Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse as setting out a strict sequence: action-yoga is the means, and knowledge-yoga (naishkarmya, the steadfast abiding in the actionless Self) is the end, with the two kept distinct rather than combined. Prescribed action purifies the inner organ, purity lets knowledge arise, and knowledge alone delivers liberation, needing no co-operating factor once it has arisen, just as the correct seeing of a rope (mistaken for a snake) needs nothing further to free one from fear. One of these voices argues against combining knowledge and action as joint causes, holding that knowledge-establishment, unlike work, is by itself an independent cause of the human goal. They also handle the apparent counter-cases carefully: that sages like Yajnavalkya renounced is read as renunciation for the ripening or enjoyment of knowledge already gained, not as the cause of its rising, and figures who gained knowledge without formal renunciation show there is no rigid rule that knowledge arises only in the renouncer.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here naishkarmya is the standing in knowledge that is preceded by the withdrawing of the senses from their outward working, and the action that earns it is specifically action done with no eye to its fruit and offered as worship of the supreme Person. Without having worshipped Govinda by such fruit-free action, a person's beginningless heap of sin stays undestroyed, the senses stay agitated, and the inward turn toward the self never opens. These commentators are careful that the prohibition targets ordinary, worldly action, not scriptural action, so the word for scriptural work is read into the verse. One uses a vivid image: to throw off such action and set out straight for knowledge-yoga is like trying to climb to the seventh storey of a tower without the lower floors. The chain is laid out step by step: without fruit-free worship the supreme Person is not pleased, sin is not stilled, the mind's impurity of passion and inertia is not lifted, attraction and aversion persist, the senses stay scattered, and inwardness cannot come.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator takes naishkarmya, freedom from action, to mean liberation itself, understanding action to cover both merit and demerit, so that what is free of both is release. By implication the verse teaches that one attains liberation through undertaking action. The distinctive claim is explicit about the relation of knowledge and action: liberation comes from knowledge that depends upon action, not from knowledge alone. And the second half is read to deny even renunciation joined with knowledge: not by renunciation alone, even when knowledge is present, does the highest good arise.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse as Krishna's reason for setting Arjuna to action, and they insist that knowledge alone, not the non-doing of action, is the means to release. They ground the denial of release-by-inaction in the word 'person' (purusha): a living being is always joined to a body, gross or subtle, so if release came from not acting it would belong to insentient, unmoving things, which is absurd. They also argue from the sheer mass of past action: across beginningless transmigration a person has done countless deeds, many of which bear fruit across many births, so merely refraining now cannot exhaust them. Freedom from bondage comes only through desirelessness, through which desireless action purifies the mind and yields the dispassion in which knowledge can arise; it does not come from the mere absence of action or absence of fruit. On the renunciate order, they hold it serves two ends, self-restraint and the pleasing of the Lord, yet they add that householders and office-holders who keep self-restraint in their own station also greatly please the Lord, so the order is not the sole path.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators hold that the goal reachable through action is not knowledge in the bare Advaita sense but a state framed by devotion. One reads naishkarmya as the state above works that is the very form of bhakti, and argues that action is performed precisely so that one may know action as the thing to be set aside; the verse speaks of 'undertaking' work, not of performing it for its own sake, and mere ignorance of action's nature is equally insufficient for the fruit of renunciation. The other stresses that even a person already fit by liberation or living-liberation is still seen to act, because he yet bears a body; this rules out premature renunciation, since the embodied condition itself draws action forth, and to refuse it is to refuse what the Lord's own design has set in motion. One also frames the whole teaching by the Mimamsa principle that one and the same action can serve as a means to distinct ends, so that yoga, knowledge, and devotion each independently lead to the human goal.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the verse as teaching the inseparability of knowledge and action: knowledge is not without action, and action joined with skill is not without knowledge, so the two are finally one single thing. He cites the saying that there is no knowledge without activity and no activity without knowledge, and that the teacher accomplished in both is the slayer of the bond that binds the beast (the limited soul). The practical upshot is that action which dwells within knowledge cannot be avoided at all, because body, speech, and mind are by their very nature a quivering motion, so a person necessarily does something. This differs from readings that keep action and knowledge as separable stages, since here they are intrinsically united.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse through the purification of the mind (citta-suddhi) as the hinge: the actions suited to one's class and stage of life (varna and ashrama) must be performed so that the mind is purified and knowledge can arise, for without that purity knowledge does not come and naishkarmya, understood as knowledge or steadfastness in knowledge, is not attained. They read sannyasa as the abandoning of scripturally enjoined action, and stress that renunciation taken up without prior purity is void of knowledge and so cannot reach liberation (moksha). One handles the scriptural objection that renunciation is itself a limb of liberation by answering that it is only knowledge-bearing renunciation that qualifies. One frames the embodied predicament warmly: as long as desires are not allayed the bondage of action continues, and all actions cease only when one attains eternal contentment, so abandoning one's ordained duties to chase the action-free state is as foolish as abandoning a boat midstream or refusing to prepare food when hungry.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators emphasize that the freedom in question is freedom from the bondage of action, not the stopping of activity. One stresses that actionlessness and perfection are synonymous and are gained only by knowledge of the Self: a man who simply sits idle has not attained it, because his mind keeps planning and scheming, and thought is itself real action; only one free of likes, dislikes, and wishes, who knows the Self, has truly reached it. One notes that mere cessation of activity is in the very nature of things impossible, as the next verse will explain. One reads naishkarmya as performing action after destroying its binding force, won not by refusing to begin and not by mere outward renunciation. One, writing as non-sectarian devotional Vedanta, locates the necessity of action in karma-yoga itself: its perfection comes only when action is done in a desireless spirit (nishkama-bhava), and since there is an inner urge to act, that urge must be quieted by doing one's duty after renouncing desire, for renunciation that bypasses doing is not actionlessness at all but only flight.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas