Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 14, Verse 10: Krishna to Arjuna — Guṇatraya-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  When sattva (clarity) suppresses both rajas (agitation) and tamas (inertia), it rises and initiates its own work — the arising of jñāna (discernment) and sukha (ease). When rajas suppresses both, it sets karma (effortful action) and tṛṣṇā (craving) in motion. When tamas suppresses both, it initiates jñāna-āvaraṇa (the veiling of knowledge) and its kindred effects. Śaṅkara reads the verse as a causal schedule: each guṇa has a sva-kārya (own-work) that it performs only once it has overpowered the other two — the guṇas do not co-produce their effects but succeed one another in dominance.

  divergence: lāgbdhātmakaṃ sattvaṃ sva-kāryaṃ jñāna-sukhādi ārabhate; rajaḥ karma-tṛṣṇādi; tamaḥ jñānāvaraṇādi — direct from Śaṅkara bhāṣya on 14.10

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  The three guṇas always inhere in the ātman bound to prakṛti (nature), but their relative ascendance is governed by prācīna-karma (prior accumulated action) and āhāra-vaiṣamya (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 wise seeker recognises which guṇa is ascendant only through its visible effects (kārya-upalabdhi), and uses that recognition to steer action toward kainkarya (service) of Bhagavān, gradually thinning the soil in which rajas and tamas take root.

  divergence: prācīna-karma-vaśād deha-āpyāyana-bhūta-āhāra-vaiṣamyāt ca paraspara-samudbhava-abhibhava-rūpeṇa vartante — Rāmānuja bhāṣya 14.10

• Madhvadvaita

  Sattva arises when it has overpowered *rajas* (the quality of passion) and *tamas* (the quality of inertia); rajas rises when it overpowers sattva and tamas; tamas rises when it overpowers sattva and rajas — so runs the mūla: *rajas tamaś cābhibhūya sattvaṃ bhavati bhārata | rajaḥ sattvaṃ tamaś caiva tamaḥ sattvaṃ rajas tathā*. No *guṇa* (quality of *prakṛti*) ascends by its own authority. The very verb *abhibhūya* — having overpowered — names a permission granted, not a self-sufficient act. *Prakṛti* and the *jīva* (the individual self) stand wholly within the *paratantra* (eternally dependent) order; their every modulation of guṇa-state is encompassed by *Hari*'s *svātantrya* (absolute independence). The *pañca-bheda* (the five-fold real distinction — Lord from *jīva*, Lord from matter, *jīva* from *jīva*, *jīva* from matter, matter from matter) holds at each moment of guṇa-succession: the rising of sattva no more collapses Lord into *jīva* than the sinking of sattva collapses matter into Lord. *Taratamya* (graded ontological hierarchy) persists through every turn of the cycle; Hari alone is *svatantra* (independently real, self-sufficient) across all three phases. The *jīva* bound in the *guṇa*-cycle finds no resting place within that cycle itself; *bhakti* (devotion as ontological subordination to Hari) is the one disposition that orients each guṇa-state — clarity, agitation, or dullness — toward its sovereign source rather than mistaking it for self-generated movement.

  divergence: Neither Madhva nor Jayatīrtha commented on this verse. The reading is voiced directly from *dvaita* *siddhānta* primitives — *svātantrya*-*paratantra* polarity, *pañca-bheda*, *taratamya* — applied to the guṇa-succession described in the mūla.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  By adṛṣṭa (the unseen karmic force) one pair of guṇas is overpowered and the third rises — this holds equally for all three rotations. Vallabha is terse here: the mechanism is adṛṣṭa, not independent guṇa-agency. In the Puṣṭi-mārga reading, adṛṣṭa is itself Kṛṣṇa's prasāda-śakti (grace-power) working through the substrate of prakṛti; the rising of sattva is therefore not a human achievement but an unsolicited gift of the Lord's play (līlā), received with gratitude rather than manufactured by will.

  divergence: guṇa-dvayam abhibhūya sattvaṃ bhavaty adṛṣṭa-vaśāt — Vallabha bhāṣya 14.10 (terse; adṛṣṭa gloss is primary)

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara names each guṇa's sva-kārya (own-work) with pedagogical precision: when sattva rises it draws the bound soul into sukha (ease) and jñāna (knowledge); when rajas rises it binds through tṛṣṇā (craving) and karma (compulsive action); when tamas rises it binds through pramāda (heedlessness) and ālasya (inertia). The devotee who sees these three arise in sequence, and who recognises each for what it binds, can use the window of sattva-ascendance — the brief clarity it brings — to turn toward Bhagavān before rajas or tamas reasserts dominance.

  divergence: sattvaṃ bhavaty adṛṣṭa-vaśād udbhavati; sva-kārye sukha-jñānādau saṃyojayati; rajaḥ tṛṣṇā-karmādau; tamaḥ pramāda-ālasyādau — Śrīdhara bhāṣya 14.10

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana specifies what the earlier commentators leave implicit: the two suppressed guṇas are overpowered yugapat (simultaneously), not sequentially, before the dominant guṇa initiates its sva-kārya (own-work). This simultaneous suppression matters because it blocks any partial admixture — the dominant guṇa operates in a cleared field. The bhakta meditating on Kṛṣṇa witnesses these shifts from a position of sākṣi-bhāva (witness-awareness): even in the moment of tamas-dominance, the witnessing awareness itself — Kṛṣṇa's own cit-śakti (consciousness-power) shining through the jīva — is untouched by the guṇa-rotation.

  divergence: rajas-tamaś ca yugapad ubhāv api guṇāv abhibhūya sattvaṃ bhavati udbhavati vardhate — Madhusūdana bhāṣya 14.10; yugapat is the distinctive gloss