Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the Lord as Narayana, the inner Self of all, and unpack his enjoyership in two ways: he is the enjoyer of sacrifices both as the agent who performs them and as the deity to whom they are offered. They expand 'great Lord' to mean the controller even of Hiranyagarbha and the highest cosmic powers, ruling this out as any merely high creature. They add that he is the one who lies in the heart of all, the overseer of the fruit of all action, the witness of all cognitions, yet in reality untouched by works or by the modifications of the intellect. For them 'knowing' is direct realization of the Lord as one's own inmost Self, and 'peace' is the cessation of all transmigration. One of them places the verse within a two-fold Brahman scheme: the conditioned Brahman, endowed with qualities and 'all-Selfed,' is attained first, and through it the un-conditioned, featureless Brahman is reached, citing the Chhandogya and the Vartika-sara that 'the Brahman-knower is two-fold, with and without conditioning.'

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

For these commentators the verse shows why the discipline of action can be practiced happily: knowing the Lord as the friend of all beings, the seeker holds the discipline of action to be the worship of the Lord himself, and so engages in it with joy, for everyone engages gladly in the worship of a friend. They read 'great Lord of all the worlds' as the Lord even of all the lords of the worlds, citing scripture, 'Him, the supreme great Lord of lords.' One stresses that the Lord's enjoyership is not merely parallel to the sacrificer's own enjoyment of the fruit; rather the fruit of the sacrifice flows back through the Lord, since he is the inner controller (antaryamin) who alone consummates the offering. The friendship that expects nothing is the actual ground on which the yogin trusts the practice, and the peace here is the same lasting peace named earlier in the chapter, reached when the practice is carried to its right end.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads the Lord as the very fruit of sacrifices and austerities and the enjoyer of that fruit: seeing the offered fruits, he is satisfied and pleased, in the way a deity is gratified when an offering is presented and made over to it. He carefully adds that for the Lord, whose desires are already fulfilled, there is no enjoyment of any other, ordinary kind. Knowing him as the great Lord of all the worlds and as the friend who does good without any expectation of return, one attains peace, that is, liberation.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse as stating the object of meditation: the Lord is what is to be meditated upon, and so 'having known' means 'having meditated.' On this reading the Lord's being a means to peace, like his being the enjoyer and the rest, is itself simply a qualifier of the object of meditation. The verse restates that knowledge of the Lord is a means to peace because that knowledge is meditation upon him.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators gather the three Vedic divisions into this single verse and set it as the keystone of the path of grace (Pustimarga). The Lord as enjoyer of sacrifices and austerities is the import of the karma-kanda, the section on ritual action; the Lord as great Lord of all the worlds is the import of the upasana-kanda, the section on worship; the Lord as the self of all beings is the import of the jnana-kanda, the section on knowledge. So action offered to him becomes worship, renunciation offered to him becomes surrender, and the resulting inner happiness is the soul's homecoming in the Purushottama, the supreme Person. One develops the enjoyership further: the Lord enjoys the heat earned by sacrifice and austerity and the very relish (rasa) born of that heat; he made the world for the sake of his own play (leela); and he is the friend in the gift of devotion (bhakti), liberation (mukti), and the relish of his own form. In this knowing, and nothing less, the touch of the world falls away and peace arises.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the Lord as the enjoyer in the fruits of sacrifices precisely because the fruit has been given up by the doer; the same holds for austerities. Knowing the truth of the Blessed One to be of this kind, one is released, however one may be placed; that is, liberation does not depend on one's outward circumstances.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read 'enjoyer' (bhokta) as protector (palaka): the Lord protects the sacrifices and austerities offered up by his devotees. They read the three titles as showing that the Lord is the one object of worship for every kind of seeker. He is the enjoyer or protector of the sacrifices of men of action and the austerities of knowers, so he is worshipped by both; he is the great controller and indweller, so he is worshipped by yogins; he is the friend who does good through his own devotees out of compassion by teaching devotion to himself, so he is worshipped by devotees. One stresses that since the attributeless Lord cannot be experienced through knowledge made of the sattva quality, the Lord has said, 'I am to be grasped by devotion alone,' so it is by attributeless devotion that the yogin makes the Supreme Self a matter of direct experience and reaches peace. Liberation, on this reading, comes through the knowledge of the Supreme Self that itself arises from devotion. One emphasizes that the seeker is carried home by the recognition that the recipient of every sacrifice, the Lord of every world, and the friend of every being are one and the same Vasudeva, the inner controller of the heart, whose grace (prasada) is the peace in which all paths end.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators keep the verse's plain devotional sense. One restates the three titles directly: the Lord is the author, goal, and God of all sacrifices and austerities, the friend who does good without expecting return, the dispenser of the fruits of all actions and the silent witness dwelling in every heart, and knowing him brings peace and liberation. One addresses the apparent conflict with earlier verses that call the Lord a non-doer and non-enjoyer: there is no real conflict, for God is Doer and non-Doer, Enjoyer and non-Enjoyer both, being beyond the power of human speech, so the seeker invests him with diverse and even contradictory attributes in striving to glimpse him. One renders the titles simply as Recipient of all sacrifice and austerities, Overlord of all spheres, and Friend of the entire creation, by realizing whom one attains tranquility. One draws out the practical heart of 'enjoyer': when a person does any good act he wrongly takes some being as the enjoyer of it, the deity he worships, the person he serves, the hungry man he feeds; to remove this, the Lord says that in truth he alone is the enjoyer of all good acts, since he dwells in the heart of every being, so in any worship, gift, or help the aim should rest on the Lord and not on the being, as the Lord also says in 9.24 that he is the enjoyer of all sacrifices.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas