Advaita Vedānta

On this reading the fire of self-restraint is kindled by knowledge of the Self as distinct from body, sense, breath, and mind, and the actions are dissolved back into the Self. One commentator works this out in great depth, distinguishing two kinds of absorption. The first is absorption preceded by mere dissolution (like deep sleep): the practitioner contemplates how each effect is non-existent apart from its cause, tracing the whole world back through the elements, the cosmic forms, and finally maya, until only consciousness remains; but because the great Vedanta sentence has not been realized, ignorance and its seed persist, and so the whole world rises again. The second and primary kind is absorption preceded by sublation: when the meaning of 'That thou art' (tat tvam asi) is realized, ignorance ceases, its effects cease, and beginningless ignorance does not rise again, so this is seedless and final. On this view the seventeen-fold subtle body, the collective Hiranyagarbha, is what is dissolved. Another commentator adds that those who only still the intellect in absorption without knowing the Self as other than intellect have not reached the goal, however long their calm endures.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse more soberly as active discipline rather than total dissolution. To offer the actions of the senses and vital airs into the fire of self-restraint means to strive, with the mind, at warding off the senses' and vital airs' bent toward action. One commentator stresses that this verse concerns the restraint of the mind specifically, and distinguishes it carefully from the restraint of the senses already mentioned and from the breath-control (pranayama) that comes later, so each is its own practice and none is redundant; the whole is rooted in the constant attentive following-out (anusandhana) of the perfect Self.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators give a brief, focused gloss aimed at fixing the meaning of the key phrase. 'Self-restraint' (atma-samyama) is difficult to parse, so they explain that 'self' here means the mind, and the means called restraint of the mind is itself the fire into which the offering is made. They settle the grammar and the referent without building out a larger doctrinal frame on this verse.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the practice as devotional meditation directed toward the Lord. The yogis here are 'fixed in meditation' (dhyana-nisthas) and act by knowledge aimed at the object of meditation. One commentator describes the actions of the senses and the five vital airs as 'not done at all,' that is, withheld, and offered into a fire lit by knowledge that has been made eager toward attaining the Lord's own form; the very restraint of the self, undertaken for the sake of reaching the Lord, is that fire. One commentator also frames the larger passage as drawing out three grades of sacrificers, a middle, a lowest, and a highest.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the fire as one-pointedness (the focused steadiness called yoga), lit by right knowledge, and understands the offering as a mind that, through that one-pointedness alone, has given up every other working and so seizes its single chosen object. He grounds this in scripture, citing the Vijnana-bhairava: when one state is not let go and the consciousness is held back so it does not pass on to another state, then by abiding in the middle of that, contemplation unfolds greatly. The emphasis falls on sustained, undistracted holding rather than on dissolving the world into its cause.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as the work of those established in meditation who bring the active life to rest in the Self. One commentator describes them as knowers of the pure 'thou' (tvam) referent who dissolve mind, intellect, the senses, and the ten vital airs, contemplating that there is only the one inner self and no other. Another describes them as holding the mind on the object of meditation by the Self and causing all the named actions to come to rest. The most vivid develops the whole sacrifice as an extended image: meditation churned on the wood of the heart by the rope of mental firmness and the preceptor's words kindles the fire of knowledge; first a smoke of tempting magic powers, then a spark, then a blaze that burns the dried wood of manifold desires and the ghee of secret longings, with the acts of the senses and the activities of the vital airs given as the final oblations, ending in the merging into Brahman.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators read the verse as describing deep absorption in which the senses and breath fall silent. One explains plainly that when the yogi fixes the mind on Brahman or the Self the senses and breath cease and are absorbed into their cause; another says simply that such seekers lose themselves in the contemplation of the Supreme. One commentator places this in a wider historical frame, noting that the Gita is widening the old word 'sacrifice' (yajna) to cover several inner methods, and that this single passage symbolically describes two or three graded sacrifices: limiting the senses, destroying the senses by giving up their objects, and finally stilling even the vital forces by complete absorption. One commentator distinguishes two ways the breath stops in absorption: by the forced breath-retention (kumbhaka) of hatha-yoga, sought for long life and vigor, illustrated by frogs that lie breathless in dried mud until the rains revive them; and the way meant here, born of the yoga of self-restraint, where the breath stops on its own once the mind has become wholly one-pointed, and which is the path of seekers of Self-knowledge.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas