Advaita Vedānta

One Advaita commentator raises and answers a sharp question that the others leave implicit: when knowledge dissolves action, is the fruit-giving power of the deed actually uprooted, or merely blocked from showing its effect? He answers carefully on two levels. On the level of the knower's own vision, all action truly dissolves and never arises again. But the natural fruit-yielding power of an action, he says, cannot literally be denied any more than fire's heat can; scripture speaks of prior deeds being burned like a reed-tuft in fire and of later deeds not sticking, and even says a knower's merit and demerit pass to his friends and enemies as his wealth passes to his sons. So the dissolution is real as seen from realization, while at the level of natural causation the deed's force does not simply vanish into nothing.

Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads the dissolving of action through the verse that immediately follows, where Brahman is the offering, the oblation, the fire, and the agent. He parses samagram itself as 'sam,' oneness, plus 'agra,' fruit: action together with its fruit dissolves by 'attaining the form of Brahman.' For him action is not annulled but absorbed, because action itself is Brahman, arising from Brahman; one who gives up action would be giving up Brahman. He therefore reads this section of the Gita as everywhere teaching engagement in action, and openly attacks those who expound only the cessation of action as deceivers of the world who destroy the Lord's real view. The fruit here is not loss but the attainment of Brahman through action done as Brahman.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

For this devotional non-dualist school, 'for sacrifice' means the act is done as an offering to Bhagavan, performed with the conviction of offering to the Lord, and 'dissolves' means the deed becomes absorbed into the Lord himself: the act melts into him without trace, taking the form of attainment of Ishvara. One commentator of this school adds a second sense: 'for sacrifice' can mean acting at the Lord's command to keep sacrifice going before the world, so that the whole deed melts away in the very rising of sacrifice itself. The accent is less on a deed being cancelled and more on a deed being received into and dissolved within the divine.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

The devotional commentators emphasize the lived, effortless quality of this state and frame the action as worship of the Lord. One pictures the knower as embodied in human form yet living only as pure spirit, performing sacrifices and ceremonies 'in a playful way,' so that these acts evaporate by merging in his own pure soul, like clouds that arise out of season and vanish without ever raining. The Gaudiya voices specify the action as the contemplation or worship of Vishnu done to please him, after which the prior binding action dissolves wholly. The keynote is that the deed reaches the state of inaction (akarma-bhava) because it is wholly turned toward and absorbed in the divine.

Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī

Modern

This modern commentator presses hard on the single word samagram, 'totally.' He links the verse back to the earlier teaching that ritual done for sacrifice is not binding, and argues the Gita aims higher than the Mimamsa ideal of heaven. The Mimamsa school holds that action leading to heaven is non-binding; but the Gita, aiming at Release, holds that even heaven-leading action is binding if done with attachment. So 'totally destroyed' means the action does not even become productive of heaven but leads instead to Release. He also widens 'sacrifice' itself: the truly important part of a yajna is the words 'this is not mine' (na mama), the selfless principle; performing every act of life in that spirit, dedicated to Brahman and for universal welfare (loka-sangraha), is itself a stupendous sacrifice by which one is freed from the entire consequence of action.

Lokmanya Tilak

Modern

This non-sectarian devotional commentator singles this out as the principal verse of karma-yoga in the whole Gita, the one place where the dissolving of all the karma-yogi's actions is stated. He grounds the whole thing in the nature of attachment (sanga): the heart's inner clinging to deeds, objects, events, situations, and persons is what actually binds and causes birth and death, while the self is by its very nature unattached (asanga). His distinctive move is practical and inward: the karma-yogi treats the body, senses, and mind received from the world as not his own and hands them back into the service of the world, so the stream of things flows outward and his unattached nature remains untouched. He goes further than most: even the sense 'I am the servant' must dissolve, since the very materials of service were never the doer's own; only service should remain, not a servant, and no reward, honor, or even the name of servant should be accepted or enjoyed. When even the quiet gladness this produces is not made an object of enjoyment, the self's innate unattachedness is directly experienced, and such a one's every action dissolves.

Swami Ramsukhdas

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This school reads the verse as a bridge to the next teaching about action having the form of knowledge. Action becomes knowledge-like by being joined with dwelling on all action, together with its accompaniments, as having for its very self the supreme Person who is the highest Brahman. One commentator of this school is explicit that the absence of attachment and possessions here is not a deliberate, willed renunciation but a spontaneous one: because the mind is settled in the self and experiences the self as bliss, attachment falls away by itself and the practitioner is simply free of possessions rather than forcibly abandoning them. He also notes a reading of samagram as 'without remainder' (nihshesha) and explicitly sets aside the alternate parsing that takes the compound as 'action together with its fruit.'

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika