Advaita Vedānta

These commentators make a careful restriction: the duty to keep turning the wheel binds the person who is still ignorant of the Self and is eligible for action, not the knower. The whole stretch of teaching, from 'not by abstaining from works' down to this verse, gave many reasons why such a person must act, and named the fault in not acting. They stress that knowledge and action are opposed, so the one already established in knowledge of the Self cannot and need not do this work; it is the non-knower alone who must do action, for the sake of knowledge, through the gradual purifying of the mind. The verse names the duty of the ignorant only incidentally, since the topic here is establishment in action, knowledge having been treated elsewhere. On this reading the verse sets up the very next teaching, where the one who delights in the Self alone has nothing left to do.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators apply the verse to the seeker who is standing in a spiritual means, whether the discipline of action or the discipline of knowledge, and who while still on that path refuses to keep the wheel turning. They read 'beings' precisely as ensouled living bodies, not mere matter, and they spell out the chain of cause and effect that makes the cycle a true wheel. The non-doing of caste-and-stage duty belongs only to the liberated person, whose beholding of the Self no longer depends on any means. They also note that the prefix 'anu' in the verb (anuvartayati) marks the seeker's turning of the wheel as a following-on after the Lord's own setting of it in motion, and that the term aghayuh can be read three ways at once: his life is for the sake of sin, or it produces sin, or it is bound up with sin.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators focus on a textual difficulty: the previous verses seemed to describe only a succession of cause and effect, so how can it now be called a 'wheel'? They answer that the series closes back on itself, the letters or Veda being made manifest through beings in turn, which is what makes it a wheel. They also handle the word aghayuh closely: since life in itself is not a sin, the man is called 'one whose life is sin' only by a figure of purposive reference, meaning his life is given over to sin alone. One who does not keep the wheel turning is in effect its destroyer.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhedabheda

This commentator gives a compressed form of the cycle, action arising from beings and beings from action, with the Lord, the birthless one, as the one who set it in motion. He frames the fault sharply: by not performing the occasion, the occasioned result itself is destroyed. He then turns at once to the exception: there is a state in which giving up action is approved, namely for the one who has become Brahman, and he quotes the next verse about the man whose delight is in the Self alone, for whom there is nothing left to be done.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the wheel as the Lord's own ordinance and the rhythm of his creation, set turning by Prajapati's instruction for the people's highest good, or by the Lord's will for his divine play (krida). To step outside it is to step outside the field where grace can reach the seeker. The fault is not merely sloth but a misdirection of love: the sense-reveller sports in the senses alone, for the senses' own sake, and not for the Lord nor in the Lord. The work that should be kept turning is, at heart, work essential to and offered for the Lord.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives the briefest gloss: one who does not accept the wheel thus is made of sin, since he delights in the senses alone and not in the Self. The contrast he draws is exactly between delight in the senses and delight in the Self.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the wheel as the cycle of sacrifice and prescribed religious duty set going by the Lord for the highest aim of beings, and they sharpen the charge against the one who drops out. His fault is precisely that he uses his senses to sport in objects and not in action meant for the worship of the Lord, nor in the eating of what remains of sacrifice held dear by the supreme Brahman; he is turned away from the Lord. They speak in vivid terms of the consequence: who would not sink into hell, such a man is a mass of sin and a dead burden on the earth, his life as barren as unseasonal clouds or as useless as the dangling nipples on a goat's neck. One should never forsake one's own religion, for it is the only path to follow whole-heartedly.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators stress the social and moral force of the verse. To violate the law of the Creator, by studying neither the Vedas nor performing the prescribed sacrifices and indulging only in sensual pleasure, is itself the worst sin, and such a selfish life is wasted. One reads the verse as the proof that sacrificial action and the duties of one's station were created by the Creator and not by man, and are needed both to keep the world going and to maintain oneself, so the cycle of sacrifice must be kept turning continually and unattachedly. He also notes that the next stanzas will answer the renunciate objection that the Self-knower need not act. The non-sectarian devotional reading frames the wheel as the wheel of creation: whoever does not keep it turning, delighting only in the senses, lives in vain and his life is a burden upon the world.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas