Chapter 2 · Verse 61·Spoken by Krishna
तानि सर्वाणि संयम्य युक्त आसीत मत्परः। वशे हि यस्येन्द्रियाणि तस्य प्रज्ञा प्रतिष्ठिता
tāni sarvāṇi sanyamya yukta āsīta mat-paraḥ vaśhe hi yasyendriyāṇi tasya prajñā pratiṣhṭhitā
Restraining all the senses, one should sit absorbed, intent on me as the supreme. The wisdom of one whose senses are under control is firmly set.
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
his verse gives the remedy. The verses just before it warned that the senses are turbulent and that they can carry off the mind of even a wise, striving person. So a natural worry arises: if the senses are that strong, can they be controlled at all? Krishna answers here. The opening word, 'all those' (tani sarvani), points back to that whole troublesome set of senses, and the instruction is plain: restrain them, hold every one of them in, and sit. Several commentators stress that this is not a counsel of despair but a method; the senses can in fact be mastered, though it takes real and sustained effort.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The outward shape of the discipline is to restrain the senses and sit 'yoked' (yukta), with a composed, gathered, undistracted mind, free of outer activity. 'Yukta' is unpacked as one who is joined or absorbed in this practice, perfected by yoga; the sitting is a settling of the whole instrument inward. Read this way, the verse also answers a question raised earlier in the chapter, namely how the steady-minded person actually sits or abides: he sits with his senses already mastered, the mind drawn in and held on its goal.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Bhāskara · Lokmanya Tilak · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
The decisive turn of the verse is the single word 'intent on Me' (mat-parah), and a large body of commentators agree it is what makes the whole practice work. The point is that the senses cannot be subdued by raw willpower alone; the practitioner must make the Lord his highest and only goal and lean on Him. One classic image: just as robbers are kept in check by a strong king, and once they know a man depends on that king they fall in line as his subjects, so the unruly senses are quieted by the power of the indwelling Lord, and knowing this person belongs to the Lord, they too become obedient. Several voices add the warning's mirror: one who sets out by his own force to conquer the senses, without setting the mind on the Lord, comes to ruin; without devotion and the grace that follows, the effort is vain.
Braided from 10 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
The second line states the fruit and the test together: 'whose senses are under control, his wisdom is established' (vashe hi yasya indriyani tasya prajna pratishthita). Mastery of the senses is the visible mark of settled insight; once the senses are genuinely in hand, wisdom stands firm. Two commentators sharpen the logic in opposite directions that still meet: the controlling of the senses bears the fruit of knowledge, and equally, by becoming steady in wisdom the senses are sure to come under control. Either way, the established mind and the mastered senses go together; this is how the steady one is recognized and distinguished from the mere practitioner still struggling at the task.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read 'intent on Me' (mat-parah) through the lens of non-dual identity. The 'Me' is Vasudeva, the inmost Self of all; to be intent on Him is to sit holding the conviction 'I am no other than That', seeing nothing beyond Him. One adds that this fixing is reached by long, uninterrupted, reverent practice of the contemplation 'I am not other than the supreme Self' (and alternatively by repeatedly seeing the fault in sense-objects), and that this very contemplation is what subdues the senses. So devotion here is not relation to a separate Lord but the steadying of the mind in its own ultimate identity, and the verse clears away any sense of a higher and a lower by that single phrase 'I am not other.'
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda
Dvaita
These commentators flatly reject the non-dual reading of 'intent on Me.' They hold that 'Me' is the Lord who is supreme, higher and more excellent than all, distinct from the devotee; to read 'devoted to Me' as 'non-dual knowledge' does not follow the actual syllables of the verse. 'Joined' (yukta) is taken as the mind applied to Him, in absorption, not as union in identity. They also build a tight argument from the structure of these verses: direct knowledge of Brahman is meant to be reached by conquering the senses, yet the senses seem impossible to conquer by ordinary discriminating knowledge alone (a hungry body cannot even subsist), which would make knowledge and sense-control mutually depend on each other. The way out is 'great effort,' and above all the constant joining of the mind on the Lord alone as the most excellent of all; that, not bare discrimination, is the supreme means of conquering the senses. On this reading the closing point of the three verses is that knowledge is the fruit of a sense-conquest won by hard toil, and one who fears the toil simply fails to win it.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This commentator explains the mechanism in order: the senses are hard to conquer because they are bound up with passion for their objects, so the practitioner first sets the mind on the Lord, the mind's auspicious resort. With the mind fixed on Him, it is purified, its taint burned away and its passion for objects gone; the now-pure mind then makes the senses obey it, and only the mind with obedient senses is able to behold the self. The supporting image is of fire fanned by wind burning up brushwood: Vishnu present in the mind burns away all the impurity of the yogins. The order matters: purify the mind through the Lord first, and sense-control and self-vision follow; reverse it and try to force the senses first, and one comes to ruin.
Rāmānujācārya
Bhakti
These devotional commentators make devotion the indispensable condition. 'Intent on Me' means simply 'My devotee,' and one holds that there is no conquest of the senses at all without devotion to the Lord, citing Uddhava's confession that yogis who merely restrain the mind by effort sink down exhausted for want of absorption, so let them rather take refuge at the Lord's lotus feet. Another, sharing the Vishnu-in-the-mind image of burning away impurity, says that by the power of devotion to the Lord the vision of one's own self, preceded by the conquest of the senses, becomes easy. One stresses that the steady one's senses have become subdued, marking him off from the practitioner. Another warns that even the slightest lingering desire for sense-objects, however outwardly detached a person seems, spreads like a single drop of poison through the body and destroys all right thinking; only the heart never tempted by objects keeps the Lord always in view.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator uses the verse to answer a precise question: why is the austere man, who also abstains from objects, not called 'of established wisdom'? The answer turns on relish (rasa). Even when the ascetic has no contact with objects like form and the rest, those objects turn away from him while still leaving behind their relish, a residual tinge lodged in the inner organ; because that tinge does not leave, he is not steady of wisdom. The yogin is different: by the very seeing of the supreme Lord, no such tinge arises in him at all. So 'intent on Me' here is the vision of the Lord that dissolves the inner relish itself, not just the outward act of abstaining, and that is what separates real steadiness from mere austerity.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Śuddhādvaita
This commentator reads the two halves as a reciprocal circle. Having restrained the senses and brought them under control, one is to be 'mat-parah,' the one for whom the Lord alone is supreme, and joined to Him; and for such a one whose wisdom is firmly established, the senses come under his own control and no one else's. Steadiness of wisdom and mastery of the senses each secure the other, which is why the first half could say that even the wise are no match for the senses: the agitating senses are subdued only within this devotional steadiness, not apart from it.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
These modern voices each draw out a practical emphasis. One reads 'yukta' as perfected by yoga, an adept who bears pain and pleasure with an equable mind, and finds in 'matparayana' the first hint in the Gita of the path of devotion; he insists that the mind is freed from the slavery of the senses only by gaining knowledge of Brahman, that merely mortifying the body is external and useless, and he cites Manu's warning that the powerful band of senses drags off even the wise man. Another, non-sectarian and devotional, finds the verse's heart in a trap of subtle pride: when the seeker controls the senses, the conceit arises, 'I have brought the senses under my sway,' and this conceit, crediting one's own strength, blocks progress and turns one from the Lord; so the seeker should credit only the Lord's grace, since the human birth, the taste for practice, and its very success all rest on grace alone, and by becoming wholly devoted to the Lord the practice is fulfilled. He also reads the second line against verse 59: there, cutting off contact with objects left the inner relish intact, so the senses were not truly mastered, whereas here the steady one's relish has passed off and the senses are genuinely in hand.
Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Sivananda
A Seeker Asks
If even a forceful, disciplined effort to control the senses leads to failure or pride, what does 'intent on Me' actually ask me to do differently from white-knuckle self-control?
It asks you to change what you lean on. The verse does still call for restraint of the senses and a gathered, seated mind; effort is not cancelled. But several commentators warn that effort alone, the conquest of the senses by your own main force without setting the mind on the Lord, ends in ruin or in vain striving.
Rāmānujācārya · Mahatma Gandhi · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The practical difference is where the mind is fixed first. Rather than gripping each sense by sheer will, you set the mind on the Lord as its highest goal and resort; the mind, steadied and purified there, is what then makes the senses fall into line, the way subjects fall in once they know whom their protector serves.
Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
And it guards you from the very pride that white-knuckle control breeds. The moment you congratulate yourself for mastering the senses, that conceit blocks you; so you credit the Lord's grace, not your strength, and your sense of 'I' rests in Him. Devotion, on these readings, is not a softer substitute for discipline but the condition that lets discipline actually succeed and steady the wisdom behind it.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
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.