Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'renouncer of all sankalpa' to its widest reach: it carries with it the renunciation of all desires and all actions without remainder. The reasoning is a chain backed by scripture and remembered texts. Desire is rooted in resolve; as the resolve, so the act; in the total renunciation of resolve no creature can even stir. So when resolve is wholly given up, all desire and all action are given up too, including the obligatory and occasional duties, not only the desire-prompted and forbidden ones. The actions are seen as serving no purpose, and the Self is known as non-doer, non-enjoyer, non-dual bliss; the verse thus marks the threshold where the self has been drawn up out of the whole field of transmigration. The accent falls on knowledge: seeing the unreality of objects and one's own true nature dissolves the clinging.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda

Advaita Vedānta

This voice meets an objection head-on: if 'yoga' here means the seedless, highest absorption (nirbija samadhi), then dropping action would already be automatic for one who has reached it, so why state it as a mark? The answer is that the verse describes the very moment of ascent, not the finished summit. The vivid image given is of intense hunger: a man fiercely hungry, indifferent to everything else, dropping all other engagements, is 'ascended-to-eating'; just so, one who burns to climb, dispassionate everywhere, having dropped all actions, is 'yoga-ascended'. The rule that follows is temporal and sharp: up to that point, actions; after that point, dropped.

Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse as a definition by inner mark within a two-stage scheme. The yogarudha is one who, having by his nature the single, steady experience of the Self, no longer attaches to the objects of matter that are other than the Self, nor to the actions bearing on them. They draw the practical lesson out plainly: precisely because non-attachment is the mark, the discipline of action (karma-yoga) practiced as ongoing non-attachment toward things still fit to be experienced is itself the cause that brings one to the summit. So one who wishes to climb should do that very karma-yoga. The verse, on this reading, is not a measure of elapsed time but a marker of inner state: he who has let go of fruit-clinging and sense-clinging is the one who has arrived (arudha); whoever is still striving toward this is the one still climbing (arurukshu).

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse as stating the mark of the yogarudha, but they guard a careful distinction. Complete non-attachment, in its primary and full sense, belongs to him alone who has truly climbed; in such a one the dissolution of faults comes of itself, effortlessly, whereas for others it comes only through effort and only after the direct seeing of the Supreme Self. They are explicit that direct knowledge is the effect of the ascent to yoga, and can be delayed by obstruction, so knowledge itself is not the defining mark; the defining mark is this effortless, complete, primary non-attachment, which distinguishes the one who has arrived from the mere aspirant whose senses are merely controlled.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators locate the mark squarely in continued action. The yogarudha is not one who has withdrawn from doing; he still performs the works fulfillable by his own activity, and even objects that come his way unsought (to relieve a sharp pain, or in sleep) still reach him. The mark is that he does not cling to these as worth pursuing for their own sake, does not attach to the works that procure them, and has given up every mental resolve grounded in the desire for self-enjoyment. The decisive thought is that ascent to yoga is measured not by the withdrawal of the senses from contact at all, but by the cessation of the inner resolve to enjoy through them.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Modern

This commentator reads 'sannyasa of sankalpa' narrowly and deliberately: it is the renunciation of the hope of fruit, the desireful reason, and not the renunciation of action itself. He insists this stanza continues the preceding ones and shows that the Gita advises the yogarudha to give up not action but the hope of fruit, to perform action desirelessly and with a peaceful mind. Karma-yoga, on this view, includes sannyasa in the shape of abandoning the hope of fruit, and the true yogarudha is precisely the man who performs all actions having abandoned that hope. He adds the encouraging note that succeeding in such desireless karma-yoga is within every man's power if he makes the effort.

Lokmanya Tilak

Modern

This commentator develops the verse into a detailed practice grounded in the contrast between the changeless Self and changing prakriti. He divides the work into two parts as the verse does: form no attachment to the objects of the senses, and form no attachment to actions. For objects, the key is to refuse the pleasure of desire-fulfillment (iccha-purti); taking that pleasure is what grows attachment, and being pleased in favorable circumstance is a self-deception that makes one dependent (paratantra) on what comes and goes. For actions, he notes two independent attachments: attachment to the fruit, and a separate inner urge to do (a vega of doing) that persists even without desire for fruit; this urge is wiped out only by acting for others or for God. He insists too that attachment to not-doing is also a fault, breeding sloth (a tamasi vritti). The whole rests on a non-sectarian devotional Vedanta: the self is a direct part (amsha) of the divine and is eternal (nitya), while objects and actions are born of prakriti and pass; clinging the eternal to the perishable is the root of all suffering.

Swami Ramsukhdas