Advaita Vedānta

These commentators locate the root failure in non-discrimination (the absence of viveka, the power to distinguish the real from the unreal). The fruit perishes because desire itself is 'preceded by non-discrimination', and desire takes hold only through dullness of intellect. One reads alpa-medhas through the Upanishadic line that 'where one sees another, hears another, knows another, that is small': duality is itself 'small', so those whose intellect is fixed in duality, craving outer objects, are 'small-intellect'. The deepest of these voices stresses that all deities are in truth forms of the one Self of all, and the Lord alone is everywhere the inner controller and giver of fruit; the real defect is failing to discriminate this single reality. The endless fruit, for them, is the dense mass of bliss that is the Lord, identified with the supreme Self.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse as distinguishing destinies strictly by the object of worship, not by any difference in the Lord's relation to the worshippers. The gods Indra and the rest have a bounded enjoyment and last only a measured time, so those who reach union with them fall away together with them. Krishna's devotees, knowing that these very acts are really the worship of Krishna, give up attachment to the bounded fruit, make the pleasing of Krishna their single purpose, and attain Krishna alone, never to return: this is anchored in the coming verse, 'having come to Me there is no rebirth'. One voice underscores the Lord's honesty: he welcomes candidates at their actual level and grants their chosen fruit truthfully, while plainly distinguishing the finite reward of the finite aim from the infinite reward of the infinite aim.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This voice gives the barest gloss: the worshippers of the gods reach the gods, while Krishna's devotees reach the everlasting state. It affirms the verse's core contrast of finite versus everlasting destination without further elaboration.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse to steer the devotee firmly past every intermediary deity while still granting those deities their reality within the Lord's order. The fruit ends because the deities worshipped are themselves not eternal in form, so the asymmetry is precise: lesser worship yields a fruit that lasts only as long as the deity-state lasts, while worship of the Bhagavan yields a fruit with no end, since the Bhagavan has no end. One develops a subtle point about conception: those who worship the gods 'as gods only, and not as portions of Me', whose minds are not lit up by his portionhood, reach only the gods, because they had no longing for union with Krishna in the first place; you attain only what you actually desired. Worship of Krishna is therefore supreme even when desire is present, and onward such devotees too reach liberation, union with the Imperishable; this is cited with a Harivamsha verse that offspring, wealth, heaven and even liberation are none of them far from devotion to Hari.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators meet head-on the objection that, if all deities are the Lord's forms and the labor of worship is equal, then making the devotees' fruit imperishable and others' fruit perishable looks like an injustice in the Lord. Their reply: there is no injustice, only the rule that 'they who are worshipers of whom attain those very ones'. Since the gods are themselves perishable, their devotees and the fruit of worshiping them must perish too; that the worshipper did not see this is exactly why he is called 'of little understanding'. The Lord, however, is eternal, his devotees are eternal, and devotion to him and its fruit are all eternal. One adds a doctrinal sharpening: the decisive factor is conception, whether one worships the deities 'as merely the sun and the rest' or as forms of the Lord; the same act done with the right conception yields the infinite fruit, namely the Lord himself with his eternal nature, qualities, and manifestations. The lesser fruit perishes not because the Lord is partial but because the vision was partial; the bhakta, taking the All in the All, gains the All. One Marathi voice adds that such fancy-ridden devotion is but a path to worldly success, its enjoyment as short-lived as a dream, and that the deity-worshipper becomes one with the deity he worships, while those who whole-heartedly follow Krishna are merged into him, eternal being, when they leave this life.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators stress the practical and ethical lesson. One classifies the deity-worshippers by guna: those who worship Indra and the like are Sattvic, those who worship Yakshas and Rakshasas are Rajasic, and those who worship Bhutas and Pretas are Tamasic; all such knowledge is partial and cannot lead to liberation, for Yajnas, Homas, and Tapas bestow only temporary rewards while liberation alone gives everlasting bliss. Another emphasizes that the worship of deities is not useless: it steadies and purifies the mind so that one ultimately gains the knowledge of the one permanent Reality; but any fruit gained before that knowledge is non-permanent, so the Lord's advice to everyone is not to be enmeshed in the hope of fruit but to aspire to become a knowing devotee. A third, a non-sectarian devotional voice, develops the verse most practically: the deity-worshipper must observe many rules and perform many rites, yet the fruit is bounded and ends in the bondage of birth and death, whereas the Lord's worship needs few rules and few rites yet yields a boundless, endless fruit leading to true welfare; their intellect is called 'small' precisely because, seeing this, they still choose the harder, lesser path. The same worship, this voice insists, could yield an imperishable fruit by either of two means: dropping desire and worshiping the gods desirelessly, or worshiping them as the very form of the Lord.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas