Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 59: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga
Objects withdraw when the senses are starved, but the taste for them stays behind. Even that taste departs only when one sees the Supreme.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
Even the man of harsh austerity — the mūrkha (fool) who merely starves his senses — finds that the objects withdraw; yet the rasa, the rāga (attachment) that draws him toward those objects, does not depart with them. Only the yati who abides as 'aham eva tat' (I alone am That), having directly apprehended param — the ultimate brahma-tattva — finds that rasa also ceases, leaving viṣaya-vijñāna completely nirbīja (seedless). Without samyag-darśana (correct vision of non-dual reality), uprooting rasa is impossible; therefore the entire purpose of this verse is to establish that sthairyam (steadiness) of the prajñā that is itself samyag-darśana must be cultivated with supreme resolve.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
The senses of one who has withdrawn them from viṣayas (sense-objects) — the nir-āhāra devotee whose indriya-s are fully pratyāhṛta — find that those very viṣayas cease to present themselves, yet rasa, the rāga toward viṣayas, does not thereby vanish. That rāga too departs only when the jīvātman has beheld param — the supreme Bhagavān who is the ātman's own antarātman — and recognised that direct experience of the svarūpa of the ātman is sukhatara (far more blissful) than anything sense-objects can yield. Here param means Bhagavān himself perceived as the ātman's own true nature and ultimate shelter, not a featureless absolute.
- Madhvadvaita
This verse refutes any easy equation of non-attachment with the mere incapacity to consume objects: the nirbhoga-state (inability to enjoy, due to fasting or illness) removes the gross viṣaya-bhoga-sāmarthya (capacity for sense-enjoyment) but leaves the rasa — the akāṅkṣā (craving) intact, as the Bhāgavata (11.8.20) itself confirms: the tongue-sense alone goes on craving taste even when other indriya-s are stilled. That rasa ceases only through aparokṣa-jñāna — the direct, non-inferential realisation of Hari as the utterly distinct sovereign paramātman — because only encounter with infinite auspiciousness can extinguish craving for the finite.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
For the niṣkāma sādhaka whose indriya-s have been genuinely pratyāhṛta, the viṣayas do withdraw — yet the indriya of rasa (taste) is sarvabala-vattva (most powerful of all) and remains as an ākarṣaka (powerful attractor) that pulls even accomplished sādhakas. The rasa of that siddha whose dhī (intellect) has become sthira departs only when the mahānanda of paramātman — the supreme ānanda which is Kṛṣṇa's svarūpa-ānanda — has been directly anubhūta (tasted as immediate experience); by the niyama (law of consciousness) that no pravṛtti toward alpa-ānanda objects is possible before the mahānanda, the lesser craving simply cannot co-exist once Kṛṣṇa's own bliss floods the sādhaka. Prasāda from Kṛṣṇa himself, not mere yogic effort, is the operative mechanism.
- Śrīdharabhakti
The verse answers the doubt: can mere abstinence constitute sthita-prajñā-lakṣaṇa? No — because even the jaḍa (inert), the āturaḥ (sick), and the upavāsa-para (fasting ascetic) show withdrawal of viṣayas from the indriya-s, yet that withdrawal is rasa-varjam (minus the rāga-rūpa abhilāṣa, the underlying desire). This abhilāṣa — the rāga toward viṣayas — does not leave the ajñāna-bound man even when sense-contact is severed. For the sthita-prajña, however, having seen param — the paramātman — that very rāga nirvartate (extinguishes of itself, svataḥ), which is the definitively distinguishing mark. The bhakta's darśana of Bhagavān is thus the mechanism: not the willpower of fasting, but the vision that makes all lesser taste tasteless.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Even the rogī (sick person) or the kāṣṭha-tapasvin (harsh ascetic) achieves withdrawal of śabdādi viṣayas through nirahāra, yet the rasa — the tṛṣṇā (thirst), the deep substrate-level rāga — persists untouched; the ajñānī's viṣayas may withdraw but the rāga that is their root never does. The sthita-prajña, however, having directly sākṣātkṛta (realised face-to-face) param — the paramātman with the certainty 'tad evāham asmi' (I am that very one) — finds that even the kṣudra-sukha-rāga (craving for petty pleasures) ceases, and with it the viṣayas too. The 'api' (even) in raso 'pi indicates a fortiori: if even the subtler rāga ceases for this one, how much more obviously do the gross viṣayas? Therefore saragaviṣaya-nirvṛtti (cessation together with rāga) is the distinctive mark, and it requires samyag-darśana pursued with mahā-yatna — great sustained effort — which for Madhusūdana is simultaneously Advaitic jñāna and Kṛṣṇa-oriented bhakti.