Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 18, Verse 8: Krishna to Arjuna — Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga
Whoever quits a duty just because it hurts, fearing the bodily strain, performs only rajasic renunciation and gains none of its fruit.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
One who abandons a prescribed duty (niyata-karma) merely because it is painful — fearing the bodily strain (kaya-klesha) it entails — performs only rajasic renunciation (rajasa-tyaga), a relinquishment driven by the quality of rajas, not by right understanding. Shankara is explicit: the fruit of genuine renunciation (tyaga-phala) is moksha, the liberation born of jnana-purva sarva-karma-tyaga — total abandonment of action preceded by knowledge. A renunciation born of aversion to discomfort is still a transaction with the body-mind complex and therefore cannot yield that fruit.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja reads the verse as a warning against a subtle error: the aspirant who, finding prescribed duties (mahayajna-adi ashrama-karma) burdensome in their acquisition of costly materials and physical effort, concludes that meditation on knowledge alone (jnana-abhyasa) is the better path, and so abandons those duties. This is rajasic renunciation because it rests on a distorted grasp of scripture (ayatha-avasthita-shastratha). The fruit of sattvic renunciation — the dawning of true knowledge (jnana-utpatti) — is never produced by rajasic abandonment, for it is the Lord's grace (Bhagavat-prasada), not mere mental relief, that purifies the mind.
- Madhvadvaita
*Duḥkhamityeva* — 'it is painful, therefore I abandon it': this is the rājasa *tyāga* (renunciation of the rajasic kind), and it yields no *tyāga-phala* whatsoever. The *jīva* (individual self), being *paratantra* (eternally dependent), holds no autonomous claim over the pain-pleasure calculus; prescribed action (*niyata-karma*) is *Hari-sevā*, service to *Hari* as the sole *svatantra* (independently real, self-sufficient) Lord, and the *jīva*'s bodily discomfort (*kāyakleśa*) is simply not a valid ground for its suspension. To abandon such action out of fear of *kāyakleśa* is to substitute the *jīva*'s own preference for the Lord's ordinance — a rajasic self-assertion that inverts the proper order of *bheda* (real distinction) between the dependent self and the Supreme. *Naiva tyāga-phalaṃ labhet*: the fruit of true renunciation — which, in Dvaita *siddhānta*, is liberation received as *Hari*'s *anugraha* (grace), never seized by mere avoidance — remains wholly out of reach for one who renounces in this mode. The *pañca-bheda* (the five-fold real distinction) stands: no conflation of the *jīva*'s discomfort with a genuine *Hari*-ordained ground of release can produce the *mokṣa* that only *Hari*'s will bestows.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
Vallabha, approaching the verse in passing (prasangat), identifies the rajasic renouncer as one who abandons even actions that are, in their deeper logic, means to liberation (parampara-moksha-sadhana), because their outer form — acquiring materials for yajna, enduring physical exertion — appears merely painful. This relinquishment is rajasic because rajas is its root cause (rajo-hetuka). Its fruit — the state of steady knowledge-abidance (jnana-nishtha) — is a product of sattva, not rajas; therefore the rajasic renouncer, having rejected the path, cannot arrive at its end. For Vallabha the implication is stark: the Pushti-marga devotee must not abandon Krishna's assigned seva even when it is effortful.
- Śrīdharabhakti
Sridhara Svami draws a precise conceptual boundary: rajasic renunciation arises when one abandons nityata-karma — not on the basis of the knowledge 'I am not the doer' (akartratma-bodha) — but simply from knowing it to be painful (duhkham iti) and fearing bodily strain (sharira-ayasa-bhaya). That absence of non-doer wisdom is the diagnostic. Because such renunciation is rooted in rajas (duhkhasya rajasatvat), the person who enacts it — the rajasic man — does not obtain tyaga-phala, here specified as the state of knowledge-abidance (jnana-nishtha-lakshana). The verse is thus less about what is abandoned and more about the inner quality from which abandonment arises.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Madhusudana Sarasvati adds a psychologically fine layer: even a person who is free from the delusion (moha) described in the previous verse may still lack inner purification (antahkarana-shuddhi) and therefore remain qualified only for karma. If such a person abandons prescribed daily action (nitya-karma) merely because it seems painful — not through the illusion of the previous verse but through aversion to effort — that too is rajasic renunciation (rajasa-tyaga). The reason: pain itself is a form of rajas (duhkham hi rajo). Therefore even the moha-free but impure person who renounces this way is rajasic and cannot attain the sattvic fruit of tyaga — the establishment in knowledge (jnana-nishtha-lakshana).