Chapter 3 · Verse 36·Spoken by Arjuna
अथ केन प्रयुक्तोऽयं पापं चरति पूरुषः। अनिच्छन्नपि वार्ष्णेय बलादिव नियोजितः
atha kena prayukto ’yaṁ pāpaṁ charati pūruṣhaḥ anichchhann api vārṣhṇeya balād iva niyojitaḥ
Arjuna said: Then what drives a person to commit sin, even against their will, Krishna, as if forced into it?
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Convergence
his verse is Arjuna's question, and the heart of it is a puzzle about why people do wrong against their own will. Arjuna asks: 'Impelled by what does a person commit sin (papa), even when he does not wish to (anicchan), as if driven to it by force (balad iva niyojitah)?' The verse turns on that strange experience we all know: a person can see clearly that something is wrong, can genuinely not want to do it, and yet still find himself doing it. Several commentators stress that 'unwilling' is the key word. The man here is not a fool who loves sin; he knows the scriptural injunctions and prohibitions, he has discernment, and his settled wish is to stay away from wrongdoing. The mystery is that knowledge and good intention are somehow overridden.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Lokmanya Tilak · Śrī Puruṣottama
Almost every commentator reads the force of the question through the simile 'as if driven by force.' The standard image is a servant or labourer compelled by a king: he acts not from his own desire but because a stronger power sets him to work. Some sources add the image of a man swept along by wind and water, helpless against the current. The point of the simile is that the wrongdoer feels coerced from within. There seems to be an inner compulsion stronger than his own resolve. Because a conscious person does not normally act without his own wish, Arjuna reasons that there must be some powerful agent at work behind the will, an enemy that 'yokes' him to the very deed he is trying to avoid.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Dhanapati Sūri · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Several commentators note that Arjuna already senses the wrong cannot be merely the surface impulses he has been warned about, but some deeper root beneath them. The Lord had said in 3.34 that attraction and aversion (raga and dvesha) are 'seated' in the senses and are the waylayers on the path. Arjuna observes that even a person who, by the strength of discernment, is actively curbing desire and anger still relapses into sin. So he suspects there is some single underlying cause beneath these, a 'root' that drives the rest. His question is therefore not idle curiosity but a search for the one decisive enemy, so that effort can be aimed at the right target. This sets up Krishna's answer in the next verse, that the enemy is desire (kama).
Braided from 7 commentators
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Dhanapati Sūri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya
Many commentators draw meaning from the address 'Varshneya,' meaning one born in the line of Vrishni, a name of Krishna. It is read as more than a polite epithet. Because Krishna, though himself unborn, took birth in the Vrishni clan, the address gently reminds him of his closeness and obligation: as you descended into this lineage, do not turn away from my question; tell me my enemy. Some add that since the previous verse praised one's own dharma (sva-dharma), and dharma belongs to one's family and class, Arjuna fittingly appeals to Krishna by his family name as he asks about why a person fails to keep his own dharma.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the question as a search for the single principal cause among many possible causes of wrongdoing. The point is practical: if all the various impellers were equally fundamental, one would have to fight each separately, an endless labour; but if one is the principal cause and the rest only its co-factors, then defeating the one settles the matter. So Arjuna asks which is the principal impeller. One of these commentators raises a sharp sub-question: people sometimes say the impellers are dharma and adharma, or attraction and aversion, which would seem to make the Self dependent and not free, and even make the Lord dependent on them. The word 'unwilling' is read as setting aside attraction-aversion as the deepest cause, because attraction always comes with a wish, and here the man has no wish to sin; so the real principal impeller must lie deeper still. The simile of the compelled servant is taken as showing this felt loss of independence.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators sharpen the puzzle by tying it specifically to the seeker of the discipline of knowledge (jnana-yoga). The man in question is precisely one who has set out on that path and therefore does not wish to experience sense-objects at all. So the contradiction is acute: why does someone whose whole orientation is against the enjoyment of objects nevertheless fall into the very experience of objects, which is the sin meant here? One of these commentators explains carefully that earlier the following of mental impressions (vasanas) was described, and that a vasana, in a conscious being, prompts action through desire (iccha); a conscious agent does not act without his own wish. Yet here the man acts unwillingly, like one driven by wind and water; so there must be some powerful external prompter, which is why 'as if by force' is supplied. This commentator also explicitly rejects an alternative textual reading ('a-niccham-ana api balad-atadeva') as incorrect, and resolves the grammar so that the question reads: the one set in action as if driven by wind, by whom is he prompted?
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators read the word 'now then' (atha) as marking a turn to a different topic, and they take pains to justify why the question fits here at all. There are many promptings of action, they say, including anger and the rest of the well-known six foes, and desire; Arjuna's real question is which of these is the strongest. One of these commentators argues at length that although only attraction and aversion were named in 3.34, the word 'aversion' there implicitly covered pride, envy and the other foes, by their well-known grouping as six. So when the question speaks of 'many' causes, this is a legitimate back-reference. The question's purpose is strategic: whichever of these is the stronger, against that the seeker will direct his great effort. The connection to the preceding teaching is read as an incidental or occasional one, hooked on the warning 'let one not come under the sway of those two' in 3.34, rather than a strict cause-and-effect link to the main topic.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators set the question against the freshly settled view that doing another's dharma brings sin while doing one's own dharma brings merit. The puzzle is then: knowing this clearly, why does the soul still go wrong? One of these commentators reads the difficulty through the soul's lack of independence, comparing it to a sick man who cannot help himself; the going wrong in substituting another's dharma for one's own is itself the sin, and it must be brought about by some pusher, even though that pusher is in some sense the soul's own nature. For this school the question is no idle doubt; it deliberately sets up the unmasking of desire (kama), the inner enemy that disposes the soul to misstep. The other commentator frames it within devotion: Bhagavan presides over the portions of the Purusha, and although Maya was said to delude some by the Lord's own permission, the real puzzle is why a person who belongs to the Lord, born in a good lineage for the rising of the dharma of devotion (bhakti), should still slide into sin and then have to undergo its fruit.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator frames the question as: how does a person engage in sin even while knowing sin to be sin? He reads it tightly back to the idea of one's own dharma. If one's own dharma is not to be given up precisely because it does not depart from one's own heart, then how is it that these people practise unrighteousness at all? The deeper thing being asked, on this reading, is what exactly this 'own dharma' is, the dharma by which no creature is ever empty or without it. So the question becomes an inquiry into the very nature of innate dharma and how unrighteousness can arise against it.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators ground the question in concrete forbidden conduct: attraction toward an object that scripture forbids, such as conversing with another's wife. The man in question knows the meaning of the scriptures of injunction and prohibition and so has no wish to engage in sin, yet he engages as if by force. One of these commentators gives a striking psychological note: by the force of the prompting agent's instigation, a full-fledged wish actually arises even in the one who is prompted, as though he had come under the wish of the prompter. Another presses the question to its root: even a person who by the strength of discernment is curbing desire and anger is seen to lapse again, so there must be some other prompter underlying these two. One of these commentators also weighs the candidates for who the prompter might be, the Lord or the prior impression (vasana), and rules out both: the Lord, being a witness and compassionate, does not prompt to sin, and the impression cannot prompt because it is insentient. The Marathi devotional voice dwells on the lived pathos of it: how even wise men who possess all knowledge fall from the right path, abandon their own duty, and are dragged knowingly back into the very things they were disgusted with and tried to shun.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators keep the verse close to ordinary experience. One renders the question plainly: by what inspiration does a man commit sin, not himself desiring it, as though coerced? Another gives a careful reading of the word 'unwilling' (anicchan): it does not mean renouncing the wish for enjoyment (bhoga) and accumulation (sangraha), but only the wish to do sin. The wish for enjoyment and accumulation is itself the root of every sin; when it is gone, sin does not arise at all. So the discerning man does not wish to do sin, yet because the wish for worldly enjoyment and accumulation still abides within him, he cannot carry out the duty fit to be done and commits the wrong that ought not to be done. The phrase 'as if driven by force' is read as the lived sense that some powerful cause is yoking the man to sin against his resolve, which is exactly what Arjuna wants named so that he can know his enemy. A third commentator simply clarifies that 'Varshneya' is a name of Krishna, born in the family of the Vrishnis.
Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
A Seeker Asks
If I clearly know something is wrong and genuinely do not want to do it, what is the power inside me that still drags me into it against my own will?
First, take seriously that the experience is real and not a sign that you secretly love the wrong. This verse describes exactly your case: a person who knows the rules, has discernment, and does not wish to sin, yet acts 'as if driven by force.' The whole question is built around the word 'unwilling.' Your good intention is not a lie; it is simply being overridden by something stronger.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
Second, the commentators agree the felt experience is one of inner coercion, like a servant compelled by a king or a man swept along by wind and water. Because a conscious person does not normally act without his own wish, this points to a powerful agent operating beneath the will, an enemy that 'yokes' you to the deed. So the right response is not to despair at your weak willpower but to recognize that you are up against a definite force, not a vague failing.
Śaṅkarācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Third, the relapse you feel, lapsing even while curbing desire and anger, is itself the clue that the trouble is not the surface impulse but a single deeper root beneath it. One commentator names this concretely: the wish for enjoyment and for accumulation still abiding in you is the root of every sin, and while it remains you cannot do the duty fit to be done. So aim your effort at that root rather than at the symptoms. Arjuna asks this very question to identify the one decisive enemy, and Krishna will name it in the next verse as desire (kama).
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vallabhācārya · Dhanapati Sūri
Contemplation
If you watch your own slips honestly, you will notice what this verse is pointing to. You do not, in the moment, actually wish to do the wrong thing; the result of wrongdoing is sorrow, and no one wishes for sorrow. So look more carefully at what 'unwilling' really covers. It is not that you have given up the wish for enjoyment and for accumulating things. That wish is still quietly alive in you, and it is precisely the root of every sin. The honest practice is to stop fighting only the surface act and to trace the trouble back to that deeper craving for pleasure and possession; for when the wish for enjoyment and accumulation goes, sin does not arise at all. Until then, expect that even while you sincerely refuse the wrong, you may be yoked to it as if pushed from behind. Naming that hidden cause, rather than blaming yourself for weakness, is the beginning of meeting your real enemy.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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