Advaita Vedānta

For these commentators the Lord into whom action is offered is Vasudeva, the all-knowing supreme Lord who is the Self of all beings; offering action 'into Me' is offering it into that universal Self. A distinctive feature of this reading is its account of the doer's thought: even while surrendering, the actor holds the discerning understanding 'I am the doer; but I act for the Lord, as a servant acts for a king.' The agency is not denied outright but reframed as servant-agency. 'Fever' is unpacked as the heat of grief and sorrow, including the sorrow of ill-fame in this world and the next and the dread of falling into hell. These commentators also debate a fine point of scope: whether 'free of mine-ness' and 'free of fever' apply only to the battle that is the chapter's topic, or to every action. One position holds that the offering and desirelessness belong to all action while freedom from mine-ness and grief belong specifically to the war; another rejects this narrowing, arguing that these obstacles attach to every action and that the Lord himself prescribed evenness in success and failure for the removal of grief generally.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators ground the whole verse in revealed texts about the inner ruler, the antaryamin who has entered into all beings and governs them from within. The self, on this reading, has the supreme Person for its body and is set in motion by Him; so the 'mind on the Self' means a mind joined to the scriptural knowledge of the self's true nature as God's own body and instrument. The crucial move is that the actions are to be cast upon the Lord as being done by Him alone: the supreme Person, the owner of all, by His own agency and by His own instruments, causes His own actions to be done for the single purpose of His own worship. Holding the actions to be merely worship of Him, one is free of longing for their fruit and therefore free of mine-ness in the act. The 'fever' is identified with a specific inner heat: the anxiety 'how shall I fare?' born of the beginningless heap of accumulated sin; remembering that the worshipped Lord Himself will free one from bondage removes that fever, so one does the discipline of action with ease. One of these commentators further ties the verse to the scriptural teaching that the jiva's very agency is dependent on the supreme (a settled point of Vedanta), so that the Lord is both the inner ruler of the conscious self and the soul of even insentient nature, and the two truths the verse pairs are God's lordship (His ruling) and His ownership (His mastery).

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse as following from 'therefore': since the action of the learned is of a certain kind and Arjuna too is to be treated as learned, this instruction applies. They raise a sharp problem: renunciation means giving up what is one's own, yet it has been said the individual soul has no actions of its own, so how can the soul be told to give up its actions? Their answer is that the actions were only mistakenly superimposed on the living being in the first place; to 'cast all actions upon Me' is to release back onto the Lord what was wrongly attributed to the jiva, knowing that the Lord Himself does all actions and that this is His worship. So the renunciation is the thought 'the Lord does it,' and the freedom from mine-ness is the thought 'I do not do it.' These commentators explicitly examine and reject a rival explanation, namely that the actions become 'of the essence of' the supreme Lord, calling it unscriptural and contrary to the means of valid knowledge; for them the point is the Lord's sole doership, not the action's merging into the Lord's being.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

Here Krishna is named as the chief, the direct doer, and the supreme deity into whom action is offered. The signature teaching is that the action itself is kept while three things are surrendered to Krishna: doership, possession, and fruit. One commentator maps the three words of the verse onto this threefold renunciation: 'nirashih' is renouncing the fruit, 'nirmama' is renouncing mine-ness, and 'vigata-jvarah' (fever gone) is renouncing doership. He uses a grammatical analogy to show how renunciation can keep the act: as in the phrase 'leave the man with the staff,' the leaving relates to the qualifier (the staff), not to the man himself; so too the renunciation relates to the adjuncts of action (doership, fruit, mine-ness), not to the action itself, which goes on. After this surrender the act becomes Krishna's own and the soul becomes His instrument, and this offering is what makes even the path of knowledge bear fruit. The other commentator stresses that acting under the Lord's command means no time is wasted, that 'all actions' includes worldly tasks, and that the warrior's work of battle is what is specifically commanded to Arjuna.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhedabheda

This commentator surrenders all actions into the Lord who is Brahman, and supplies a metaphysical reason for why this is possible: the whole array of activities belongs to Brahman by virtue of Brahman's sentience, and since effect and cause are not different, the action attains identity with Brahman and so becomes fit for attaining That. The freed person's settled thought is given in plain words: 'Action is not mine; it belongs to Brahman alone; it is done in Me.' Resolved in this way, one fights free of grief. He closes by linking the verse forward to the praise of those who, full of faith and free from cavil, constantly follow this teaching and are thereby released from the bondage of actions.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the verse as the explanation of how one acts once joined to the Lord. The inner determination is stated starkly: 'I am not the doer at all; the supreme Lord, who governs all, is alone the doer of all.' Casting all actions upon the Lord just is thinking in this way. With this conviction settled, and out of a wish to favor or benefit the world, one simply carries out the worldly conduct that here takes the form of war. The accent falls on the complete denial of one's own doership and on the benevolent motive of supporting the world.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the offering devotionally. One notes that Arjuna is not yet a knower of truth, so he is told to do action in this way; the mind on the Self means seeing 'I act under the inner Ruler, dependent on Him,' and the karma is regarded as the means to a fruit that is the Lord's, done for the Lord, so that one becomes void of mine-ness. Another stresses that the 'adhyatma' mind rests in the Self and not in objects. A third draws the servant-and-king picture out fully: as a servant under the king's authority acts by the king's command, so Arjuna under the Lord's authority is to act by His command, desiring to hold the world together; he is free of mine-ness by thinking 'these actions are the means to my Lord's fruit and are for His sake,' and the verse teaches that the duties of one's own station are to be done by all who seek liberation. The Marathi devotional voice adds a warm expansion: do all prescribed duties keeping the mind fixed on the supreme Self, refuse the egotistic thought 'this is the action, I am the doer, I will do it,' and then, with a peaceful and firm mind, take up the bow and play the warrior's role; in doing so one spreads good fame, raises respect for the religion of the Self, and rids the earth of the dead weight of evil.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators render the verse for the contemporary reader while keeping its core. One states simply that surrendering all actions to the Lord means acting with the thought 'I perform all actions for the sake of the Lord,' and glosses fever as grief and sorrow. Another draws the servant image morally: one who knows the Self in the body as a part of the supreme Self dedicates everything to Him, as a faithful servant is a mere shadow of his master, since the master is the real doer and the servant only the instrument. A third renders the offering as making a true 'sannyasa,' a dedication, of all actions to the Lord with a mind fixed on the highest Self, giving up hope of fruit and mine-ness, and fighting without mental perturbation. The non-sectarian devotional voice develops the verse most fully for the practitioner: the seeker worries that action binds yet cannot stop acting, and the answer is to surrender all one's duties to the Lord and hold no separate relationship of one's own with them. The reason given is that in every action of the whole world only the Lord's power (shakti) is at work; body, senses, objects and power are all the Lord's, while one's true self is a part of the Lord. So dropping the falsely assumed 'mine' on body and senses and seeing them as the Lord's alone is the real meaning of offering. The mind should hold an aim that is spiritual, not worldly, an uddeshya (a goal) rather than a kamana (a craving), and acting in this way is itself the offering of every action at the Lord's feet.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas