Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 13, Verse 8: Krishna to Arjuna — Kṣetra-Kṣetrajña-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Vairāgya (dispassion) is absence of attachment to sense-objects such as sound, and to enjoyments seen and unseen; anahaṃkāra is the absence of ahaṃkāra (ego). Doṣānudarśana is reflecting on the defect in each of birth, death, old age, disease and sorrow - the passage from the womb, the loss of intellect, strength and lustre in age - or else seeing that each of them is sorrow, not by its own nature but as a cause of sorrow. From that reflection dispassion toward bodily and sensory enjoyments arises, the organs turn toward the inner Self for its vision, and so, being a cause of knowledge, it is called knowledge.

  divergence: Śaṅkara offers two parses of duḥkha-doṣa (defect in each item, or sorrow-as-defect) and insists birth and the rest are sorrow only as causes of sorrow; the payoff is the turning of the organs to the pratyag-ātman (inner Self), which is why a mere attitude can be called jñāna.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Vairāgya toward sense-objects is recoil from objects other than the self, through contemplating their defectiveness. Anahaṃkāra is freedom from taking the non-self body as the self - said by way of example, so that freedom from taking what is not one's own as one's own is also intended. Doṣānudarśana is contemplating that, while one is embodied, the defect whose form is birth, death, old age, disease and sorrow is unavoidable.

  divergence: Rāmānuja reads anahaṃkāra as not mistaking the body (anātman) for the self, extended to 'mine'-ness over what is not one's own - not Madhusūdana's 'I am the greatest' pride; and he ties the defects specifically to the condition of being embodied (saśarīratva).

• Madhvadvaita

  For this verse Madhva offered no comment.

  divergence: ABSENT: the supplied text states explicitly that Śrī Madhvācārya did not comment on this verse. No Dvaita rendering is fabricated. Jayatīrtha's Prameyadīpikā is also silent on this verse.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  'Indriyārtheṣu' means: among sense-objects.

  divergence: THIN: Vallabha's supplied comment is a single word-gloss (indriyārtha = viṣaya). Nothing of the school's doctrine can be anchored here, so the rendering is kept to that gloss.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Further: doṣānudarśana means reflecting again and again on sorrow and defect in birth and the rest - or, alternatively, seeing the defect that has the form of sorrow. The rest is clear.

  divergence: Śrīdhara glosses only the compound, adding the 'again and again' (punaḥ punaḥ) of repeated reflection, and leaves vairāgya and anahaṃkāra as self-evident.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Vairāgya is a mental state opposed to rāga, of the nature of non-craving, toward sense-objects seen here or heard of in scripture; ahaṃkāra is the pride, arising in the mind even without spoken self-praise, that 'I am the most excellent of all', and its absence is anahaṃkāra. The 'eva' excludes non-connection and 'ca' means conjunction: the combined practice of all twenty, amānitva and the rest, is what is called knowledge, not with even one missing. Repeated reflection on the defect in birth, death's cutting of every vital point, old age's loss of strength and others' contempt, diseases like fever, sorrows born of losing the wanted and meeting the unwanted, and the loathsomeness of a body full of bile, phlegm and filth, serves the vision of the Self by causing dispassion toward objects.

  divergence: Madhusūdana distinguishes ahaṃkāra (inner pride without outward boasting) from the mānitva of the previous verse, uses 'eva' and 'ca' to argue all twenty means are required together, and adds the body's loathsomeness (kāya-jugupsā) to the defects - more ascetic in tone than Rāmānuja's embodiment-based reading.