Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the whole chain as the path of liberating knowledge. 'Buddhi' is the understanding whose object is the true nature of the Self, the certainty of the identity of Brahman and the self, born of Vedantic hearing and reflection. 'Bhavana' is the continuous meditative flow that ripens that knowledge into direct realization. 'Shanti' is not merely calm but the cessation of ignorance together with all its effects, and the 'sukha' withheld from the unpeaceful is specifically the bliss of liberation. Two careful sub-points appear here. First, one commentator raises the question of whether mental calm causes Self-knowledge directly or only by way of meditation, and answers that the verse praises calm because without it neither correct meditation nor knowledge can arise; the rival reading, that the verse merely warns against an uncollected intellect after the previous verse spoke of the senses, is rejected as forced. Second, the two occurrences of 'unyoked' are derived from two different verbal roots, one meaning to join or collect, the other to be settled in samadhi, which underlines that stability of intellect is the whole point.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the disqualifying fault is named with unusual precision: the unyoked one is the person who has not surrendered his mind to the Lord and instead sets out to subdue the senses by his own effort. For such a self-reliant seeker the understanding that bears on the self will never be accomplished, and for that very reason its contemplation is impossible, its longing for objects is never stilled, and the eternal, unsurpassed happiness can never be gained. The accent falls not on technique but on dependence: it is the refusal to give the mind over to God, and the reliance on one's own power, that breaks the chain at its first link.

Rāmānujācārya

Dvaita

These commentators treat serenity as a genuinely distinct prerequisite and ask a sharp question: if direct knowledge of Brahman is accomplished by meditation aided by hearing and reflection, what extra work is this 'serenity' doing, the serenity for whose sake the senses had to be conquered? Their answer is that without serenity (a one-pointedness of mind) there is no yoga and so no right knowledge at all, which is why the unyoked has no buddhi; the verse supplies, by context, the missing condition 'in the absence of serenity'. They also fix the meaning of 'peace' by the lexicon, where 'shanti' stands alongside release and nirvana, so peace here means liberation itself. And they note that this peace is mentioned to make known not merely the loss of all pain in liberation but a supreme happiness wholly unobtainable by worldly beings.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

This is the most distinctive rereading of the chain, and it turns on devotional union. The puzzle this commentator poses is that the sthita-prajna state was already described for one in samadhi, so what new point is added here. The answer recasts every term toward Bhagavan. The 'ayukta' is the one not joined in yoga to the Lord, and for him there is no buddhi at all; even if buddhi has dawned, if union with the Lord in samadhi has not arisen, the sthita-prajna state achieves nothing. 'Bhavana' is read not as meditation in general but as the longing for a body fit for the relish of Bhagavan; 'shanti' is the attainment of that body; and the final 'sukha' is the direct experience of the bliss of devotion enjoyed in that body. The whole verse thus becomes a statement that without union with God nothing on the path bears its fruit.

Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators keep the standard chain but tilt its middle and end toward the Lord and the bliss of the Self. The unyoked one is specifically the one whose mind is not fixed on the Lord, and 'bhavana' is read as meditation on the Supreme Lord rather than abstract Self-inquiry. 'Shanti' is the cessation of the pull toward objects, the dying down of the thirst for them, and the withheld 'sukha' is named as the bliss of the Self, the experience of the self-luminous Self that is itself bliss. One of these voices, in vivid imagery, says the man without this stable discernment is caught in the snares of sense-objects, that for the peaceless happiness is as impossible as the germinating of a burnt seed, and concludes that the unsteady mind is the root of all miseries, so the senses must be kept in complete control.

Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator does not parse the four links one by one. He gives the import of the surrounding passage as a single portrait: the true yogin of established wisdom is the one who is the governor of his own mind, so that even while he serves and engages the objects he is not overwhelmed by the surges of anger and the rest. The emphasis is less on a ladder of denials and more on mastery from within: it is being in command of the mind, not the mere avoidance of objects, that marks the one who is firmly established.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators restate the chain in direct, practical terms and locate it within karma-yoga. One frames the whole verse as the warning that follows from the discipline of mind and senses: in karma-yoga the restraint (samyama) of mind and senses comes first, for without discerning restraint craving is not destroyed, without that destruction the intellect does not grow steady, and without steadiness there can be no peace and no happiness. Another renders 'buddhi' as steady Reason and 'bhavana' as fixedness or firmness of that Reason, keeping the sequence intact. A third underscores the diagnosis at the end: desire or thirst for sense-objects is the very enemy of peace, there cannot be even a tinge of happiness for one who thirsts, and only when that thirst dies does one enjoy peace and become able to meditate and rest in the Self.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas