Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the recovered understanding as buddhi concerning the Self, the connection with the intellect whose object is the oneness of Brahman and the self. The means it carries over are the disciplines of knowledge: renunciation of all action, approaching the teacher, hearing, reflection, and profound meditation. One of them works this out in unusual detail through the seven grounds (bhumis) of the path described in the Vasishtha teaching, distinguishing those who die having reached the higher grounds, where liberation is assured, from those who die on the earlier means-grounds, where the doubt about their outcome arises and is answered here. The address Kuru-nandana is taken to hint that for Arjuna too, given his pure and prosperous line, knowledge will come without toil through the strength of prior impression.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the recovered buddhi as the inner-bent bearing on the discipline (yoga) of the prior body, and they emphasize the structure of continuation. Mere birth in a yogi's family is not by itself the cause of release (moksha), because the prior yoga was only slackened, not completed. So three things together carry the candidate to the consummation: the rebirth that furnishes the conditions, the recovered inner bent, and the renewed striving. One stresses that he strives again so that he may not be one struck down by an obstacle.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator frames the verse within the discipline of action done for the Lord's sake. Because such action is not fruitless, it issues either in enjoyment of the meritorious worlds or in final release. He insists this answer holds for the followers of the path of action, not for those who, abandoning action, would seek liberation from knowledge alone, for whom he says there is only an evil end, since knowledge serves liberation by removing ignorance and cannot itself be a cause of enjoyment. On this base he reads the recovered union of understanding and the renewed striving toward perfection.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the recovered buddhi as knowledge made manifest for the sake of Bhagavan's service, gained immediately after entry into the embodied state by Bhagavan's grace, simply by being born in the household of those who belong to Bhagavan. The full success (siddhi) striven for is the gaining of Bhagavan himself. The address Kuru-nandana is read as given for the sake of trust, and the pause in the earlier life is called no wasted detour: the resumption begins where practice left off and proceeds quickly because the soil is already prepared.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator stresses how the prior practice carries the seeker forward almost against his will: helpless, subject to another, he is led by sheer force toward the practice of yoga by that earlier momentum. He reads perfection as the state made of release, and the final goal as the state of Vasudeva. He adds that even the mere wish to know yoga carries one beyond the Brahman-that-is-sound, the muttered mantra and self-study, so that one no longer takes it as one's own; and he insists such a one is not perfected in a single body but through practice over many births.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the recovered buddhi as the understanding whose object was Brahman or steadfastness in the supreme Self, recovered in the new body as one's own inheritance. One calls this the very mechanism of the fallen yogi's arc: nothing of the earlier sadhana is lost, so the next birth begins not at a cold start but exactly where the earlier life left off, the new effort pressing forward with extra force. Another widens the goal to purity of heart and the seeing of both one's own self and the Supreme Self, and reads the renewed striving, like one awakened from sleep, as undertaken so that the seeker may not again be struck down by an obstacle.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva

Modern

These commentators read the verse in terms of the psychology of stored impressions. One explains that thoughts and actions are deposited in the subconscious mind as samskaras, habits, and tendencies, which are revivified in the next birth; the yogic tendencies then compel the aspirant to strive with greater vigor than before, reaching toward higher planes of realization. Another simply says the spiritual impressions of previous births come again, and the seeker attempts a success in yoga that is even higher. A third opens the question of what becomes of the seeker, now full of dispassion, after birth in the line of self-realized liberated souls, treating the verse as the answer to that state.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas