Advaita Vedānta

These commentators stress the logical tension the verse seems to create and how it is resolved. If every creature acts only according to its nature, and no one is without a nature, then human effort would have no room and scripture would seem pointless. They define nature strictly as the impression of merit, demerit and the rest from a former birth, manifest now and prompting by its own power; one source even qualifies it as 'present' so that no action is ascribed to the time of cosmic dissolution. One Advaita voice adds that the Lord himself impels beings only with regard to their prior karma, which is how he can be the inner controller without overriding their nature. The 'no different from beasts' maxim shows knower and non-knower are equally subject, so the conclusion holds for all.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This school turns the verse on the self's relation to matter. Scripture declares that the self is by nature distinct from insentient matter (prakriti) and that this true self is what should be constantly dwelt upon. Yet even the man of knowledge, when dealing with material objects, behaves according to the prior impression of his matter-nature. Crucially, the 'man of knowledge' here is not one who has fully realized the self face to face, but one who has merely heard scripture and grasped intellectually that the self is distinct from matter. The vasana that has grown from the beginningless confusion of taking the body for the self is full and fully unfolded; it cannot be stilled all at once by a knowledge born only today from indirect scriptural teaching. So the restraint imposed by scripture, by itself, cannot yet master it.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads the verse as explaining why responses to the teaching legitimately differ. Nature is action done in another birth, abiding in the mind as latent impressions, like a dye upon a garment. Given its strength, it is fitting that some do not follow Krishna's teaching at all. But the verse is also a hinge: for those who, by the force of merit accumulated in another birth, do follow the teaching, the instruction of the next verse is given, that attraction and aversion are seated in each sense-object and one must not fall under their sway, for they are one's adversaries. So the verse sorts hearers and points the worthy ones to the real practice.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse tightly with the surrounding teaching: if following Krishna's view brings liberation and the opposite brings ruin, why do people not follow it? Their distinctive concern is grammatical and metaphysical. Since root-nature could be thought of as one, how can the verse speak of nature as 'one's own', individual to each person? The answer is that 'nature' here means the formative tendency carried over from before, namely attachment and aversion and their effects, which differ from soul to soul. So each being's 'own' nature is its own particular load of carried-over raga and dvesha.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

This school reads the verse through grace. The wise do not settle on Krishna's view alone, despite the great fruit, because nature pulls everything its own way as straw is pulled by the wind; even one who understands that 'it is by nature's delusion that I am as I am' still does not actually take up what another teaches. One source presses the metaphysics: the individual soul is a portion of prakriti, so it cannot of itself engage in what the Lord commands, and the Lord's own deluding power (Maya), granted by him, leads even the knowing astray, citing the Durga-saptashati that the great Maya forcibly draws away even the minds of the wise. The decisive consequence for both is that external restraint and even holy company accomplish nothing on their own; only the Lord's own nourishing grace (pushti) can carry a soul against its nature, so the wise one turns from self-trust to refuge in Krishna.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This reading is metaphysically the most radical and oddly the most freeing. Even the man of knowledge has no 'reversal' in ordinary dealings like eating; he too simply acts as befits sattva and the rest, knowing it precisely as that. But the deeper point is that the beings, made of earth and the other elements, dissolve back into nature, while the self is a non-doer, ever free. Since the self never acts in the first place, the whole problem of curbing birth and action does not even arise for it. The question 'whose is the curbing?' is left to dissolve the false premise that the free self needs restraining at all.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators frame the opening question in terms of why people fear no punishment and do not become desireless and do their own duty. They agree nature is the disposition fixed by the samskaras of past karma, the burden of suffering built up by long habit of sin, and that even the discerning are dragged by it. Their distinctive move is to grade the remedy and then transcend it: external restraint through the desireless path of action can refine those of impure mind, and the path of knowledge those of pure mind, but neither can lift those of utterly impure nature; for them, only devotion arising from the Lord's spontaneous grace, and the company of the holy (satsanga) whose words cut away the mind's affliction, can destroy even the strongest evil tendency. They cite the Skanda and Bhagavata Puranas to show even a lowly hunter raised to ecstatic love by grace. One of these voices presses the practical edge: since the senses indulged become like a serpent or a tiger or a deadly poison, the learned should grant them no indulgence on any pretext, and should not pour one's life into fattening a perishable body.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

The modern commentators are most anxious to block a fatalist misreading. They insist the verse does not deny personal effort or self-restraint; it must be read with the very next verse, which shows that one can rise above the sway of likes and dislikes (raga and dvesha). The passionate and ignorant man is helplessly carried by his lower nature, but the disciplined seeker can master it. One warns against the excuse 'I cannot do this, it is not my nature', insisting that habit is not nature and that the soul's true nature is ascent, so every threatened decline should be resisted. Another draws the practical line precisely: outer suppression (nigraha) of an act is useless without the inner clearing of raga and dvesha, and he distinguishes acts that are neutral and free of attraction from acts where attraction and aversion have entered. The real cure is inward, at the root, not external coercion.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas