Advaita Vedānta

The knowledge meant is the direct realization of the oneness of Brahman and the self, the one means to liberation. Action yields a fruit and so keeps one bound; the knowledge-sacrifice yields no new fruit at all but manifests the liberation that is ever-accomplished and complete. 'All action is completed in knowledge' is read in its strongest sense: ritual action is fulfilled by being culminated and superseded, its obstacles destroyed, when realization of self-Brahman identity arises. The Chandogya image of the winning dice-throw that gathers the lesser throws shows that the knower absorbs the worth of all good action. The address Parantapa is heard as a promise that through purified mind and gained knowledge Arjuna will scorch the enemy ignorance, which mere action never can.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Action itself is twofold: it has a substance-made part and a knowledge-made part, and the knowledge-made part is the better one. Knowledge here is not a rival that cancels action but something practised within action: knowledge is the goal of every means, it is carried inside action, and by being so practised it comes by stages into the state of being fully attained. So the verse is not exalting an inner knowledge-yoga over the path of works. Within this whole chapter it is the karma-yoga, with knowledge as its central embedded component, that is being called 'better' over the merely material sacrifice. The same action, by repeated practice, reaches its completion in knowledge; means and goal differ only by stage, not as two opposed paths.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

The sacrifice of knowledge includes the whole, with worship and the other limbs; the sense is that its fruit is just knowledge itself. The word 'entire' (akhila) is not idle repetition after 'all action'; it means 'without remainder,' nothing left over. 'Completed in knowledge' is read carefully to block a wrong inference: it does not mean that once knowledge arises action need no longer be done. Rather 'completion' means fullness, fruitfulness, and that fruitfulness is present when knowledge is present; from this proximity the action is said to be completed by the fruit that has the character of knowledge.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

The superior offering is the knowledge that all is of the nature of Brahman (brahma-atmakatva-jnana), one in meaning with sankhya and yoga; in it the whole of action together with its fruit is gathered up and contained, as the Chandogya text says. Yet this knowledge-sacrifice is always the recognition that Bhagavan is the ground and end of every act. For one who is the Lord's own and acts only at His command for holding the worlds together, action done without this knowledge, in a prohibited mode aiming at heaven, would be unfitting; the knowledge-sacrifice is complete because in it all action comes to its fulfillment in nearness to the Lord.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

The knowledge-sacrifice surpasses the material one, and a fine distinction is drawn about how it works through the mind. Even though the knowledge-sacrifice uses the activity of the mind, knowledge, whose very nature is the self, has in the mind's transformation only its manifestation, not its production; this is what sets it apart from the merely material offering, which is born of activity directed at the non-self. When knowledge is present, all action, being now without futility, comes to its end: after knowledge, action does not remain, for once the fruit has arisen the means cease. Knowledge is a divine collyrium for the spiritual eye, the mine of emancipation that satisfies spiritual hunger and brings union with the Supreme Self.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

Better than the sacrifice by substance taken alone is the sacrifice lit up by knowledge. The 'taken alone' is exactly what the 'maya' suffix hints at: substance by itself, unilluminated. The point is the lighting-up: knowledge is what kindles and completes the offering, for all action comes to its culmination in knowledge.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhedabheda

The verse heads off a doubt that liberation might come from action alone. Earlier teaching held that there is no liberation from knowledge by itself but from knowledge joined with action. Some ritualists, though, call mere heaven 'liberation,' a graded abiding reachable by action, and that breeds the false hope that action alone suffices. So Krishna ranks the knowledge-sacrifice above the material one like the agnishtoma: 'all is completed when there is knowledge,' meaning it alone is competent for final release. The supporting text is that one who worships the Self as his world finds his action not exhausted; action joined with knowledge has an unexhausted fruit, whereas action by its own nature is momentary.

Śrī Bhāskara

Modern

The knowledge-sacrifice is the higher offering, but its meaning is guarded against quietism. One reading insists that 'all action is merged in knowledge' must not be taken to mean that after gaining knowledge a man may drop action; the Gita's firm teaching is that all action be done as duty for universal welfare, performed with an equable reason so the doer is untouched by merit or sin, and that there is no release except by acquiring knowledge. A further reading sees the jnana-yajna here as not one of the twelve sacrifices listed earlier but the established discipline of attaining knowledge by discernment and reflection (viveka-vichara), taken up only after the material sacrifices have purified the mind: by doing no action for one's own sake the impurities of accumulated sin and restlessness are wiped out, then knowledge removes the covering of ignorance, and one rises above action and objects so that only the conscious Reality remains one's aim. A third reading notes plainly that works of charity done without knowledge often do harm; no act, however noble its motive, is perfect unless it is informed with knowledge, so the fulfillment of all action lies in knowledge. And all actions, done as offerings to the Lord with their fruits, are gathered into the knowledge of Brahman, as rivers join the ocean.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi