Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 57: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The muni (sage) who is anabhisneha (without attachment) everywhere — toward body, life, and all that belongs to them — neither exults upon encountering the śubha (auspicious) nor recoils upon encountering the aśubha (inauspicious): these twin movements of harṣa (elation) and viṣāda (depression) have been extinguished by viveka (discriminative insight). Because no outward event can agitate the understanding of one whose snehā (viscous love-attachment) toward the not-Self has been dissolved, his prajñā (wisdom) is pratiṣṭhitā (firmly established) — not as a yogic attainment but as the natural remainder when the superimposition of ahaṅkāra (ego-sense) is seen through. This verse names the epistemic signature of jñāna, not a vow to be undertaken.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  One who dwells in udāsīnatā (equanimous non-grasping) toward the beloved — remaining untouched by the saṃśleṣa (union) and viśleṣa (separation) that constitute the śubha and aśubha of relational life — has graduated beyond ordinary householder consciousness to the threshold of bhakti-yoga. This udāsīnatā is not coldness: it is the inner spaciousness that arises when the jīva (individual soul) re-orients its fundamental snehā (love) from finite objects toward Bhagavān alone, who is the antaryāmin (inner controller) of all. The sthitaprajña (one of steady wisdom) thus described is not a renunciant but the bhakta who has learned to love Īśvara through and beyond all worldly loves.

• Madhvadvaita

  The jīva (individual soul), eternally distinct from and dependent upon Hari, accumulates prārabdha (already-ripened) karma that delivers śubha (pleasant results) and aśubha (painful results) without the soul's choosing; the wise devotee therefore neither exults at favorable outcomes nor hates unfavorable ones, recognizing both as Hari's sovereign dispensation and not as products of the jīva's own agency. This anabhisneha (non-attachment) is grounded in a clear metaphysical boundary: since the jīva never owns outcomes in the first place — they belong entirely to the Lord's paratantra (sovereign ordering) — any abhinandin (exultation) would be a false appropriation, and any dveṣa (aversion) an impious resistance. Pratiṣṭhitā prajñā (established wisdom) is thus the cognitive marker of a soul that has correctly understood its own āśrita (dependent) status before Hari.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Iha (in this life) and amutra (in the hereafter) the puṣṭi-bhakta who has tasted Kṛṣṇa's prasāda (grace-gift) naturally loses vairāgya (disgust-renunciation) toward the world, because the world itself is the scene of Kṛṣṇa's līlā (divine play) — yet this very satiation means he neither abhiṣaṅga (clings) to pleasant experiences nor rāga-dveṣa (thirsts or bristles) toward unpleasant ones, since both are Kṛṣṇa's direct expression. Vallabha reads the verse as the silence of one whose speech has been emptied of rāga-dveṣa-vacana (the language of craving and aversion): na bhāṣate — he simply does not speak in those registers any longer. His prajñā (wisdom) is settled not because he has conquered passion but because Kṛṣṇa's anugraha (grace) has displaced the very appetite for conquest.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara reads anabhisneha (absence of attachment) as extending even to one's putrādi (sons and other intimates) — the deepest affective ties — so that when anukulā (favorable) outcomes arrive the sthitaprajña neither praises (na praśaṃsati) nor commends them, and when pratikūlā (adverse) outcomes arrive he neither blames (na nindati) them; he remains kevalam udāsīna (purely equanimous) in speech and bearing alike. The key gloss is bādhitānuvṛtti — the persistence of a habit after its cause has been removed: the sage does not actively suppress emotion, the very root has been dissolved, so the reactions no longer arise. Thus his prajñā pratiṣṭhitā (wisdom that has found its seat) is not a discipline but the natural idiom of one from whom snehā (attachment-love) has been emptied.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana distinguishes two directions of snehā (attachment): the tāmasa (inertia-bound) love that projects one's own loss and gain onto another person — the 'other-directed' love that makes a neighbor's success feel like one's own wound — and, by contrast, the universal love directed toward Paramātman (the Supreme Self), which is not only permitted but required: anātmasneha-abhāvasyā tadarthatvāt (the absence of attachment to the not-Self exists precisely for the sake of that attachment to the Self). The abhinandin (exultation at the pleasant) and dveṣa (aversion to the unpleasant) he identifies as tāmasa bhraṃtirūpa dhīvṛtti (confused, inertia-born mental movements) that cannot coexist with the śuddhasatva (pure-luminous) condition of pratiṣṭhitā prajñā. Thus anabhisneha is not general emotional flatness but the precise evacuation of non-Brahman attachment that leaves the heart free to rest wholly in Kṛṣṇa — a jñāna-bhakti integration visible nowhere else in the bhāṣya tradition.