Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 15: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The one whom these contacts of the senses do not disturb — that dhīra (steadfast one), equal in sorrow and joy, stands in the unbroken vision of the nitya-ātman (eternal Self). Because he sees the Self as changeless, the oscillations of heat and cold find no purchase on him; they cannot dislodge him from nityātmasvarūpadarśana (abiding in the nature of the eternal Self). He alone is fit for amṛtatva (immortality) — which is mokṣa, nothing other, and nothing less.

  divergence: Śaṅkara glosses dhīra as dhīmān (one of stable intellect) and reads amṛtatvāya kalpate as samartho bhavati — becomes competent — for liberation, making steadiness the qualification, not the reward itself.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads the dhīra not as a jñānin isolated from action but as the karma-yogin who performs varṇocita-karma (duty appropriate to one's station) — here, war — without nursing the fruit, treating even the harsh strokes of weapons as if they were benign. Such a person, bearing unavoidable pain as though it were joy, genuinely wins amṛtatva (immortality); the one who flinches from duḥkha (suffering) does not. The verse thus confirms that karma performed as kainkarya (service to Bhagavān) without phala-abhisandhi (attachment to result) is the direct sādhana (means) for liberation.

  divergence: Rāmānuja specifies śastrapātādi-mṛdukrūrasparśa — the mild and fierce touches of falling weapons — as the real referent of mātrāsparśa here, grounding the universal teaching in Arjuna's battlefield situation.

• Madhvadvaita

  For Madhva, the puruṣa (individual jīva) is characterized precisely by his being puriśaya — the one who dwells within the body. Yet the mātrāsparśa (sensory contacts) affect the body; they cannot, by that very fact, truly assail the jīva who is ontologically distinct from the body. The quality of sama-duḥkha-sukhatva (equanimity in pain and pleasure) is therefore not a psychological achievement alone but a recognition of the jīva's inherent non-identity with the body's modifications. Equanimity flows from correct ontology, not from willpower.

  divergence: Madhva's commentary inserts the polemical gloss: śarīrasambandha-abhāve sarveṣāṃ vyathābhāvāt — because when the body-connection is absent there is no disturbance for anyone — making equanimity a corollary of the jīva's essential separateness from matter.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha renders the verse with compressed rapture: sahana (endurance) itself is the single gateway to amṛtatva (immortality). Where Śaṅkara elaborates a cognitive path and Rāmānuja a volitional one, Vallabha sees the endurance of dvandva (the pairs of opposites) as direct prasāda (grace) made active in the devotee — every touch of heat or cold is a brushstroke in Kṛṣṇa's līlā (divine play), borne by the one who is kṣama (capable, fit). The person who endures without agitation does not merely prepare for amṛtatva; he becomes a vessel already overflowing with it.

  divergence: Vallabha's terse comment — na vyathayanti dhīraṃ so'mṛtatvāya kṣamo bhavati — strips the verse to its spine: endurance directly produces fitness for immortality, with no intermediate doctrinal apparatus named.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara situates this verse within the practical path of dharma and jñāna (knowledge) acting together: the mātrāsparśa (sensory contacts) do not overthrow the one whose sorrow and joy are balanced, and it is through that unshaken quality — not through counter-effort to remove the contacts — that he becomes fit for mokṣa (liberation). Trying to neutralise the contacts is futile; bearing them with equanimity is both the means and a sign of readiness. The devotional register insists that this equanimity is itself a form of surrender, not merely a Stoic discipline.

  divergence: Śrīdhara frames the verse as a refutation of the impulse to counter-effort: tatpratīkāra-prayatnād api tatsahanam eva ucitam mahāphalattvāt — 'even over the effort to ward them off, bearing them is more fitting because of the great fruit.'

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana mounts a full philosophical defence of the puruṣa's immunity before arriving at the devotional conclusion: ātman is svaprakāśa (self-luminous), and as the witness-illuminator of all antaḥkaraṇa (inner instrument) modifications — including sukha and duḥkha — it can no more be stained by them than the sun is stained by the defects of the eye it illumines. The dhīra is dhī-sākṣin (the witness of the intellect), not the intellect's subject. From this Advaita-grounded immunity, Madhusūdana draws the bhakti consequence: one who has tasted this svaprakāśa-paramānanda (self-luminous supreme bliss) of ātman is kalpate for amṛtatva, in the full sense of brahman-ātman-aikatva-jñāna (knowledge of the identity of brahman and ātman).

  divergence: Madhusūdana invokes the śruti 'sūryo yathā sarvalokasya cakṣur na lipyate cākṣuṣair bāhyadoṣaiḥ' — the sun as illuminator is not tainted by external faults of vision — as the precise analogical warrant for why the ātman cannot be a locus of genuine bondage.