Chapter 7 · Verse 1·Spoken by Krishna
मय्यासक्तमनाः पार्थ योगं युञ्जन्मदाश्रयः। असंशयं समग्रं मां यथा ज्ञास्यसि तच्छृणु
mayyāsakta-manāḥ pārtha yogaṁ yuñjan mad-āśhrayaḥ asanśhayaṁ samagraṁ māṁ yathā jñāsyasi tach chhṛiṇu
Krishna said: Hear how, with your mind fixed on me, practicing yoga and taking refuge in me, you will know me fully and without doubt.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his verse opens a new movement of the Gita. The commentators who track the book's structure agree that the first six chapters chiefly settled the nature of the seeker's own self (the meaning of the word 'thou,' tvam), through the disciplines of action and self-knowledge. From the seventh chapter on, the focus turns to the Lord who is to be worshipped (the meaning of the word 'that,' tat). Krishna is now answering an unasked question. At the close of Chapter 6 he had praised the one who 'worships Me with inmost self gone to Me' as the best of yogis; the natural follow-up is, what is the nature of this Lord in whom such devotion is placed, and how does the worshipper's inner self come to rest in Him. Arjuna does not ask, but Krishna, out of compassion, sets it forth on His own.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Yāmunācārya
The verse lays down three joined conditions in the seeker. First, the mind is attached to Krishna: 'mayy asakta-manah' means the mind clings to Him, settled on Him by the turning away from all other objects. Several read this attachment as more than bare mental connection; it is the mind held fast by love, so fixed that other pulls have fallen away. Second, the seeker takes Krishna as his sole refuge ('mad-ashrayah'): he makes Him his one ground and support, abandoning every other resort. Third, he is 'practising yoga' ('yogam yunjan'): he keeps up the discipline of gathering and steadying the mind by the method already taught in Chapter 6. These three are not separate options but a single posture held together, mind set on the Lord, refuge taken only in the Lord, and the discipline kept up with the Lord as its object.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Viśvanātha
Several commentators sharpen what 'sole refuge' means by a contrast. A king's servant constantly serves the king, yet his mind is really fixed elsewhere, on his wife and children and his own gains. The seeker of liberation is unlike that servant: for him the Lord is both his refuge and the very object his mind clings to, with no divided loyalty. The refuge is exclusive: not knowledge, not ritual action, not any other practice or shelter, but Krishna alone. Some note that this exclusive resort, since taking refuge in the Lord is in one sense common to everyone, becomes the distinguishing mark of the yogin precisely because here it is total and undivided.
Braided from 7 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
Krishna then promises the fruit and frames the rest of the teaching: 'hear how you will know Me without doubt and in full.' 'Without doubt' (asamshayam) means with no residual uncertainty left over. 'In full' or 'whole' (samagram) means the entire Lord, together with His glories, His powers, His strength, and His sovereignty, just as He is. The 'hear' (shrinu) marks that what follows is not reached by reasoning or inference but is to be received as instruction from the Lord Himself. Many gloss the divine fullness with terms like vibhuti (glory), bala (strength), aishvarya (lordship and power); the knowledge being offered has the Lord for its object, and it is to be both complete and certain.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as opening the exposition of the Lord as the supreme object of meditation, the meaning of the word 'that' (tat), completing the earlier teaching on the self, the meaning of 'thou' (tvam). The attachment of mind, the refuge, and the yoga are all glossed as the steadying of the mind on the Lord alone by abandoning every other means; one source contrasts the seeker with those who, wanting some human goal, take up a fire-oblation, austerity, or a gift as their means, whereas this yogin sets aside all such means and takes the Lord as his sole resort. 'In full' is unpacked as the Lord endowed with the qualities of glory, strength, power, and sovereignty, and one source frames the goal as knowing the Lord both with attributes and without (saguna and nirguna). One among them adds that the special mark of this worship is the knowledge that all Brahman is the Self that is Vasudeva, and that this knowledge of the Lord as cause makes such a yogi superior to the prior one.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read 'attached in mind' through the lens of intense love. The mind is bound very firmly to the Lord by an excess of love, such that the devotee's very nature would crumble at once if parted from the Lord's own nature, His qualities, His deeds, and His glory; and because he would so crumble without the Lord, the Lord is his sole support. They lay out the chapter's program: the Lord's own true nature, His self-veiling by His material nature, the taking of refuge, the distinctions among devotees, and the preeminence of the awakened one. The knowing promised is of the supreme Person 'as a whole,' both in His proper form and in His all-pervasion, with the residual uncertainties of half-knowledge removed, reached by the practice taught in this and the following chapter and received as instruction from the Lord, not by inference.
Yāmunācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This commentator glosses the attachment as a heart made tender by natural affection toward the Supreme Lord, with the practice of yoga and refuge taken in Him with no other shelter, by which means the seeker comes to know Him free of doubt and entirely, just as He is. (A Dvaita source reports that this reader construed both 'without doubt' and 'in full' as qualifiers of the Lord Himself, as 'Me, who am free of doubt and entire.')
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
These commentators stress that 'attached in mind' means the mind joined to the Lord in exceeding fondness, where the force of the prefix marks 'exceedingly,' since mere connection is not a limb of yoga. 'Taking Me as refuge' is read concretely: holding that the Lord Himself does everything through one, that He alone is one's refuge, and that one stands in Him alone. On the disputed phrases they take a distinct position: 'without doubt' and 'in full' qualify the act of knowing, not the Lord. They explicitly reject reading these as descriptions of the Lord (as one other reader did, taking 'Me who am doubt-free and entire'), and gloss 'without doubt' as meaning 'so that the entire one is reached just as He is.' Their reasoning is scriptural: it is not the point here to say the Lord is free of doubt, and the entire Lord cannot be fully known by anyone else, since the Gita will later say 'You alone know Yourself by Yourself' (10.15).
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators open the bloc as the turn from self-knowledge to bhakti, defined as a love founded on knowledge of the Lord's greatness, exceedingly firm and surpassing every other claim, through which alone there is release; one derives the very word bhakti from service plus loving affection (sneha). The Lord here is the supreme Self, the support of every dharma, whose play (lila) is uncommon and beyond the world, gracious by nature. The refuge and the yoga are read as taking the Lord as one's sole shelter and support 'for the very purpose of His play,' and yoga itself is glossed as the steady exercise of servanthood. 'Mind fastened on Me' means a mind that has dropped every claim of its own and longs only for the Lord's delight. The fullness to be known is the Lord in His form of union, inclusive of every rasa; this verse is treated as the seed-text (sutra) under whose commentary the whole chapter runs.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads the coming teaching very tersely in terms of knowledge and activity: 'knowledge and discernment' are just knowledge and activity, and beyond these two nothing whatever remains, since the entire host of knowables rests on knowledge and activity.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators read the verse as unfolding the worship-worthy form of the Lord (the 'aishvaram rupam,' the very form of Ishvara) in whom devotion is to be set. They insist all three terms must be held together and none loosened: mind set on the Lord, refuge taken only in the Lord and in no knowledge or action, and the discipline kept up with the Lord as object, all together opening 'samagram,' the integral Lord. One develops a sustained argument that this devotion is the supreme and wholly independent means, which even without other practices accomplishes everything from heaven to liberation; he reads 'without doubt' and 'in full' to imply that knowledge of the Lord's bare impersonal Brahman-nature is incomplete and attended with doubt, since the Brahman the knowers worship is itself the supreme glory of the Lord, who is its very foundation. They also describe the chapter's plan as declaring the Lord's majesty and the fourfold character of those who do and do not worship Him, and read the attached devotee as one who has 'climbed to the level of attachment' to the dark and beautiful Lord robed in yellow.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators give plain, applied readings. One contrasts the person who performs ritual or charity with an inner profit-motive and gains his reward, against the yogi who instead fixes his mind wholly on the Lord and His lofty attributes (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, love, beauty, grace, strength, mercy), takes refuge in Him alone, and so comes to know Him in full; he adds the practical note that singing the Lord's glory and attributes develops love, and that one who has taken refuge cannot bear separation from the Lord even for a second. One renders the verse simply as acquiring complete and unquestionable knowledge of the Lord while practising karma-yoga with the mind kept on Him. One reads 'attached in mind' as a mind that, by an excess of loving affection (sneha), has settled in the Lord of itself, so that remembrance arises naturally and forgetfulness never occurs, and whose pull toward all perishable things and sense-objects has fallen away. One treats the chapter as the synthesis of devotion with knowledge, where bhakti with knowledge is now added to works and self-knowledge, and reads the promised whole-knowledge ('samagram mam') as the integral knowing of the all-originating Godhead, the supreme Nature (Para Prakriti) in which Purusha and Prakriti are one, attained only after equality and the vision of unity are gained.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Sri Aurobindo · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If Krishna is right there in front of Arjuna, what is there left to know, and why does knowing Him need all this inner work of attachment, refuge, and yoga?
The commentators take this question head-on. One raises exactly the objection: are You not standing here in plain sight, what then is to be known? The answer is that what stands in sight is not the whole of it; what is to be known is the Lord as endowed with all His glories, powers, and splendours, the full reality behind the visible figure, which the eye alone does not reach.
Dhanapati Sūri · Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri
That is why the verse asks for inner work rather than mere looking. The knowing it promises is to be received as teaching ('hear'), not gathered by inference or eyesight; it comes as instruction from the Lord Himself, by the practice taught in this chapter and the next.
Vedānta Deśika · Rāmānujācārya · Sant Jñāneśvar
And the three conditions are the very means to that full and doubt-free seeing. The mind has to be attached to the Lord, refuge taken in Him alone, and the discipline of steadying the mind kept up, all together; it is this whole posture that opens the integral Lord and removes the leftover uncertainty of half-knowledge.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya
Contemplation
Here is a concrete way into this verse. Notice the difference between the servant of a king and the lover of God. The servant attends his master all day, yet his mind is really elsewhere, on his family and his own gains. So you can go through religious motions while your heart is fixed on what you hope to get out of them. The verse asks for something else: let the mind itself rest on the Lord and His qualities, His grace, His strength, His beauty, His mercy, and take refuge in Him alone, not as a transaction but as a homecoming. A simple practice is offered for when the mind will not stay: sing the glory and the attributes of the Lord. Singing them grows love, and love is what fixes the mind on Him; this intense love is what real devotion is. The promised fruit is not abstract. One who has truly taken refuge, who is fixing or has fixed his mind on the Lord, cannot bear separation from Him even for a second, and it is into that nearness, knowing Him in full and without doubt, that this discipline is meant to carry you.
Sit with this · Swami Sivananda
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