Advaita Vedānta

These commentators hold the plain identity of anger with desire: 'this very desire, obstructed somewhere, turns into anger,' so anger is just desire in a changed state. They reason from desire's nature as restless longing arising from rajas. One adds that desire is mind-formed, citing scripture that 'desire, will, doubt' and the rest are all the mind, so kama is essentially the mind's unfixedness. The closing word 'here' is read as 'here in transmigration,' the round of birth and death. The cure is structural: since desire is rajas-born, wearing rajas away by a sattvic turn wears desire away.

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

Dvaita

These commentators reject the idea that anger is literally desire transformed, and call this the error of other commentators who do not know the subtle truth from the texts. For them desire and anger are utterly different; a quality cannot be the material out of which another quality is made, only its occasioning cause. They affirm instead a strict causal link: anger always arises from desire, and apart from desire anger does not arise in any way at all. Even when anger seems to come from hearing one's teacher censured, it still arises from a desire (the desire that what one holds dear in devotion not be censured). They also parse 'great sinner' (mahapapma) not as a descriptive compound but as a possessive one: 'that from which great sin comes,' such as brahmin-slaying. And 'the enemy' opposes 'all,' meaning the complete human goal, namely liberation.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators set the verse precisely in the context of one who has begun the discipline of knowledge while still joined to matter made of the gunas. Desire here is born of rajas and of the earlier impression (vasana) left by past experience of objects, fastening on sound and the other sense-objects, and it draws the seeker out toward all objects. When its course is checked, it turns into anger directed at the conscious beings causing the obstruction, and sets the person to harming others. One develops the precise mechanism: the seed-impressions of sense-experience, watered by rajas, sprout into desire and anger; desire is a knowledge-aspect of the self, while rajas is a quality of prakriti, and just as fire's heat touching the hand raises a blister, contact with guna-bearing prakriti raises desire in the self. To the worry that an overwhelmingly rajasic person could not even begin the discipline of knowledge, the answer is that sattva rises in interludes, alternating, which makes the beginning possible.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators add a distinctive refinement: strictly speaking, desire (the prior appearance of attachment, raga) is born of rajas, while anger (the prior appearance of aversion, dvesa) is really born of tamas. The text does not say this only because, in the transformation, the cause being tamas is left implicit; for this reason anger is called the younger brother of desire. One frames rajas itself as a portion of Bhagavan manifested for the unfolding of the world's variety, which bewilders the embodied soul into engagement, so that knowing this form one should give up the distracted works it produces. The word 'here' is given a forward-looking sense: in this embodied worldly life desire is a foe, but once this body is over, in the supra-mundane sphere it becomes workable, no longer an enemy. One reads the naming of desire alone as a foe in light of Arjuna's own situation (at the moment of war he is attached to the lives of his kinsmen, so it is precisely desire that is at stake), and as setting up the later teaching that only refuge in the Lord and the grace of surrender dissolves desire at its root, since effort alone will not.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator opens with the point that the inner upheaval is caused by an adventitious covering laid over the heart, not by any absence of dharma; dharma is still present, lodged in the heart, only veiled. By the two uses of 'this' the utter non-difference of desire and anger is hinted, and the two are eternally connected, mutually inseparable, so they are expounded as of a single form. He reads 'great devourer' as the eater of great happiness, the one that swallows joy down, and 'great sinner' as the sin-giver.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators follow the identity of anger with desire and the rajas origin, but several sharpen the inner chain: from rajasic desire is born tamasic anger, so anger is the tamasic outgrowth of a rajasic root. One uses a homely image: desire becomes anger as milk joined with something sour becomes curd, so conquering desire is itself conquering anger. They frame the three terms as a refutation of three remedies: desire cannot be reconciled by giving (it is unfillable), nor by conciliation, nor by sowing division (it is too fierce), so it must be slain by the means to be told next. One notes that the Lord, hidden by action, is the prompter everywhere like rain, but desire is itself the foremost sinner. The Marathi devotional voice pours out an extended, vivid lament: desire and anger are merciless scourges working like the god of destruction, dark cobras guarding the buried treasure of knowledge, tigers in the valley of carnal pleasures, assassins waylaying the path of devotion to God; born of rajas yet fondled by tamas, fed on nescience, they devastate contentment and fortitude and uproot bliss, kill without weapons and bind without ropes.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators give plain, practical readings. One restates the teaching directly: the cause of all sin and wrong action is desire; anger is desire itself, arising when a desire is blocked by those who stand in the way; when desire arises it generates rajas and urges the person to work to possess the object. Another renders the verse tersely, naming greedy and sinful desire, born of rajas, and anger, as the enemy. One develops the cycle most fully: he points ahead to 14.7, where rajas is said to be born from craving and attachment, and reconciles it with this verse (where desire is born from rajas) by describing a self-feeding loop: from raga (attraction) desire is born, and from desire raga grows; reckoning worldly things to give happiness breeds attraction, which sets their importance in the inner instrument, which raises the craving to hoard them, which grows attraction further; as long as this cycle runs, wrong action does not fully cease. He explains that both 'desire' and 'anger' are named because sin is seen done sometimes under the sway of one and sometimes the other, yet the singular is used to show that the one craving for perishable objects is the single root of all sin.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas