Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read sannyasa as renunciation in the highest sense, the relinquishing of all action and its fruit, and they are careful to say that calling karma-yoga by this name is figurative and is done for the sake of praise. The primary, literal renunciation belongs to one who has truly given up all the means of action; it cannot literally hold in the field of work. So the householder who acts is called renouncer and yogi only secondarily, by a likeness through the doer who in both cases gives up the fruit-resolve. They explicitly reject reading the verse as a full, literal identification of karma-yoga with sannyasa, comparing such language to calling a young man a lion. One of them adds that yoga is the restraint of the mind's movements (the fivefold modifications), and that the fruit-resolve is a form of attachment whose restraint is, in a secondary sense, both yoga and renunciation; thus there is no contradiction in lending the word.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse as deliberately blocking a rival doctrine: the view that knowledge-discipline (jnana-yoga) is the real practice and action-discipline is merely its limb or helper. They say the verse states an identity, not a subordination. What is called sannyasa, the renunciation of fruit-bound resolves, is yoga; and what is called yoga, karma-yoga so qualified, is sannyasa. The two are one inner stance approached from two sides, the giving-up side and the joining side. For them, renouncing sankalpa specifically means giving up the false conceit of self toward matter, which is not the self, by dwelling on the truth of the self; one in whom this conceit remains is simply not on the action-discipline at all. So the door is shut on the joining-of-action-to-knowledge reading.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators take 'yoga' here in its primary sense, as the means to knowledge and the worship of the Lord, and they argue that renunciation is included WITHIN that yoga rather than being a separate thing. The word 'too' in the source shows that renunciation, though sometimes spoken of separately, is not really different from yoga. They press a sharper point: the bare abandonment of resolve is not by itself full renunciation. The view that yoga is merely doing one's own action for the worship of the Lord, and so could stand even without renunciation, is unsound; for if one does not give up desire and intention, one does not possess the means at all. So 'sankalpa' here stands by implication for desire and the rest, and renunciation is genuinely contained in yoga.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads 'renunciation' (sannyasa) in its etymological sense, as a derivative word rather than a fixed technical term for a stage of life. Renunciation means the complete relinquishing, the depositing, the offering of one's actions unto the Supreme Self. He compares the word 'vaidya': conventionally it names the physician, but etymologically it applies to anyone in whom there is learning. In the same way 'renunciation' is not confined to the formal orders of life; by its root meaning it reaches wherever actions are wholly offered up to the Supreme Self.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse in a devotional key. One holds that sannyasa and yoga share a single purpose, both turning on the same giving-up-of-fruit point. The other deepens it into the love of the Lord: the renunciation in view is one carried out in the mode of one whose every disposition has become His, having the very form of the relish of separation in love. The fruits given up are the fruits one had wished for oneself, and from such giving-up the success of union with the Lord follows. The one who has not renounced sankalpa is one who has not let go of the inner resolve set on his OWN enjoyment, and such a person, even wearing the outward marks of devotion, is never a yogi. So long as the wish to taste one's own pleasure abides, the wish to taste the Lord's pleasure cannot dawn; both cannot stand together in one heart.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators keep the identity functional rather than merely verbal: the two names attach to the same inward act, the laying down of the fruit-resolve and the consequent absence of mental scattering. One states it plainly: renunciation of the fruit of action is exactly the meaning of the word renunciation, and the stilling of the mind away from sense objects is exactly the meaning of yoga, so the two words have come to carry one and the same meaning. One frames the verse as answering an objection: in the path of knowledge, where all sense-activity ceases, the word 'renunciation' is used, and in the restraint of the mind the word 'yoga' is used, so how can one karma-yogi (whose path involves full sense-activity) be called both? The answer is that both names apply to him by figurative usage, on the strength of his resemblance to the fruit-renouncer and to the mind-restrainer. One reads the verse as hoisting a flag over the union of the two paths, where karma and yoga begin just where the threads of illusory desires are snapped by renunciation while acting.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators stress that true sannyasa is a state of mind, not an outward act. One defines sankalpa as the imagining faculty that plans for the future and guesses at results, and says no one who plans and expects fruits can be a karma-yogi, since such thought keeps the mind unsteady; karma-yoga is here praised because it is the external aid and stepping-stone to the yoga of meditation. One insists that becoming fireless or inactive is not the mark of real renunciation; true sannyasa is giving up the desireful reason, the hope of fruit, and so a man who performs his duties while giving up that hope is the true sannyasin, a doctrine the Gita reconciles with the older smriti rule. One reads the verse as repeating the fifth chapter's teaching that sannyasa (sankhya-yoga) and karma-yoga are not two but one, with the same fruit; just as the formal sannyasi is a complete renouncer of the conceit of being the doer, the karma-yogi who acts as mere duty, wholly renouncing fruit and attachment, is equally a complete renouncer, so between yogi and sannyasi there is no difference at all.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas