Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 13, Verse 27: Krishna to Arjuna — Kṣetra-Kṣetrajña-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  He who sees the parameśvara (supreme Lord), supreme relative to body, senses, mind, intellect and the unmanifest, abiding sama (without distinction) in all beings from Brahmā to the plant, undying among the dying, he sees; 'dying' and 'undying' are set side by side to show the Lord's absolute difference from beings, for birth is the root of every bhāva-vikāra (modification of being) and destruction the last, so denying destruction denies all the rest, and the Lord's nirviśeṣatva (freedom from all distinction) and ekatva (oneness) are established. Everyone sees, but sees wrongly; as one with diseased eyes (timira) sees many moons and the one who sees a single moon is marked out, so he who sees the one undivided Self alone sees, and the rest, though seeing, do not see.

  divergence: Śaṅkara (13.28) reads sama as nirviśeṣa (without any distinction) and derives the Lord's oneness from the negation of the last modification, destruction. The many-moons image makes plurality itself the error, against Rāmānuja, who reads parameśvara here as each individual self.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Thus, in all beings where field and knower are joined, he who sees the self as freed from the unequal forms of god, human and the rest, standing in each body as parameśvara (supreme ruler) over its own body, senses and mind, equal in form as jñātṛtva (being a knower), and undying by a nature unfit for destruction while those bodies perish, he sees: he sees the self as it truly is. But he who sees the self as unequal in form, as a god or the like, and as subject to birth and death, wanders in saṃsāra (worldly becoming) forever.

  divergence: Rāmānuja (13.27) makes the sharpest turn of the panel: parameśvara here is the individual self, the supreme ruler of its own body, not Brahman or Viṣṇu. Sama means that many selves are alike in form, all knowers, not that one self is everywhere; the error is to take the self's form to be that of its body.

• Madhvadvaita

  No Dvaita rendering: the supplied source records that Madhvācārya did not comment on this verse ('Sri Madhvacharya did not comment on this sloka').

  divergence: ABSENT: Madhva's bhāṣya is empty for this verse (his 13.28). The payload lists Jayatīrtha's 13.28 as a witness passage, but its text is not supplied, so no Dvaita reading is invented here. Jayatīrtha's Prameyadīpikā is also silent on this verse.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  To make it easier to grasp, he again speaks of seeing the self, which is threefold: antaryāmin (the inner controller), puruṣa (the individual self) and avyakta (the unmanifest); in two verses he gives the fruit of seeing the first. He who sees the paramātman (supreme self), the antaryāmin (inner controller) and Īśvara (Lord), abiding equally in all beings, has samyag-darśana (right vision); and he who sees, in the perishing bodies produced from prakṛti (matter), the one who does not perish, like a jāti (universal) that outlasts its instances, the same in form as a knower, he sees.

  divergence: Vallabha (13.28) divides the self into three and takes parameśvara as the antaryāmin (inner controller), who is distinct from the individual self that is dealt with in the next verse. The jāti (universal) analogy, the undying in the dying as a kind persists through its instances, is his own; 'same in form as a knower' borrows Rāmānuja's wording.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Having said that saṃsāra (worldly becoming) springs from non-discrimination, he now states the samyag-darśana (right vision) whose object is the discerned self, to end it. He who sees the paramātman (supreme self) abiding in moving and unmoving beings as nirviśeṣa (without distinction), the same in all by being sat-rūpa (pure existence), and therefore undying in them as they die, he alone sees rightly, no one else.

  divergence: Śrīdhara (13.28) grounds sameness in sat-rūpa (being as pure existence): what is the same in everything is its existence itself. He sides with Śaṅkara's non-dual reading but in a brief, positive form, with no argument about modifications and no many-moons image.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Beings, moving and unmoving, are uneven, changing every instant (no thing can stand a moment without changing), cancelling one another, perishing, like a city in the clouds conjured by māyā (illusion); the parameśvara (supreme Lord) among them is sama (the same everywhere), one in each body, unchanging, giving sattā-sphūrti (existence and luminosity) to the whole inert world, untouched by fault, and undying, not cancelled even when all duality is cancelled. He who sees this Self by viveka (discrimination) with śāstra-cakṣus (the eye of scripture) alone sees, as waking knowledge cancels a dream; the ignorant, like a dreamer, seeing wrongly, does not see at all, for error is a not-seeing, just as one who takes a rope for a snake is not said to see the rope. From this pure seeing of the Self, avidyā (ignorance), which is itself a not-seeing, ceases, and with it saṃsāra (worldly becoming), its product.

  divergence: Madhusūdana (13.28) goes further than Śaṅkara: the Lord is the giver of existence and luminosity (sattā-sphūrti-prada) to all that is inert and is uncancelled when all duality is cancelled, and wrong seeing is analysed as adarśana (non-seeing) itself. The sight he praises comes by śāstra-cakṣus (the eye of scripture), not by unaided reflection.