Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse as teaching the strict oneness of Self and Brahman, and develop at length why Brahman is undivided. Brahman is not split by differences of its own qualities, because consciousness is free of qualities; desire and the rest are properties of the field or the inner organ, not of the Self, since the Self is beginningless and qualityless. Nor is one Self divided from another by any ultimate individuating particulars, for there is no proof such particulars exist in each body; per-body difference of the Self and those alleged particulars depend on each other, so with no real differentiator the conclusion is that Self and Brahman are one. The faultlessness of the even-seer follows from this oneness: being non-different from the faultless Brahman, the seer is faultless too. One image given is two golden idols, deity and pedestal: the worshipper sees difference of form, but the gold-seer sees only gold; the worship-rule deals with the superimposed difference, the even-vision with the truth. This school also frames the whole passage as the renunciation of all action running from verse 5.13 to the chapter's end, so the even-seer in view is the egoless renunciant for whom the worship-rule has no scope.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the 'sameness' as the sameness of all selves rather than an undifferentiated unity, and locate the conquest within the path of practice. 'Here itself' means in the very state of practicing the means: the self-substance, freed from the fault of contact with matter, is the same in all and is Brahman, so to rest in the sameness of selves is to stand in Brahman, and standing in Brahman is itself the conquest of transmigration. They stress that those who dwell on the sameness of selves, having knowledge as their single form, are the liberated indeed. One source emphasizes that this even-sight is not a means to a fruit coming only later; it brings here and now the cessation of affliction (klesha) that is itself a portion of the supreme good, and presents the verse as teaching how, for the man of the discipline of action, knowledge in the form of even-sight ripens.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators treat the verse cautiously as praise (stuti), and use it to defuse two tensions rather than to assert liberation-in-the-body literally. The objection they raise is internal: the next sentence makes even-sight the very means to liberation, so how can it here be called a means to immediate knowledge; and an earlier teaching allowed even the knower another birth, so how can liberation be said to happen here in this very body. The reply is that in praise an overstatement is admissible. So the strong 'here and now' language is read as exalting the even-seer's state, not as a flat doctrinal claim that the embodied knower is already wholly liberated.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read 'sameness' through Bhagavan's own nature and his play (leela). Whatever is equal is to be held as of Brahman's form; if the mind too becomes equal by restraint, it becomes Brahman by identity, recalling 'evenness in success and failure is yoga' (2.48), and so the even-minded come to identity with Brahman and live the freed life even in this body. One source develops the leela further: Bhagavan brings forth the world for his own play, and each being acts according to the disposition (bhava) in which it was brought forth, so fitness or unfitness need not be weighed; Brahman is even and faultless among the very forms he made for his play, as in the rasa-dance. This source also offers alternative senses of 'sarga': as the production of oneself made fruitful and made into Bhagavan's own doing, or as the supra-mundane bhava-body of the devotee that now falls entirely under his sway, so that whenever he wishes the bhava manifests.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhedabheda

This commentator gives the verse a sharply assimilative reading: everything seen by the intellect becomes Brahman alone, just as a thing fallen into a salt field becomes salt alone. Even while abiding in the body, rebirth is conquered and destroyed by those whose mind is established in evenness, that is, in the nature of Brahman; because Brahman is faultless and even, they are established in that Brahman, and by that establishment the round of birth is conquered.

Śrī Bhāskara

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as praise of the state of even vision and as attaining the condition of Brahman (brahma-bhava), and several name Brahman's evenness specifically as the absence of partiality. One explains that because such people have ascertained the absence of partiality in Brahman, then even while abiding in the expanse of the world they are established in Brahman alone, so liberation is easy for them. One frames the answer to the Gautama objection precisely: the fault named applies only before brahma-bhava has been reached, since the text speaks expressly of the stage at which one is still in the posture of a worshipper; the rule that binds the still-worshipping does not bind one who has in this very life passed into Brahman. One offers a vivid devotional picture of such a liberated life: he lives in detachment without losing contact with the senses or dropping their functions, acts like ordinary people but has dropped the delusions born of ignorance, abides in the body yet remains aloof from worldly affairs, like spirit haunting a tree but unseen, or like water rolling over water that others call waves, known under many names and forms yet none other than the Supreme Brahman.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators emphasize the psychological and practical reading and, in one case, contest the renunciation framing. One states simply that as a man thinks so he becomes, so those whose minds are bent on being the same to all achieve that sameness and become one with Brahman. One stresses the balanced, equanimous mind: when the mind is rooted in evenness and always balanced, birth and death are conquered, bondage is annihilated and freedom attained. One reads the verse as the Upanishadic teaching that he who has realized the Self-formed Lord as a non-doer, with all activity belonging to Prakriti, has become 'steeped in Brahman' (brahma-samstha) and is released in life (jivan-mukta); but this source explicitly argues, against the renunciation reading, that the surrounding stanzas show a man does not escape action even in this state, so brahma-samstha here means one who keeps performing the actions appropriate to his stage of life. One source describes the inward difference behind identical outward conduct: outwardly the great soul and the ordinary man eat, drink and move about alike, but within the great soul there is continuous evenness, faultlessness and peace, while in the ordinary man there is unevenness, fault and unrest; and this inner evenness is not manufactured but arises of itself once one is naturally established in one's own true nature.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas