसवर्जं रसोऽप्यस्य परं दृष्ट्वा निवर्तते
viṣhayā vinivartante nirāhārasya dehinaḥ rasa-varjaṁ raso ’pyasya paraṁ dṛiṣhṭvā nivartate
The objects of the senses fall away from the embodied self who abstains from them, though the taste for them remains. Even that taste falls away when the Supreme is seen.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his verse answers an objection that hangs over the description of the steady sage. In the previous verses Krishna praised the one who withdraws his senses from objects, like a tortoise drawing in its limbs. But here a doubt is raised: mere non-engagement of the senses with objects cannot, by itself, be the mark of a person of steady wisdom (sthita-prajna), because that same non-engagement is found in people who are not wise at all. The deluded, the sick, the person fasting from hunger or under a vow, the one in deep sleep, swoon, or dissolution, all show senses that have fallen quiet. So Krishna draws the line precisely: the body identified, ignorant person may have the objects fall away, but the inner pull toward them does not. The mark of real wisdom must therefore be something more than quiet senses.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas
The two halves of the verse turn on a single word, rasa, here meaning not the literal taste on the tongue but the inner relish, craving, or longing for objects, the felt pleasure-pull (rasa, glossed as raga, attachment or passion). The teaching has two stages. First, when the embodied one abstains, withholds his senses from their feeding (nirahara, glossed as not seizing or taking in objects), the gross outer objects, sound, form, and the rest, do turn away from him. But the rasa, the underlying craving, remains, intact and unbroken, often in a subtle or seedlike form. Second, and decisively, even this rasa turns away once he has seen the Supreme. So withholding the senses and seeing the Supreme are two different operations with two different reaches: the first quiets the objects, only the second uproots the craving.
Braided from 17 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
What finally severs the craving is direct vision of the Supreme, named here as param drishtva, having seen the supreme. Several commentators specify that this is not a vague glimpse but realization of the Self, the recognition that 'I myself am that,' or the experience of the supreme Reality, Brahman, that the highest is one's own innermost nature. When that vision dawns, perception of objects becomes 'seedless': there is no longer any latent germ left to sprout into desire again. The reason the craving falls is given concretely by some: the Self that is seen is far more delightful, more blissful, than any object, so the lower pull is simply outshone and outdrawn by the higher delight. Without this right vision the craving is never truly pulled up by the roots; it can only be suppressed.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Puruṣottama · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Because of this, the verse delivers a practical conclusion about spiritual effort. Outer abstinence and austerity are real and have a use, but they are limited: they restrain the desire for objects without rooting it out. So the firm, direct-vision wisdom is what must be cultivated with great effort, since that alone destroys the craving the senses leave behind. The person who has withdrawn the senses but not yet seen the Supreme is still a practitioner, not yet perfected. The next verses (2.60 onward) go on to show how dangerous that lingering, un-uprooted craving still is, even for the striver who is working hard at self-control.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Madhvācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as a precise statement about the mutual relation of knowledge and detachment, ending in a non-dual realization. The vision that severs craving is specifically the apprehension 'I myself am that,' 'I alone am all,' Brahman recognized as one's very Self. A logical worry is faced directly: if craving cannot leave without right knowledge, and right knowledge cannot dawn while craving persists, are the two not locked in mutual dependence, with neither able to begin? The answer is that there is no circular trap, because the process is staged. First, by discrimination the senses' gross subjection to objects is broken and the coarse attachment turns back; then, on that cleared ground, right knowledge arises; and only then does even the subtle, seedlike attachment cease completely. So detachment and knowledge are not co-equal rivals waiting on each other, but successive steps, and the firm right-vision insight is what must be deliberately brought about.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri
Advaita Vedānta
This commentator sharpens the objection by pressing the hardest cases: if merely turning the senses from objects made one steady in wisdom, then sleep, swoon, cosmic dissolution, and even spirit-possession would qualify, since in all of these the sense-objects fall away. The verse's answer marks the great difference between deep sleep and true absorption (samadhi). In deep sleep and the like, the craving merely persists in subtle, dormant form because the root ignorance about the Self (the foundational Self-nescience) has not been burned away. In the one who has 'seen the Supreme,' that very root-ignorance is burned, so even the subtle craving departs. This commentator also notes that an older style of gloss restricts the verse to an ascetic doing austerity in the forest, in whom taste persists, while in the one who has seen the Supreme it goes; he frames this as the contrast that matters.
Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Dvaita
These commentators set the verse within a larger argument that knowledge does not come effortlessly. Abstaining from food yields only an absence of the power to enjoy objects, or the loss of longing for other objects; the longing for relish itself does not go by fasting, and goes only through direct knowledge. They press the point with scripture: the Bhagavata (11.8.20) says the wise who fast swiftly conquer every sense but the tongue, for in one who shuns the rest, the relish itself grows stronger. So fasting can actually inflame rather than reduce the core craving. They also work out the grammar of 'except taste' on two levels: rasa as the attachment that takes all objects for its field, and rasa as both the specific power of enjoyment and the longing tied to it. A fuller analysis is offered of what 'conquest of the senses' even means: the senses are conquered not by their mere absence but when, even near objects, they do not drag the mind in, and even when the mind is drawn no attachment arises, so the Self is not disturbed; this two-fold conquest (decay of sense-power and decay of mental attachment) comes about by two different means in two kinds of person, fasting and direct realization of Brahman, which is why genuine conquest takes great effort.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
This commentator gives the seeing of the Supreme a specifically devotional content. The relish that finally turns away does so on the seeker beholding the supreme rasa belonging to Bhagavan, the Lord; the lower relish is displaced by a higher, divine relish. He also draws attention to the word dehinah, 'the embodied one,' reading it to show that in the merely abstaining person even the body-identification (deha-adhyasa, the false sense of being the body) has not passed away, which is why the craving stays gripped in him. The contrast between such a one and the steady sage, in whom the very longing falls before the supreme rasa of the Lord, is therefore immense.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
This commentator reads the verse as the Gita's explicit verdict against severe fasting and body-weakening austerity as a path to mastery of the senses. When a person does not eat, the senses grow weak and incapable of enjoying their objects, but this is only the external action of enforced weakness; the desire for objects is not thereby reduced, so one must instead acquire the knowledge of Brahman that destroys desire, after which mind and senses come under control automatically and no fasting is needed. He cross-refers to Chapter 6 (6.16-17) and 3.6-7, where the yogin is told to eat and act moderately and not to give up food or activity altogether; the Gita treats body-weakening practices as one-sided and to be set aside, favoring moderate food, moderate activity, and knowledge of Brahman. He explicitly rejects the reading (held by some others, and supported from the Bhagavata) that rasa here means literal tongue-taste intensified by long fasting, arguing that such a sense breaks the logic of the verse's second half, that the Bhagavata's word is rasanam not rasa, and that the Bhagavata lacks the second half of this verse, so the two should not be equated.
Lokmanya Tilak
Modern
This commentator maps the verse onto the inner life of the practitioner (sadhak) with a fine-grained psychology of the craving. He distinguishes two ways one becomes abstinent: by giving up food (by choice or through sickness) and by withdrawing the senses (indriyas) from objects and sitting in solitude; here the abstinent one is the seeker who withdraws the senses. He shows how the relish-attitude (rasa-buddhi) secretly survives: the sick man inwardly thinks 'when I recover my strength I will enjoy these things again,' and the seeker likewise keeps a hidden taste even after objects fall away. He notes an exception: those who naturally lack attachment and have intense dispassion (tivra vairagya) lose the rasa-buddhi already in the practice stage, but the seeker working only by reflection without that intense dispassion still finds the relish lingering. Crucially he locates the relish in the seeker's very 'I'-sense (ahanta), the ego-feeling, and in the gross it becomes raga, attachment; so the practical work is to pull the relish out of the 'I' itself by holding the conviction 'I am desireless; making attachment and desire is not my work.' He adds a careful logical point: it is not a rule that losing the relish makes one a steady sage, but it is a rule that being a steady sage means the relish does not remain.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If giving up objects only quiets them while the craving stays alive underneath, what actually breaks that craving, and is there anything I can do toward it besides waiting to 'see the Supreme'?
Be clear first about what outer abstinence can and cannot do. Withdrawing the senses and even fasting genuinely make the objects fall away, and that is real progress, but they reach only the surface: the inner relish, the craving, remains and can even be strengthened by force, so quiet senses are not yet a freed heart. This is exactly why the verse refuses to treat stilled senses as the mark of wisdom.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Madhvācārya · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
What actually severs the craving is direct vision of the Supreme, seeing that the highest reality is your own innermost Self, an experience that leaves no latent seed of desire behind. The reason it works is not suppression but replacement: the Self that is seen is far more delightful and blissful than any object, so the higher delight outshines and dissolves the lower pull. The craving does not have to be wrestled down; it falls away on its own before something better.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Puruṣottama · Mahatma Gandhi · Sant Jñāneśvar
So yes, there is real work to do before that vision, and the path is staged, not a paradox of waiting. By discrimination you can break the senses' gross grip on objects, and on that cleared ground knowledge can arise that finally removes even the subtle craving. The Gita does not ask for body-punishing extremes for this; it commends moderate food and activity together with the knowledge of Brahman, after which mind and senses come under control on their own. And the inner move is available now: locate the relish in your sense of 'I' and steadily hold 'I am desireless; attachment is not my work,' cultivating the higher yearning that conquers every lower one.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Mahatma Gandhi
Contemplation
Notice the difference this verse marks between two kinds of emptiness. You can step away from the things you crave, withdraw your senses, sit in quiet, and the objects will fall away. But watch how a hidden relish-attitude (rasa-buddhi) stays behind: like the sick person who secretly thinks, 'when my strength returns I will enjoy this again,' a taste lingers in you even when the object is gone. This commentator points to where that taste actually lives, in your very sense of 'I' (ahanta), the ego-feeling, where in its coarse form it becomes plain attachment. So the work is not only to remove objects but to draw the relish out of the 'I' itself. Hold, quietly and steadily, the conviction: 'I am desireless; making attachment, making desire, is not my work.' As that attitude of desirelessness settles in, or even just the sincere aim to become desireless, the relish-attitude stops holding on; and on the actual experience of the supreme Reality, it falls away entirely. And take the pressure off: it is not the rule that you must first kill the relish to become steady, the rule runs the other way, that on becoming steady in the Self the relish simply does not remain.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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