Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 18, Verse 31: Krishna to Arjuna — Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The buddhi (intellect) called rajasi is that by which one does not know dharma (scriptural injunction) and adharma (what is prohibited) correctly — not grasping them with full, decisive discernment (yathavat). Shankaracharya stresses that the rajasic buddhi sees both the prescribed and the forbidden, the doable and the undoable, but without the clear, unreserved judgment that right knowledge (viveka) demands. Without this precision, action binds — and liberation remains foreclosed, since jnana cannot arise from a buddhi that substitutes approximate understanding for exact discrimination.

  divergence: Shankara: 'na yathavat sarvatas nirnayena na prajanati' — does not know with complete, all-sided determination.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Ramanuja reads the verse as specifying the intellect that fails in its two-fold duty: grasping the two kinds of dharma — nishtha (steadfast observance appropriate to one's station) and its opposite — and discerning, within varying desa (place), kala (time), and avastha (circumstance), what is karyam (to be done) and akaryam (not to be done). The rajasic buddhi knows these categories but mis-applies them, confusing the relational contours of kainkarya (service-action) proper to a devotee. This confusion is not mere ignorance but a failure of the refined judgment (viveka) that bhakti-yoga requires as its preparatory ground.

  divergence: Ramanuja: 'deshakalavasthAdishu karyam ca akaryam ca yathavat na janati' — does not know rightly what is to be done across the varying contexts of place, time, and condition.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva's gloss is spare and diagnostic: rajasic buddhi is distinguished by its lack of consistent truth-tracking (yatharthatvaniyamabhava). The tamasic buddhi is worse — it simply cannot tell dharma from adharma at all; the rajasic buddhi oscillates, grasping the distinction sometimes but without the stable, Hari-grounded discernment that correct action requires. For Madhva, the jiva's utter dependence on Hari means that autonomous moral judgment untethered from divine grace will necessarily be unreliable — the rajasic intellect is precisely this: intermittently correct, but not yoked.

  divergence: Madhva: 'yatharthatvAniyamAbhAve rAjasyAh' — for the rajasic, the rule of truth-correspondence is absent.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha is concise: the rajasic buddhi perceives the two-fold dharma and its opposite but does not know them rightly (na yathavat). In the Pushti-marga reading, correct knowing is inseparable from Bhagavan's anugraha (grace-gift); a buddhi not saturated by Krishna's prasada will perceive dharma as an external obligation rather than as lila-expression. The rajasic practitioner labors under an unillumined intellect — capable enough to name the categories, incapable of living them as divine play. The remedy is not sharper reasoning but surrender to the flow of grace that alone perfects discernment.

  divergence: Vallabha: 'purvoktam dvividham dharmam tadviruddham ca prajanati na yathavat' — knows the two kinds of dharma and their opposite, but not rightly.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara marks the rajasic buddhi by the key word 'ayathavat' — which he glosses as 'sandehaspada' (subject to doubt, liable to fall into doubt). The rajasic intellect does not make a clean error; it places dharma and adharma, karyam and akaryam, into a zone of uncertainty. This ambiguity is the signature of rajas: not the blunt confusion of tamas, nor the clarity of sattva, but a persistent suspension of judgment that masquerades as open-mindedness. Sridhara's devotional frame implies that the cure is not argument but the settling that comes from bhakti's direct insight into the Lord's will.

  divergence: Sridhara: 'ayathavat sandehaspada-tvena' — the 'not rightly' of ayathavat means: standing in the domain of doubt.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudana offers the panel's most elaborate analysis: dharma is shastravidhita (enjoined by shastra), adharma is shastrapratishiddha (prohibited by shastra) — both operating in the unseen realm (adrishta); karyam and akaryam operate in the seen realm (drishta). The rajasic buddhi does not know any of these rightly; it either fails to reach determination (anadhyavasaya — non-conclusion) or falls into samshaya (doubt) — wavering between 'is this it?' and 'or is it not thus?' Madhusudana notes that the instrumental case (tritiya) in the verse signals buddhi as karana (instrument of action), not agent — a grammatical precision that points toward the Advaita frame: the real agent remains Brahman; the rajasic buddhi is a flawed instrument obscuring that truth.

  divergence: Madhusudana: 'kimsvididam ittham na veti canadhyavasayam samshayam va bhajate' — falls into either non-conclusion or doubt; and 'trtiyanidrdesad anyatrapikanatram vyakhyeyam' — the instrumental case signals instrument-nature throughout.