Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 56: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  One whose mind is not agitated (anudvigna-manas) amid the three classes of sorrow — adhyātmika, adhibhautika, adhidaivika — because the very root of disturbance, namely avidyā-born identification with the body-mind, has been severed by discriminative knowledge: he alone deserves the name sthita-prajña. Similarly, where sorrow cannot disturb, pleasure cannot kindle fresh craving; like a fire that is never fed more fuel, the sthita-prajña neither lusts after present delights nor burns toward future ones. Because rāga, bhaya, and krodha are all modifications of the agitated citta arising from false superimposition (adhyāsa), their dissolution is not a moral achievement but a natural consequence of jñāna — and the muni who rests in that jñāna is so called.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  When the causes of sorrow — priya-viśleṣa (separation from the beloved) and apriya-āgamana (arrival of the unwished-for) — are present, the muni's mind remains anudvigna because he recognises that the jīva-ātman, as a mode (prakāra) of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, is never truly severed from its foundation in the Lord. Rāga, which Rāmānuja defines as spṛhā directed toward what is not yet obtained, and bhaya and krodha, which arise from the anticipation or obstruction of such craving, all belong to the man who takes himself as isolated; the muni who meditates on ātman as śeṣa (remainder belonging entirely to Bhagavān) finds these passions have no foothold. He is therefore stalled sthita-dhī — steadied not by suppression but by the constant vision of the Lord as inner ruler (antaryāmin).

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva explains that this verse and the two following form a triad that articulates the upāyas (means) of jñāna, as confirmed by the āgama: 'jijñāsubhiḥ sādhyaṃ jñānināṃ yat tu lakṣaṇam.' Rāga is glossed by Madhva as śobhanādhyāsa — the false superimposition of beauty or worth upon an object — and it is the taproot from which bhaya and krodha branch out; the tad-rahita muni has recognised Hari as the sole locus of all genuine śobhana, and therefore no creaturely object can sustain the superimposition. The jīva, eternally distinct from and dependent upon Bhagavān Viṣṇu, achieves sthita-dhī not by merging into Brahman but by resting in dependent clarity (svatantra-paratantra-viveka), knowing its own complete contingency.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha opens with the observation that the qualities enumerated here are the natural (svābhāvika), interior (antaṅga) sādhanas of the genuine sādhaka — not manufactured disciplines but gifts that arise organically when Kṛṣṇa's prasāda flows inward. Because the pushti-mārga devotee understands every sorrow and every joy as the Lord's līlā-parīkṣā — a testing through his own grace — the mind neither recoils from duḥkha nor clutches at sukha; both are touches of Kṛṣṇa's hand. The sthita-dhī described here is therefore not a yogic achievement won by effort but the prasāda-siddha stillness that descends upon one whom Śrī Kṛṣṇa has chosen to hold.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara's clean commentary identifies three pairs: mind unagitated (anudvigna) amid arrived sorrows; longing dissolved (vigata-spṛhā) amid arrived pleasures; and rāga, bhaya, krodha all departed — noting that rāga here means prīti, affective attachment, the most interior of the three passions. Because the muni's equanimity has its basis in detachment (rāga-bhaya-krodha-viyoga) rather than in the absence of circumstance, no external arrival of sorrow or sweetness can alter the inner disposition. Śrīdhara thus marks this verse as the devotionally inflected portrait of the stitha-prajña: one whose inner landscape has been cleared by the triple departure of attachment, fear, and anger, so that Bhagavān's presence alone fills the space.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana, in his characteristic synthesis, distinguishes with unusual precision between the prārabdha-karmaja experience of raw duḥkha — which even the sthita-prajña may undergo as residual bodily fact — and the secondary, ignorance-born mental reaction (bhramarūpa udvegarūpa tāmasa-citta-vṛtti) which the sthita-prajña does not undergo, because its causal avidyā has been destroyed. The same analytic applies to sukha: prārabdha may bring pleasure, but the second-order reaction — the vain longing that more pleasure will last, the self-congratulatory swelling (utphullatā) — is absent, for its root has been burned. Rāga (śobhanādhyāsa-nibandhanā), bhaya (dainya-ātmaka-citta-vṛtti), and krodha (abhijvalana-ātmaka-citta-vṛtti) are all characterised as viparīta-rūpa — forms of inversion — and their dissolution in the jñānin is simultaneously a bhakti-realisation: once the screen of viparīta is gone, what remains is the unobstructed Kṛṣṇa-bhakti that Madhusūdana regards as the highest fruit.