Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 13, Verse 28: Krishna to Arjuna — Kṣetra-Kṣetrajña-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Because, seeing the Īśvara (Lord) abiding equally everywhere, in all beings, he does not harm the self by the self, therefore he reaches the parā gati (highest goal), mokṣa (liberation). It may be objected that no creature harms itself; not so, for every ignorant person sets aside the self, which is directly evident, takes the non-self as self, and, having made dharma and adharma (merit and demerit), kills that assumed self and takes up another new one, and kills that too, so every ignorant person is an ātmahan (self-slayer); and the true Self too is as if slain by avidyā (ignorance), since its fruit is not seen. The seer of the Self harms the self in neither way, and so reaches the highest goal.

  divergence: Śaṅkara (13.29) meets the objection that self-harm is impossible by giving 'self-killing' two senses: endlessly dropping one assumed body-self for the next, and obscuring the true Self by ignorance. The goal is mokṣa (liberation), the end of both kinds of harm.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Seeing the Īśvara (master), the self that stands in the bodies of gods and the rest as their śeṣin (owner), support and controller, as sama (the same everywhere) in being of the one form of knowledge, freed from the unequal forms of god and the rest, he does not harm his own self by the ātman (here, the mind); he protects it and releases it from saṃsāra (worldly becoming). Therefore, from seeing it everywhere as the same in form as a knower, he reaches the parā gati (highest goal): gati is 'that which is reached,' and the highest thing to be reached is the self as it truly is. He who sees the self as unequal everywhere, in the forms of god and the rest, harms it, flinging it into the middle of the ocean of becoming.

  divergence: Rāmānuja (13.28) again reads īśvara as the individual self, master (śeṣin) of its own body, glosses ātmanā as manasā (by the mind) and turns 'does not harm' into a positive: protects and releases. The parā gati (highest goal) is the self's own true condition, not merger, the opposite of Śaṅkara's reading of a single Lord and mokṣa as the end of ignorance.

• 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 13.29). Jayatīrtha's 13.29 is listed as a witness passage but its text is not supplied; nothing is invented. Jayatīrtha's Prameyadīpikā is also silent on this verse.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Seeing the same, he does not harm the self by the self, that is, he does not take it to be other than it is but knows it as it truly is, on the authority of the saying: 'What sin has he not done, that thief who steals himself, who takes the self that is one way to be another?' (Mahābhārata 1.74.27). Rather he protects it and passes beyond saṃsāra (worldly becoming), as the śruti (scripture) says, 'he goes beyond death'; therefore, from seeing it everywhere as the same in form as a knower, he reaches the parā gati (highest goal), the dhāma (abode) of Bhagavān (the Lord), of the nature of sat-cit-ānanda (being, consciousness and bliss), which is the akṣara (the imperishable).

  divergence: Vallabha (13.29) reads 'harming the self' as misapprehending it, and adopts Rāmānuja's 'protects' and 'same as knower,' but the goal is distinctly Śuddhādvaita: the parā gati (highest goal) is the abode of Bhagavān (the Lord), identified with the akṣara (imperishable) and with sat-cit-ānanda, neither Rāmānuja's self-as-it-is nor Śaṅkara's bare mokṣa.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Why does he alone see? Because, seeing the paramātman (supreme self) abiding sama (equally) in all beings, rightly settled in its unfallen nature, he does not by his own self destroy the self whose nature is sat-cit-ānanda (being, consciousness and bliss) by hiding it under avidyā (ignorance), and so he gains the parā gati (highest goal), mokṣa (liberation). But one who does not see thus, who takes the body to be the self, harms the self along with the body; so the śruti (Īśa Upaniṣad 3) says, 'Sunless are those worlds, wrapped in blind darkness, to which, after death, go those who slay the self.'

  divergence: Śrīdhara (13.29) keeps Śaṅkara's sense of self-harm as hiding the blissful Self by ignorance, but compresses it, names the self-slayer simply as the one who takes body as self, and adds the Īśa Upaniṣad warning of the sunless worlds as the fate of that error.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  He praises this vision by its fruit to awaken ruci (a taste for it): seeing the Self as described, realising it directly through the eye of scripture as 'I am this,' he does not harm the self by the self. Every ignorant person harms the Self twice: by avidyā (ignorance), which makes the one Self that is, that shines, non-agent, non-enjoyer, supreme bliss, seem not to be and not to shine; and by killing, through karma (past action), the old body-complex he took as self and taking up a new one; the Mahābhārata ('that thief who steals himself') and the Īśa Upaniṣad ('those who slay the self'), where ātmahan (self-slayer) means one who takes the non-self for self, both say so. The knower cancels that false identification by seeing the pure Self, and so, harm to the Self having ended, reaches the parā gati (highest goal), mukti (liberation), the end of avidyā (ignorance) and its effects.

  divergence: Madhusūdana (13.29) expands Śaṅkara's double self-slaying with an exact account of avidyā (it makes the existing, shining Self appear 'not there, not shining') and with the same Mahābhārata verse that Vallabha cites. He frames the verse as praise meant to produce ruci (taste, eagerness) in the seeker, an element of his own that ties knowledge to devotional desire.