Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 55: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  When the seeker casts off, entirely and from the root, every last desire (kāma) that has lodged itself in the mind — not merely suppresses them but uproots them through the dawning of paramārtha-darśana — and rests satisfied in the pratyag-ātman alone, needing nothing from without, that one is sthitaprajña: the knower in whom ātma-anātma-viveka-jā prajñā stands unmoved. Tuṣṭi here is not emotional contentment but the satiation that comes from tasting the nectar of ultimate reality itself, rendering all external gain superfluous (bāhya-lābha-nirapekṣa). Such a one is the true sannyāsī — ātmārāma, ātmakrīḍa — whose wisdom is no longer seeking because seeking has been dissolved by recognition.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  The apex of jñāna-niṣṭhā is reached when the mind, anchored exclusively in Bhagavān as the inner ātman (ātmany eva ātmanā — mānasā ātmaikāvalambana), derives from that anchorage a fullness (tuṣṭi) so complete that every subsidiary desire, being now seen as a distraction from that sole support, falls away without remainder. This is not renunciation through will-power but renunciation as natural consequence of sufficiency: when one rests in the inexhaustible Lord as one's own inner self, inferior satisfactions simply lose their pull. The sthitaprajña is thus first a jñānin who has completed the arc of bhakti-preparatory yoga — the next verse will describe states still approaching this summit.

• Madhvadvaita

  Ātmā here is Paramātmā — Hari himself — not the jīva, for the jīva is eternally dependent and cannot be the source of its own tuṣṭi (paramātmanā tad-prasādāt eva tuṣṭiḥ). The sthitaprajña casts off desires primarily (prāyaḥ sarvān) — even realized devotees like Śuka retain one desire, namely bhakti for Kṛṣṇa's feet — because the jñānin who truly sees Hari's supremacy finds all other desires simply annulled by that vision (rasaḥ param dṛṣṭvā nivartate 2.59). Those whose desires persist are not genuine jñānins; their adherence to desires is evidence of being overpowered (abhhibhūtam), not a sign of adhikāra.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  The verse announces the very svarūpa — the essential nature — of one who lives in Kṛṣṇa's grace: this is not a practice of casting off but a description of what blossoms naturally in the vessel that has received prasāda. In Puṣṭi-mārga the abandonment of kāmān is not an effortful renunciation but the spontaneous withdrawal of desire-energy when Kṛṣṇa's own ānanda floods the devotee's inner being; the devotee becomes tuṣṭa in the ātman because that ātman is itself a mode of Kṛṣṇa's svarūpa, which is sat-cit-ānanda undivided. The question 'how does one achieve this?' is thus the wrong question — one receives it, and the receiving is the dissolution.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  What Kṛṣṇa here calls the lakṣaṇa of the siddha — the mark of one who has arrived — is at the same time the sādhana of the sādhaka who is still on the way: the inner qualities are identical, only the mode of their presence differs. The muni abandons the kāmān lodged in the mind (manaḥ-sthitān kāmān) because he has become ātmārāma, one who rejoices in the self alone, the self understood as paramānanda-rūpa — of the nature of supreme bliss. Śrīdhara's reading is that tuṣṭi is the cause of the abandonment, not its result: because the sādhaka has tasted the ānanda of the ātman, even petty sense-desires (kṣudra-viṣaya-abhilāṣāḥ) become tasteless and fall away on their own.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Kāmān here must be understood with full Yoga-technical precision: they are mano-vṛtti-viśeṣāḥ — specific modifications of the mind-stream — elaborated in Patañjali's system into the five categories of pramāṇa, viparyaya, vikalpa, nidrā, and smṛti, all of which must be relinquished without remainder (niravaseṣān) through kāraṇa-bādha, the removal of their root-cause. The state being described is samādhi-stha: all mental modifications have subsided. Tuṣṭi in the ātman is the positive dimension of this — ātmā as paramānanda-rūpa, self-luminous consciousness (svaprakāśa-cid-rūpa) that does not require an intermediating vṛtti to shine; this is confirmed by the Kaṭha-śruti: when all desires of the heart are released, the mortal becomes immortal and attains Brahman here itself. Thus for Madhusūdana the sthitaprajña is simultaneously the advaitin's jīvanmukta and the bhakta's devotee absorbed in Kṛṣṇa's cit-prakāśa.