Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 12, Verse 13: Krishna to Arjuna — Bhakti-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The bhakta who is dear to the Lord bears no hatred (dvesa) toward any being because he perceives all beings as the Self (atman) — to hate another is to hate oneself. Friendship (maitri) and compassion (karuna) arise naturally from this atma-darsana, not as moral duties imposed from without. Without the conceit of ‘mine' (nirmama) and ‘I' (nirahankara), pleasure and pain arrive equally and leave no residue; the knower simply abides unmoved, granting fearlessness to all — this is the mark of the samnyasi who sees brahman alone.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  The true bhakta understands that even those beings who harm or despise him do so under the Lord's impulsion proportionate to the bhakta's own past karma — recognizing this, he maintains maitri (loving regard) toward the very beings who wrong him, and karuna (compassion) toward their suffering. He is free of the notion ‘this body is mine' (nirmama) and of the delusion that the body is the self (nirahankara), so pleasure and pain from contact cause neither elation nor agitation; unshaken equanimity (sama-duhkha-sukha) is the fruit of seeing all circumstances as Bhagavan's dispensation. Such a devotee, whose mind and intellect are offered entirely to Vasudeva, worships through karmayoga with no eye on results, and is therefore dear to the Lord.

• Madhvadvaita

  Reconstructed from the dvaita school's doctrine, not translated from Madhva's commentary at this verse.

  Adveṣṭā sarva-bhūtānāṃ — the bhakta bears no hatred toward any being. This is not the dissolved impartiality of one who has ceased to distinguish; the pañca-bheda (the five-fold real distinction: Lord–jīva, Lord–matter, jīva–jīva, jīva–matter, matter–matter) stands unrevoked. Hatred is absent because each being is seen as sustained by Hari, the svatantra (independently real, self-sufficient) ground of all. Maitraḥ karuṇa eva ca — friendliness and compassion flow from recognition that every jīva (individual self) shares the condition of paratantra (eternally dependent) existence; none is self-sufficient, all lean on the same Lord. Nirmamo nirahaṃkāraḥ — freedom from ‘mine' and from the egoic claim of authorship follows directly: the paratantra jīva has nothing it can rightfully call its own, and no act it can rightfully call its doing, since Hari alone is the true kartā. Sama-duḥkha-sukhaḥ — equanimity across pain and pleasure is the jīva‘s natural posture when it rests in its proper station within the taratamya (graded ontological hierarchy), neither inflated by pleasure nor shattered by pain, because neither alters its ontological rank. Kṣamī — forbearance completes the portrait: the dependent self, knowing every event issues from the will of the svatantra Hari, finds no occasion for resentment. Together, these qualities are not moral accomplishments grafted onto an expanding self; they are expressions of the jīva‘s constitutive paratantrya, made luminous when bhakti (devotion) reorients the self toward its sovereign.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabhacarya opens: Bhagavan now declares in six slokas (beginning with ‘advesta') the thirty-two marks of the pushti-bhakta who is the object of His love, because the Lord's grace alone — uncaused (nirhetuka) — is the root-cause of the bhakta's approach. Non-hatred, friendliness, and compassion are not virtues the bhakta acquires; they are the spontaneous fragrance of Krsna's prasada already operative in him. The bhakta does not work to be nirmama or nirahankara — Krsna's own anugrahika grace has already dissolved those illusions, making the devotee a fitting vessel for the Lord's lila.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara Svami reads these eight slokas (beginning ‘advesta') as the qualities that swiftly (ksipram) produce the Lord's grace (paramesvara-prasada) for the devotee already described. Advesta toward all beings is glossed in three relational registers: toward superiors one is free of envy; toward equals one moves with friendly fellow-feeling (maitri); toward those in distress one extends compassion (karuna). Nirmama and nirahankara together remove the two great obstacles — possessiveness and body-identification — and from their removal equanimity in pain and pleasure (sama-duhkha-sukha) follows naturally; ksama (forbearance) is the stabilizing virtue that holds the whole disposition steady under provocation.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  The Lord, wishing to bring even the manda-adhikārin (one of middling qualification) to the akṣara-upāsanā that is the supreme fruit, praises in seven verses — beginning with adveṣṭā — those akṣara-upāsakas (worshippers of the Imperishable) who have attained abheda-darśana (vision of non-distinction) and are kṛtakṛtyāḥ (wholly accomplished): tān eva jñānaṃ dharmajātaṃ ca anusaraṇīyam — their knowledge and body of dharma are what Arjuna should follow upon reaching the requisite qualification. One who sees sarvāṇi bhūtāni ātmatvena (all beings as ātman) finds no ground for aversion even when those beings cause him pain — ātmano duḥkhahētāv api pratikūlabuddhyabhāvān na dveṣṭā sarva-bhūtānām. Maitrī is snigdhatā — the natural warmth that arises from that vision; karuṇā is duḥkhiteṣu dayā, active compassion for the afflicted, making the devotee sarva-bhūtābhaya-dātā, a source of fearlessness for all — he is, in the bhāṣya's own word, a paramahaṃsa-parivrājaka. Nirmamaḥ is one dehe ‘pi mameti pratyaya-rahitaḥ — free even of the sense ‘mine' toward his own body; nirahaṃkāraḥ is one vṛtta-svādhyāyādi-kṛtāhaṃkārān niṣkrāntaḥ, gone out beyond the pride built up by conduct and scriptural recitation. These two extinguish the twin impulses of dveṣa and rāga, leaving pleasure and pain same — balanced — and a will that does not retaliate: ākrośana-tāḍanādinā api na vikriyām āpadyate — not disturbed even by abuse or blows. That unshaken steadiness is kṣamā.