Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 18, Verse 35: Krishna to Arjuna — Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  That resolve (dhrti) by which a person of corrupt intellect (durmedhas) perpetually maintains — as if it were obligatory — sleep (svapna, i.e., nidra), terror (bhaya), grief (shoka), despondency (vishada), and intoxication (mada, the self-aggrandizing delusion born of sense-indulgence), never releasing any of them: that resolve is declared tamasic. Shankara specifies mada as vishayaseva — the mind wedded to sense-objects, treating their pursuit as duty rather than recognizing the duty to renounce. Such corrupted retentiveness (dhrti) inverts the function of buddhi and binds the jiva to samsara instead of preparing it for viveka and jnana.

  divergence: Shankara: ‘mado vishayasevam atmanah bahumanyamanah matta iva madam eva ca manasi nityameva kartavyarupataya kurvan na vimuncati' — mada glossed as sense-service held as eternal duty.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  That resolve (dhrti) which holds fast — through the activities of mind (manas), vital breath (prana), and senses — to sleep (svapna) and arrogance (mada) born of sense-experience, and which likewise sustains the activities oriented toward fear-producing and grief-producing objects: such resolve, driving the inner instruments toward bondage-objects rather than toward Bhagavan's kainkarya (service), is tamasic. Ramanuja emphasizes that the wrong objects of retention are the problem: mind and prana are not themselves tainted, but when their activity (kriya) is held firm in the direction of bhaya-shoka-vishaya (objects causing fear, grief, depression), dhrti becomes an instrument of samsara rather than of bhakti-yoga.

  divergence: Ramanuja: ‘bhayashokavishadashakshab cha bhayashokadidayivishayanparah tatsadhanabhuta cha manah-pranadi-kriya yaya dharayate sa dhrtis tamasic' — dhrti here as the holding-firm of inner activity toward bondage-objects.

• Madhvadvaita

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

  Dhṛti (resolve) of the tāmasī (darkened) kind holds fast to svapna (sleep, torpor), bhaya (fear), śoka (grief), viṣāda (dejection), and mada (intoxicated pride) — and does not relinquish them. The one so bound is durmedhā (corrupt-minded): the intelligence that cannot discriminate between svatantra (the independently real, self-sufficient) Hari and the paratantra (eternally dependent) jīva remains fastened to these tāmasic states as though they were its rightful possession. Where sāttvikī dhṛti orients the jīva toward Hari through bhakti (devotion) and clear acknowledgment of bheda (real distinction), tāmasī dhṛti inverts this: it is the jīva‘s refusal of its own paratantra nature, expressed as torpor, fear, grief, and pride. Mada is named last and most sharply — the swelling of self-regard that is the direct inversion of ontological subordination to the svatantra Lord. The pañca-bheda (the five-fold real distinction: Lord–jīva, Lord–matter, jīva–jīva, jīva–matter, matter–matter) remains what it is; tāmasī dhṛti neither dissolves nor transcends it, but produces a durmedhā who is bound within taratamya (graded ontological hierarchy) at its lowest register.

  divergence: Bucket changed from B to C: both Madhva and Jayatīrtha are silent on this śloka. The reading is voiced directly from dvaita siddhānta off the mūla.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's reading is terse and structural: the tamasic dhrti is that which ‘does not release svapna and the rest' (svapnadin na vimuncati), and equally the mental-vital-sense activity (manah-prana-indriya-kriya) directed toward those states that it does not release. In the pushti-marga reading, this dhrti is the opposite of seva-nishtha — the firm devotion to Krishna's prasada. Where sattvic dhrti holds the mind in Krishnarpanam (offering to Krishna), tamasic dhrti holds it in the dark triad of torpor, fear-grief, and self-intoxication: the prakriti-bound soul mistaking its own heaviness for stability.

  divergence: Vallabha: ‘svapnadin na vimuncati tan prati prayukta manah-prana-indriyakriya va na vimuncati' — the retention is both of the states and of the inner-instrument activity perpetuating them.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara opens with the formula ‘tamasi dhrtim aha' — ‘he now states tamasic resolve' — marking this as the closing term of a trifold classification. The key gloss is durmedhas: ‘he whose intelligence is corrupt and laden with aviveka (non-discrimination).’ Such a person does not release (na vimuncati) svapna and the rest — he revolves them again and again (punahpunar avartayati). The bhakti inflection: aviveka is itself the root deformity, and the bhakta's prayaschitta (remedy) is the very nama-smarana and satsanga that introduces viveka, dissolving the tamasic grip on states that the durmedhas mistakes for his own nature.

  divergence: Sridhara: ‘dushta avivekabahulataya medhaye yasya sa durmedhah purushah yaya dhrtya svapnadin na vimuncati punahpunar avartayati' — aviveka-burdened intelligence as root of tamasic retention.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudhana provides the most analytically precise glosses of the panel: svapna = nidra (sleep); bhaya = trasa (terror); shoka = ishtaviyoganimitta samtapa (the burning pain caused by separation from the beloved); vishada = indriyavasada (the collapse of the senses into lassitude); mada = ashastriya-vishayasevonmukhata (the orientation toward sense-objects not sanctioned by shastra). Tamasic dhrti does not merely fail to release these — it holds them perpetually as kartavya (obligatory), treating inertia and delusion as duty. The advaita-bhakti synthesis: even Krishnaprema cannot be received by a mind whose durmedhas-dhrti has made tamas its chosen abode; viveka-vairagya must crack open the tamasic shell before bhakti can penetrate.

  divergence: Madhusudhana: ‘yaya na vimuncatyeva kintu sadaiva kartavyataya manyate durmedha vivekasamamartha dhrtih sa... tamasi' — tamasic dhrti characterized as treating tamas as eternal duty.