Advaita Vedānta

He literally does nothing because he possesses the vision of the actionless Self. The true self is a non-agent and non-enjoyer; once that vision arises, the doership and enjoyership that belonged to body, senses, and ego are sublated, cancelled as false. So 'does nothing at all' is taken in the strictest sense: in the highest truth the knower's action is mere inaction. Why then does he still engage at all? Not for any purpose of his own, since he has none, but only to hold the world together as an example, or to avoid the censure of the wise, his activity being just the bare upkeep of the body. One source presses the point with the maxim that a knower's mere living-activity, like an animal's, is purposeless and so does not count as binding 'action'; the real difference between the wise and the unwise lies only in attachment versus non-attachment. Some in this school note that for the fully ripened knower, giving up action entirely is what is in order, and he acts on only when there is no way out of it.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

He 'does nothing' in the sense that, under the outer guise of action, what he is actually engaged in is the steady practice of knowledge. The action is real and is genuinely performed with the face turned toward it, but its inner substance is no longer ordinary fruit-seeking work; it has become a form of the discipline of knowledge. 'Ever content' is read precisely as content in the very self, not as a vague 'always cheerful'; 'without resort' is read as giving up the disposition that leans on unsteady matter as one's reliance. One source is careful that 'does nothing whatever' must not be over-read to deny knowledge too: it means he does no other-fruit-aimed action. The contradiction of being engaged yet doing nothing is resolved by saying the engagement is only the external form of work, while the inner orientation is non-engagement in anything contrary.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

Mere absence of desire and intention is not enough; the verse restates the very form of knowledge that frees. The decisive content is a specific true vision: such a one holds that he has the same form as the Lord, who is himself ever content and rests on nothing. So 'ever content, without support' is read first as the Lord's own nature, in whose likeness the knower understands himself. One source spells out the logic: resolve is attachment to the action and desire is attachment to the fruit, so giving up fruit-attachment alone does not complete the matter; the added word 'eternal' marks that the wrong knowledge to be removed is the failure to see that I too am ever of this Lord-like kind, hidden only by nescience. The knowing is corrective: 'for this reason I too am of such a kind, but through ignorance am not so perceived.'

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

The action continues but is offered up to the Lord, so it cannot bind. One source reads the work as performed in the very mood of Brahman: outwardly the hands labor in sacrifice and the like, while inwardly Brahman alone is, so the doer is no doer, just as Brahma is said to act yet, contented in eternal bliss and free of any material ground, does nothing. The fruit and the attachment given up are specifically the prakritic ones, the perishable result like heaven and the material clinging; everything is known as it truly is, as non-material reality. The other source frames it through devotion: such a one performs work because his work has taken the form of the Lord's own command and is, in effect, service to Him; being the Lord's command rather than his own fruit-seeking, that work yields no private fruit-experience and so is no obstacle to liberation.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhedabheda

He turns the mind away from impermanent fruits and is content in the eternal supreme Self, with no support that could serve as a means to fruit; lacking attachment to fruit, even while acting he does not act. This source then adds a practical distinction the verse implies. Action divides into what is to be done and what is not: the optional and the prohibited are not to be done, while the obligatory is to be done as worship of Brahman. And even where one might fear 'while acting he incurs sin,' the obligatory act is to be performed with the mind established in non-duality, on the principle of offering everything to Brahman. So the freedom from binding comes through doing one's required duty as worship, in a non-dual frame of mind.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

This source reads the engagement narrowly through the nature of the action that remains. 'Engaged' means engaged even with full facing-toward the work. But the action that continues is the 'bodily' kind: action whose nature is the working of the senses, action that serves the body and is not colored by the mind and the intellect in the binding way. The point is that what persists is sense-level functioning, not the mentally invested, intellect-driven activity that would tie the person down.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

He is content in his own innate bliss and so needs no resort for his maintenance and security; he leans on no one at all for upkeep. Fully engaged in his natural and prescribed duty, he still does nothing whatever, because for him the work comes to wear the very form of inaction. One source adds that under the guise of practicing action he accomplishes nothing other than steadfastness in knowledge, and explicitly marks this as the state of one who is striving to ascend, so the verse is showing how the binding character of wrong action is to be understood. Another source paints the contentment vividly: indifferent to his own body, detached toward action-fruits, yet always cheerful, he abides in the central home of full contentment and feasts on the vision of the true Self, never saying 'enough' even when served without stint.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These voices restate the inaction-in-action idea in plain, applied terms. One source says simply that his action does not bind him. Another defines 'nirashraya' precisely as having no 'reason' that has taken shelter in the means of obtaining the fruit, that is, no motive lodged in wanting a particular act for a particular result. Another, drawing on the example-setting note, says the one who works for the world's welfare without egoism or fruit-attachment really does nothing though ever active, because he knows the Self that is beyond all activity; being self-contained like the Absolute, all his desires are already met, so he depends on nothing, as one who has the king's favor need not depend on any official. A fourth develops the deepest analysis: binding happens only when the doer joins a relationship (sambandha) with the body, senses, mind, and the rest, thinking 'this equipment is mine, I am the doer, the fruit is mine.' The realized person has experienced the complete breaking of this relationship with matter, so he has no attachment in the equipment, the action, or the fruit, and thus does not become the receiver of the fruit. An army fights for victory, but the victory belongs to the king who provisioned and urged it on, not to the army; likewise the fruit follows whoever owns the relationship with the doing-equipment. In truth the self (svarupa) is conscious, indestructible, and changeless, while action and fruit are inert and changing; the self never really carries any karma. The assumed relationship is the only cause of bondage, and once it is dropped, the self's natural detachment from action and fruit stands forth on its own.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Mahatma Gandhi