Suppressing rajas and tamas, sattva rises. Suppressing sattva and tamas, rajas rises. Suppressing sattva and rajas, tamas rises. Each guna's rising is by overpowering the other two. The disciple sees the gunas as a three-way wrestling match: at any moment, one is on top because the other two are pinned.
Shankara reads precisely. When sattva suppresses both rajas and tamas, it rises and initiates its own work — the arising of jnana and sukha. When rajas suppresses both, it sets karma and trishna in motion. When tamas suppresses both, it initiates jnana-avarana — the veiling of knowledge — and its kindred effects. The rotation is continuous; no guna's dominance is permanent. The bhakta learns to read his current state by which work is being initiated.
Madhusudana specifies what the earlier commentators leave implicit: the two suppressed gunas are overpowered yugapat — simultaneously, not sequentially — before the dominant guna initiates its sva-karya. This simultaneous suppression matters because it blocks any partial admixture; the dominant guna operates in a cleared field. The bhakta meditating on Krishna witnesses the simultaneity: sattva does not suppress rajas first and then tamas, but both at once, the moment sattva rises.
Ramanuja reads with characteristic warmth: the three gunas always inhere in the atman bound to prakriti, but their relative ascendance is governed by prachina-karma — prior accumulated action — and ahara-vaishamya — inequality of food and circumstance. Through this karmic differential, they exist in mutual suppression and mutual arising — sometimes sattva overpowers the pair, sometimes rajas, sometimes tamas. The bhakta who watches this can choose the food and the circumstance that incline the scales toward sattva.
Madhva reads on the bheda-frame: sattva arises when it has overpowered rajas and tamas; rajas when it overpowers sattva and tamas; tamas when it overpowers sattva and rajas. No guna ascends by its own autonomous force; ascendance is the absence of suppression by the others. The mechanism is real: each guna is a real entity, the wrestling is a real wrestling, the dominance is a real dominance — none of this is illusion. Hari's grace alone releases.
Vallabha reads through pushti-marga: by adrishta — the unseen karmic force — one pair of gunas is overpowered and the third rises; this holds equally for all three rotations. The mechanism is adrishta, not independent guna-agency. In pushti-marga adrishta is itself Krishna's prasada-shakti working through the substrate of prakriti; the rising of sattva is therefore not a human achievement but a moment of Krishna's grace in the field.
Shridhara names each guna's sva-karya with pedagogical precision: when sattva rises it draws the bound soul into sukha and jnana; when rajas rises it binds through trishna and karma; when tamas rises it binds through pramada and alasya. The bhakta who sees these three arise in sequence, and recognizes which is operating, has the diagnostic the chapter has been preparing.