Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 47: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Your standing (adhikāra) is in action alone — not in the establishment in knowledge (jñāna-niṣṭhā) — and even while performing that action, the craving for its fruits (karma-phala-tṛṣṇā) must never arise, in any state whatsoever. When thirst for result moves you, you become the very cause of birth and bondage; so do not make yourself the generator of fruit (karma-phala-hetu). And lest you conclude that fruitless action is pointless suffering to be abandoned, Śaṅkara forestalls the error: do not let attachment (saṅga) to non-doing take hold of you either.

  divergence: Śaṅkara distinguishes karma-adhikāra from jñāna-niṣṭhā at the outset — action is the instrument of purification for those not yet qualified for direct inquiry into the ātman, and fruit-craving is the mechanism by which action generates further birth rather than liberation.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  For the mumukṣu (liberation-seeker) who stands in perpetual sattva, the sole sphere of right engagement is action in its naked form — nitya (daily), naimittika (occasional), and kāmya (desiderative) alike — stripped of the specific fruits with which scripture presents them, for fruit-bound action breeds bondage while fruit-free action is kainkarya (service) to the Lord and the very means to mokṣa. Rāmānuja adds: even while acting, the practitioner must hold in view that he is not the doer — the instrumentality of the fruits too (hunger-relief, and so on) belongs to the guṇas or to the Lord, as will be made explicit later. The reluctance expressed as 'I will not fight' is precisely the inaction-attachment against which the fourth quarter of the verse warns.

  divergence: Rāmānuja grounds niṣkāma-karma explicitly in bhakti-yoga preparation: fruit-free action addressed to the Lord is mōkṣa-hetu; fruit-hungry action is bandha-rūpa. The verse is thus not merely ethical counsel but a soteriological re-description of the entire range of Vedic injunctions.

• Madhvadvaita

  Even a jñānī has no warrant for fruit-desiring action — how much less ordinary men. This does not mean that the Vedic passages enjoining desire-motivated rites (kāmī yajeta) are void; Madhva reads them as inducements to participation (rōcanārtha), not as endorsements of desire-as-motive — the Bhāgavata itself confirms: 'fruit-mention is like making medicine palatable.' The fruits arise or fail through Hari's independent will, not through the jīva's effort; since the jīva is fundamentally asvatantra (non-independent), making oneself the cause of one's own fruit is a categorical error about one's ontological status. Do not cling to non-action either — for desireless action done as worship of Bhagavān carries its own fruit, namely Lord's prasāda, which no other act can procure.

  divergence: Madhva's gloss turns on the absolute distinction between jīva and Īśvara: the jīva's adhikāra is real but dependent, fruit-causality belongs to Hari alone, and the injunction against inaction is grounded in the danger of prātyavāya (omission-sin) rather than in any fruit-expectation.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  After Kṛṣṇa has shown that his word stands beyond the flood of Vedic injunctions (vēdōdanvati), Arjuna asks: what, then, is worth taking up (upādēya)? The answer is: action itself — action alone — is what is to be received; and yet that action's fruits must never at any moment become the province of the ego's claiming. Vallabha's commentary is strikingly compressed and imperative: perform; never possess the result; do not set fruit as the cause-motive of doing; and do not let attachment creep into the forbidden domain (niṣiddha) or other's duty (para-dharma) under the guise of avoiding action.

  divergence: Vallabha treats the verse structurally as Kṛṣṇa's direct answer to what is upādēya after Vedic 'flood-crossing' — the verse establishes karma-only as the receiver's domain, excluding both fruit-hunger and the subtler pull toward inaction or the alien path.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  To the implicit question — 'surely all fruits will come through worship of Parameśvara, so why continue karmic effort at all?' — Śrīdhara answers with the verse as a corrective: you who seek tattva-jñāna have standing only in the action, not in the fruits that bind. If you object that fruit automatically follows action as satiation follows eating, the verse counters: do not be one whose motive-force is the fruit — for only a desired, consciously willed fruit (kāmita-phala) becomes a constituent of the bondage-relation; an unclaimed fruit, by this logic, does not bind. Therefore, fearing bondage-through-fruit should not seduce you into the equal error of attachment to non-performance.

  divergence: Śrīdhara's key hermeneutic move is the distinction between kāmita (desired) and akāmita (unclaimed) fruit: only willed fruit generates bandha, which is why niṣkāma-karma does not produce the dreaded result — a technical point that removes the anxious 'why act at all' objection.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  To those whose inner instrument (antaḥkaraṇa) is still impure and therefore unfit for the arising of genuine knowledge (tāttviaka-jñāna), action as purifier-of-mind is what is prescribed — not Vedānta-sentence inquiry, which requires a purified locus. While performing such action, the sense 'I am the one to enjoy this fruit' must never arise at any stage — before, during, or after. The mechanism of bondage is desire-tinted doing: one who acts through fruit-craving becomes the generator (utpādaka) of that fruit; but action offered to Bhagavān with surrender (bhagavad-arpaṇa-buddhi) without desire does not function as fruit-cause at all, as the tradition confirms. And lest the student think desireless action is pointless effort, Madhusūdana closes the loop: do not let affection for non-doing arise — for the unpurified sādhaka is not yet qualified to sit in jñāna-niṣṭhā, and abandoning action prematurely only prolongs the condition it was meant to cure.

  divergence: Madhusūdana's synthesis positions karma-yoga as the antaḥkaraṇa-śodhaka bridge between the impure-instrument stage and jñāna-niṣṭhā proper; bhagavad-arpaṇa-buddhi is what neutralizes the fruit-generating mechanism — thus weaving Advaita's inner logic with the devotional offering that Śrī-bhakti traditions foreground.