Chapter 7 · Verse 27·Spoken by Krishna
इच्छाद्वेषसमुत्थेन द्वन्द्वमोहेन भारत। सर्वभूतानि संमोहं सर्गे यान्ति परन्तप
ichchhā-dveṣha-samutthena dvandva-mohena bhārata sarva-bhūtāni sammohaṁ sarge yānti parantapa
From desire and aversion comes the delusion of the pairs of opposites. By it all beings fall into confusion at birth.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna names a second cause for why beings fail to know him. The first cause, named just before, was maya, the Lord's own veiling power. Here he adds a further, more immediate cause: the delusion that arises from desire and aversion. 'Desire' (iccha, also called raga, attraction) is the pull toward what is agreeable; 'aversion' (dvesha, also called repulsion) is the push away from what is disagreeable. From these two springs a 'delusion of the pairs of opposites' (dvandva-moha). The 'pairs' (dvandva) are the contrary experiences that come and go together: heat and cold, pleasure and pain, honor and dishonor, gain and loss. Several commentators are explicit that this is presented as an additional or intermediate cause, set after maya, not a replacement for it.
Braided from 12 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
The mechanism runs like this: confronted with the pairs of opposites, the being desires the pleasant and is averse to the painful, and from this back-and-forth a confused conviction settles in. Commentators give the form of that conviction directly: 'I am the happy one, I am the suffering one,' or 'I am honored, this is mine; I am dishonored.' The mind, gripped by attraction and repulsion, loses the power to see things as they truly are. The point is pressed by a 'how much more' argument: if such a mind cannot even see external objects correctly, far less can it know the innermost Self. So the delusion of the pairs is precisely the obstacle that blocks the rise of true knowledge.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
This delusion is not a private failing of a few unlucky people; it is built into birth itself. The word 'sarge' (at creation, at the coming-to-be, at the arising of the body) tells us the bewilderment is present from the very start of embodiment, before discrimination has had any chance to settle. Every being, as it is born, arises already under the sway of this delusion. Several commentators add the deeper reason: the desire and aversion practiced in earlier births leave latent impressions (samskaras), and at the next birth these awaken and present the pairs once again as objects to be wanted or shunned, so the cycle renews itself life after life.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Madhvācārya · Vallabhācārya
Because the inner organ is agitated by attraction and aversion, all beings do not know Krishna, who is their very Self and the supreme Lord, and therefore do not worship him. The verse thus completes the explanation begun earlier: knowledge of the Lord is rare precisely because this universal delusion stands in the way. The two names Krishna uses for Arjuna, 'Bharata' (born in the noble line of Bharata) and 'Parantapa' (scorcher of foes), are read as encouragement: by the strength of his noble lineage and his own innate power, Arjuna is the kind of person who can overcome this enemy called the delusion of the pairs.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The delusion of the pairs is read as the direct, intermediate obstacle that blocks the rise of knowledge whose object is the supreme reality, the truth of the Self. The reasoning is that a mind overcome by desire and aversion cannot see even outer things truly, so far less the inmost Self, where the obstructions are many. One voice in this school sharpens the content of the delusion into a list of superimpositions: seeing the auspicious in the inauspicious, truth in untruth and untruth in truth, the eternal in the non-eternal, and the Self in the non-Self such as the body. On this reading the verse explains why even omniscient creation-knowledge does not arise in the ordinary being. This school also expressly rejects a forced alternative reading that would make the verse merely about beings' lack of triple-time knowledge.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This school stresses that the delusion is a structural condition coeval with entry into samsara, not a personal failing; the candidate has been carrying it from the very start. The desire and aversion of past births leave their impress, so that at birth the pairs present themselves again as objects of wanting and shunning, and the being becomes one whose very nature is desire and aversion toward these things. The pointed contrast is with the man of knowledge, whose single nature is the joy and pain of union with and separation from the Lord; no being is born of that nature. The corrective conclusion this school draws is that, because the veil is structural and not merely personal, it is the Lord's grace that cuts through it.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhakti
The devotional commentators fill in the lived texture of the delusion and tie it to fitness for devotion. The settled conviction is spelled out as 'I am honored and happy; I am dishonored and unhappy; this woman is mine, this man is mine,' issuing in extreme attachment to wife, sons, and the rest, and it is precisely this attachment that leaves a person unfit for devotion to the Lord. One voice underscores that the delusion is structural with embodiment itself, so mere effort cannot remove it; only refuge in the Lord who is the very support of maya can. One voice supports the point with the Bhagavata's teaching to Uddhava that the one neither disgusted nor over-attached is the one for whom devotion bears fruit. The Marathi voice dramatizes the whole chain as a family allegory: the ego falls in love with the body, desire is born, desire weds hatred, and their child is the delusion of the pairs, who, nursed by the grandfather Ego, drives all creatures into the jungle of worldly existence.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Dvaita
This school insists that the verse names a further, intermediate cause of the delusion concerning the Lord, distinct from the deluding power of maya already stated. The careful point is timing: 'from the very time of creation, while there is a body, desire and the rest are present; before that there is only ignorance.' Before creation there can be knowledge even without desire, but such knowledge depends on the Lord's will, and that very dependence shows that the delusion of the pairs is an intermediate cause, not the root. This school also reads the word 'creation' (an action) as standing by secondary signification for 'the time of creation,' so that it can serve as the occasion at which the cause operates. It explicitly notes and resists the way another tradition glosses 'pair-delusion,' treating that gloss as a recourse used only when no plainer reading is available.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
Here the delusion is read against the background of the Lord's play and service. The duality of attraction and repulsion takes hold from the very moment of embodiment, before discrimination can settle, so the conscious (cit) portion, already bewildered by maya, is then further hidden by this dvandva, leaving the creature at a double remove from the Lord. The deeper sense added is that beings were brought forth for the Lord's play and service, and so ought to dwell only on the pleasure and pain of union with and separation from him, not on their own private 'I' and 'mine'; those absorbed in their own concerns are unfit for the Lord's work, and maya therefore deludes them. The address 'Bharata' is taken to signify that only some rare devotee, after the manner of Bharata, is free of this delusion.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This voice frames the verse around a doubt about whether dissolution brings release. By desire, aversion, anger, delusion and the rest, the being, itself made of delusion, swells out, and the whole world, lying within the womb of prakriti and unable to do anything but its own task, sinks into a sleeping state, as in the deep sleep that comes each night. But this sinking is not liberation: when the experiencing of that delusion ends, the transmigration of manifold workings is seen to return again. The accent falls on showing that mere dissolution or sleep-like cessation is no genuine release, because the latent impressions resume their work.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhedabheda
This commentator works out the two arms of the pairs concretely: toward things that benefit or serve another's purpose there is, from attraction, pleasure, and an engagement bound to it; toward things that harm there is aversion, pain, and a withdrawal bound to it. Thus beings, bound by engagement, come at their birth, that is, in the taking on of bodies, to bewilderment. He also presses a grammatical point against reading 'pairs' as simply meaning attraction and aversion: if that were all it meant, the word 'pairs' would be pointless, since it would have sufficed to say only 'by the delusion arising from desire and aversion.'
Śrī Bhāskara
Modern
The modern voices keep the core analysis and draw out its practical edge. One lists the pairs at length, raga and dvesha, pleasure and pain, success and failure, censure and praise, and notes that the victim of attraction and repulsion loses discrimination, wishing pleasant objects to last forever though everything conditioned in time, space, and causation must perish. Another simply restates that beings are steeped in ignorance through the confusion created by the pairs arising from desire and hate. The most developed modern voice argues that the human body is meant for discernment (viveka): a person should incline the mind toward the supreme and turn it from the world, but when both love and dispassion are aimed only at the world they harden into raga and dvesha, and the being becomes entangled. This voice adds a striking corollary: being drawn to the Lord through any single door, even fixation, enmity, or fear, can bring deliverance, as with Bilvamangal, the gopis, Shishupala, and Kamsa, because the underlying disease is the scattered pull of the pairs, and a one-pointed pull toward the Lord, of whatever kind, breaks it.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If this delusion is built into birth itself and carried over from past lives, is it even possible for me to escape it by my own effort, or am I simply stuck with it?
Take the difficulty seriously first: the verse really does say the delusion is present from the moment of birth, woven into embodiment before discrimination can settle, and renewed each life by the latent impressions of past desire and aversion. So this is not a small habit you can simply decide away by willpower alone; it is structural, a condition of being born into the world rather than a personal lapse.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vallabhācārya · Śrīla Baladeva
But the verse is diagnostic, not a sentence of despair. Because the delusion is structural and rooted in the Lord's own veiling power, the way through is not raw self-effort but refuge in the very Lord who supports maya; his grace is what cuts the veil that mere effort cannot.
Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī
And you are not powerless in turning toward that refuge. The human form is given precisely for discernment, and the practical move is to redirect your love toward the supreme and your dispassion toward the world, rather than letting both collapse into attraction and aversion. Strikingly, since the real disease is the scattered, two-way pull of the opposites, even a single one-pointed pull toward the Lord, by whatever door, begins to break it; the very names Krishna uses, calling Arjuna noble-born and scorcher of foes, signal that a person can indeed stand against this enemy.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śaṅkarācārya
Contemplation
Notice where your loving and your turning-away are actually pointed. You were made for discernment, not for being tossed by every agreeable and disagreeable thing. When both your love and your dispassion are aimed only at the world, they harden into desire and aversion, and you become tangled in exactly the pairs this verse describes. So practice steering: incline the mind toward the supreme and let it turn away from the world, giving real weight to your own discernment rather than reacting by attraction and repulsion. And take heart from this: the disease is the scattered pull of the opposites, so even a single, one-pointed pull toward the Lord begins to cure it. Bilvamangal was bound by infatuation, yet when his longing turned, it carried him home. Being drawn to the Lord through any door at all is the door out.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.