Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 13, Verse 6: Krishna to Arjuna — Kṣetra-Kṣetrajña-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Icchā (desire): having once met a kind of thing as a cause of pleasure, on meeting its like one wants to take it; this is a property of the inner organ and, because it is known (jñeyatvāt), it is field; so too dveṣa (aversion), sukha (pleasure), clear and serene, and duḥkha (pain), all field because all are known. Saṃghāta is the aggregate of body and senses; cetanā is the modification of the inner organ shown in it, shot through with the reflected light of the self's consciousness as an iron ball is with fire; dhṛti is what holds up body and senses when they sink; and these too are field because they are known. Desire and the rest stand for every property of the inner organ: this is the field with its modifications, from the great elements to dhṛti, stated in brief.

  divergence: Śaṅkara (his 13.7) applies one test throughout: whatever is known is field. Cetanā is not consciousness but a mental state lit by consciousness's reflection, like heat in red-hot iron. He closes by announcing that the knower will be described from 13.12 and that the list from amānitva on is called 'knowledge' because it is the means to knowledge.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Desire, aversion, pleasure and pain are called the field's products and modifications: although they are properties of the self (ātma-dharma), they arise from its connection with the field, and so are counted as the field's effects, the puruṣa being, as I shall say, the cause of experiencing pleasure and pain. Read 'cetanādhṛtiḥ' as one word: the saṃghāta (aggregate of elements) is the ādhṛti (support) of the cetana (conscious one), arisen as the base for the one who tastes pleasure and pain and who achieves both experience and release. This is the field, in brief, with its effects.

  divergence: Rāmānuja (his 13.6) makes two moves found in no other school here except Vallabha, who borrows them: desire and the rest really belong to the self, and are 'field' only because the field occasions them; and the word-division 'cetanā-ādhṛtiḥ' turns cetanā and dhṛti from two items into one: the body as support of the conscious self. This directly contradicts Śrīdhara, for whom desire and the rest are not the self's at all.

• Madhva · Jayatīrthadvaita

  Desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, the saṃghāta (aggregate of body and senses), cetanā (awareness) and dhṛti (steadiness): these named here are the vikāra (modifications). What was listed before them, from the great elements onward, is the kṣetra (field) itself, so 'this field with its modifications, told in brief' covers both lists, the field and then what changes in it.

  divergence: Read with Jayatīrtha's Prameyadīpikā on Madhva's bhāṣya (their 13.7): Madhva gives one sentence: desire and the rest are the vikāra (modifications). Jayatīrtha only settles its scope: after the list beginning with the great elements the verse says 'this field with its modifications', which leaves unclear what is the field and what its modifications, and Madhva's sentence answers that desire and the rest are the modifications, the implication being that the earlier list is the field. That is a clarification of how the two lists divide, not a new doctrine. Neither commentator says whose property desire is, nor how cetanā (awareness) or dhṛti (steadiness) are to be taken, so the Dvaita text here takes no side in the dispute the other schools engage: Advaita, Bhakti and Advaita-bhakti make desire and the rest properties of the mind, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Śuddhādvaita make them properties of the self that arise through its tie to the field. The Dvaita reading supplied is only that these items fall under the field as its modifications.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Now its modifications: though desire, aversion, pleasure and pain are properties of the self, they belong to it as my cit-aṃśa (spark of consciousness) only through its tie to the field, so they are said to rest in the field; and saṃghāta is the compact body, cetanā the life-functions such as breath that carry discernment, and dhṛti steadiness. This body made of elements was brought forth by my icchā (will) for devotion to me, a support for the puruṣa who is my spark and in truth unmanifest, so that tasting pleasure and pain he may win both experience and release; it is thick with desire and aversion, yet a means to all four aims of life, sealed by destiny and by others. This perishable field, the human body gross and subtle, I have set out for you in brief!

  divergence: Vallabha (his 13.7) takes over Rāmānuja's claim that desire and the rest are the self's properties occasioned by the field, but recasts the self as the Lord's cit-aṃśa and adds what no other school says: the human body was brought forth by the Lord's will for the sake of devotion to him. He reads cetanā as vital functions (prāṇa), not cognition, and keeps cetanā and dhṛti separate, unlike Rāmānuja.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Desire and the rest are familiar; saṃghāta is the body, cetanā the mind's cognitive modification, dhṛti steadiness. Because they are seen (dṛśyatvāt), desire and the rest are not properties of the self but properties of the mind, and so fall inside the field; they stand also for intention and the like, as śruti says: 'desire, intention, doubt, faith, unfaith, steadiness, unsteadiness, shame, understanding, fear: all this is mind alone'. So the field's properties promised under 'what it is like' are shown, and this field with its modifications, the senses and the rest, I have told you in brief.

  divergence: Śrīdhara (his 13.7) gives the reason Śaṅkara gives in different words (seen, so not self), and denies outright what Rāmānuja asserts: desire and the rest are not ātma-dharma. He anchors this in Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.5.3 ('all this is mind alone').

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Icchā is the mind-state that craves pleasure and its means, called kāma or rāga; dveṣa its opposite, called krodha or envy; sukha a mind-state wanted for its own sake, born of dharma, which gives a glimpse of the paramātman's bliss; duḥkha its opposite, born of adharma; saṃghāta the body with its senses; cetanā the mind-state, born of valid knowing, that reveals the self's own knowledge; dhṛti the effort that holds up flagging body and senses: all mind, as śruti says. Against the materialist who says the body-aggregate is the conscious knower, the Buddhist for whom momentary cognition is the self, and the logician for whom desire and the rest are marks of the self, the word 'sa-vikāram' answers: all of this undergoes change from birth to destruction, and a changing thing cannot witness its own arising and passing, so the witness of every change is itself changeless. As it is said, 'of a thousand changes in the intellect I am the witness, therefore changeless'; changeability, not counting, is the mark of the field.

  divergence: Madhusūdana (his 13.7) gives the most precise definitions here and makes sukha a window onto the supreme self's bliss. His decisive move is to read 'sa-vikāram' as the criterion of the field itself, change from birth to death, and to use it against Lokāyata, Buddhist and Nyāya views of the self: the field is defined by changing, not by any list, and the witness is changeless.