Advaita Vedānta

For these commentators the verse marks the higher path of the purified seeker. They read the surrounding teaching as saying that the yoga of action is better for one of impure mind, but the renunciation of all action is better for one whose mind is pure. The Self is held to have, of its very nature, no doership and no causing-of-a-doer at all; agency is not merely suspended by renunciation but never belonged to the Self in the first place, which is changeless (the 'as it were He thinks, as it were He moves' of scripture). One source presses a subtle point: even the qualifier 'he sits in the body' is meaningful, because only one who knows the Self as distinct from the body-and-sense aggregate can truly cognize 'I dwell in the body, as in a house'; the ignorant person, identifying the Self with the body, can only think 'I sit on the ground or a chair.' Even the realized knower still appears to dwell in the body because the residue of impressions from already-begun karma keeps producing bodily cognitions until the body falls.

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

Bhedabheda

This reading frames the renunciation as renouncing in Brahman, with a mind turned to the inner Self, while beholding a oneness in the thought 'Brahman alone is that; that very Brahman is the agent; and its fruit too is that very Brahman.' First, in the stage of performance, one acts; afterward, having gained the light, one becomes the supreme Self and abides happily, freed from every bond, like the Inner Controller. This source stresses that the actions already set in motion must be exhausted only through being experienced, so the delay of full union lasts only until the body falls away, the wise one experiencing the begun-fruit because there is no obstruction in those actions. It also notes a grammatical point: the verb 'as' (to abide) is used here in the sense of indifference, not as an injunction to sit.

Śrī Bhāskara

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the agency that seems to be the self's arises from the self's connection with a body, a connection itself rooted in the self's own earlier karma; agency does not belong to the self by its essential nature. The man of restraint, discerning this, makes no effort to govern the body and does not cause the body to act, and so abides happily. One source is careful to say the doing and causing-to-do are not absent in the outward sense, the body and senses continue their operations; what is absent is only the inner ascription 'I do, I cause to do.' This verse, on this reading, leads directly into the Lord's direct statement of the self's natural form in the verses that follow.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse as Krishna again clarifying the precise meaning of the word 'renunciation,' so it is not mistaken for the abandonment of action in its own outward form. The qualifier 'with the mind' shows that what is given up is the false sense of agency. They draw a careful two-step distinction: an earlier verse stated the giving up of the conceit of being the agent (the doer); this verse now makes plain that there is also the giving up of the conceit of being the causer (the instigator). If the verse meant the dropping of action itself, the phrase 'with the mind' would be pointless, which confirms that the inner conceit, not the outer act, is the target.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

On this devotional reading the giving up of action is by the mind alone while the action is still done outwardly, and a mind that has come to evenness renounces inwardly so that the embodied one sits at ease, not himself doing nor causing the senses to do. One source signals a distinction even from Sankhya: the Sankhya renounces the very doing, whereas the Pushtimarga yogi renounces only doership and lets the body, which is the Lord's instrument, carry on its appointed work; the nine gates of the body are not a prison but a field of worship, with the inner offerer sitting content within. The other source roots the whole stance in the Lord: the devotee stays in Bhagavan's sway (vashi), takes on the body for Bhagavan's sake, does nothing from the absence of self-aggrandizing 'I,' and prompts nothing in others from the absence of 'mine,' though he may still teach and help others for their sake.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This source voices the verse in the first person as the realized stance itself: just as a man within a house has no connection with the decay and the like that belong to the house, so 'I,' dwelling in the house that is the body adorned with the nine windows that are the openings of the eye and the rest, have no connection with the properties of that house. The accent is on the immediate, lived identity of the indweller who simply does not share in what belongs to the dwelling.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as describing the one of purified mind for whom renunciation is now the superior course, and they emphasize that the body has become 'stripped of the I-sense.' One develops the city image as a topology of detachment rather than a piece of anatomy: the body has its openings, and the citizen of the city now lets the traffic of senses and objects go in and out of the gates without identifying with any of it, dwelling within his own house in untroubled rest; this same source reads the closing words as a rule against the unpurified, who, even after donning the robe of renunciation, again start to do and to have done, unlike the one here described. Two of these sources, working from a devotional metaphysics, gloss the renunciation as the discriminating offering of all actions back upon primal nature (prakriti), from which they arose. One vivid voice adds that wherever this karma-yogin turns he finds happiness showering on him, and wherever he dwells he finds the vision of the Self abiding, so that while living in the nine-outlet body he is yet 'without a bodily life,' living as if he did no action at all.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These modern commentators keep the practical edge. One catalogs precisely the kinds of action being renounced (obligatory, occasional, optional, forbidden, and expiatory) and contrasts the ignorant worldly man who says 'I am resting in the easychair' with the wise man who, knowing the Self distinct from the body, says 'I am resting in this body.' One frames the whole verse around watchful witnessing: the gatekeeper who stays alert and lets in or out only what deserves passage truly has no part in the traffic and is a passive witness, doing nothing and getting nothing done; he even notes that, strictly, the countless pores of the skin are no less gates than the famous nine. One restates it metaphysically: the embodied man realizes the Atman is a non-doer and that the entire activity belongs to prakriti, and so lives quietly, in indifference. One analyzes why the man is called 'vashi' (self-mastered): it is mine-ness and attachment in the senses, mind, and intellect that give them their hold; without these, the instruments fall naturally under his sway, and since the sankhya-yogi has no such bond with the three bodies (gross, subtle, causal) that are prakriti's work, he does not become the doer of their actions, though to onlookers he still appears embodied.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas