Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 5: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Arjuna, still bound by the confusion that treats the body-mind complex as the self, sees only two evils: either kill the venerable teachers and enjoy blood-drenched pleasures, or live a mendicant's life. Both alternatives are framed within the cage of ahaṅkāra (ego-sense), the root delusion Śaṅkara will later diagnose at 2.11 as the source of all śoka (grief) and moha (delusion). The man of discriminating intellect recognises that guru-murder for the sake of rājya (kingdom) binds the jīva more deeply to saṃsāra (the cycle of becoming), while begging, though degrading to the proud warrior, at least does not multiply the chains of pāpa (demerit). The verse is Arjuna's pre-jñāna articulation of a genuine ethical impasse — not yet wisdom, but an honest recognition that desire-driven action poisons every fruit it touches.

  divergence: Śaṅkara's silence on verses 2.1–2.9 is itself a teaching: these verses record the depth of Arjuna's avidyā (nescience) before the ācārya's instruction begins at 2.11; the Advaita reading derives from Śaṅkara's framing of moha and ahaṅkāra established in that opening commentary.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads Arjuna's words as speech soaked in snēha (personal affection) and kāruṇya (compassion), overlaid with confusion about dharma and adharma — the very triple entanglement the Bhagavān will untangle. Arjuna asks: how can I, having received upadeśa (instruction) and hospitality from Droṇa and Bhīṣma, now seat myself where they sat and enjoy the bhōgān (pleasures) they had been enjoying, those same pleasures now drenched in their blood? For the Viśiṣṭādvaita ācārya, this verse reveals that Arjuna has correctly intuited the horror of desire-driven action — the only problem is that he has stopped at intuition without surrendering the outcome to Bhagavān. True kainkarya (service) to the Lord would dissolve both the craving for kingdom and the paralysis of grief, leaving action as pure śēṣa-vṛtti (the mode of being wholly instrumental to Viṣṇu's will).

  divergence: Rāmānuja: 'snēhakāruṇyadharmādharma-bhayākulaḥ' — Arjuna's confused speech emerges from this four-fold agitation; the bhāṣya underscores that Arjuna cannot yet perceive what is truly hita (beneficial) because Bhagavān's śāsana (command) has not yet been received and understood.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva begins his bhāṣya only at 2.11, but the Dvaita metaphysic is already at work in Arjuna's words: the jīva (individual soul), eternally distinct from and dependent upon Hari, cannot resolve the problem of guru-killing through any autonomous moral calculus. Arjuna's anguish — better begging than blood-smeared pleasures — is genuine piety misdirected: he acknowledges that no artha (wealth or kingdom) can compensate for the destruction of those through whom Hari's grace once flowed. Yet his error is to think the choice is his to make; the Dvaita answer, to come in Kṛṣṇa's own voice, is that the jīva acts rightly only when wholly surrendered to Hari's ordination, not when it independently weighs two evils against each other.

  divergence: Madhva's commentary does not cover this verse; the Dvaita rendering is anchored in the eternal jīva-Brahman distinction and the principle that volitional moral paralysis is itself a form of svātantrya (false independence) that Dvaita systematically negates.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's bhāṣya names this verse's core move precisely: killing the mahānubhāvān (great-souled) gurus violates both lōka (the worldly order) and vēda (scriptural injunction) simultaneously. To live as a sannyāsī on begging-food is better — a concession that Arjuna frames as a question but which functions, Vallabha indicates, as a kāku (ironic inversion): the very absurdity of the Pāṇḍava prince reduced to begging underlines how monstrous the alternative is. For the Puṣṭi-mārga, the verse is a negative revelation of Kṛṣṇa's līlā (divine play): the warriors' attachment to artha has so entangled them that Arjuna must stand at this precipice precisely so that Kṛṣṇa's prasāda (grace beyond merit) can interrupt all human calculation. Blood-smeared pleasures are not merely ethically repugnant — they are the anti-image of the ananda (bliss) that only Kṛṣṇa's svarūpa (own form) can bestow.

  divergence: Vallabha: 'guro'r-ādihananam lōkavēdaviruddham' — the double violation (worldly and scriptural); and the kāku (ironic register) in 'bhunjīya' signals that what sounds like Arjuna's solution is actually the demonstration of its own impossibility.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara holds the ethical and the soteriological in careful balance: killing Droṇa and the others is paralokaviruddha (contrary to the next world), so even begging-food in this world is the superior path. But the verse's deeper sting lies in what the gurus themselves confess — Śrīdhara cites Bhīṣma's own admission to Yudhiṣṭhira that artha has enslaved him: 'I am the servant of wealth; wealth is no one's servant.' The gurus who stand on the other side have not fallen beyond veneration; rather, their artha-tṛṣṇā (thirst for wealth) has made them unable to withdraw from the war despite their own better knowledge. Śrīdhara thus reads the verse as a meditation on how social bondage (being bound to the Kauravas by artha) corrupts the guru-śiṣya relationship without dissolving it — which is precisely why Arjuna's revulsion is both morally sound and spiritually incomplete.

  divergence: Śrīdhara cites Bhīṣma's Mahābhārata confession directly: 'arthasya puruṣo dāso dāsas tv artho na kasyacit' — the very gurus Arjuna hesitates to kill have themselves acknowledged that artha has compromised their freedom.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana addresses a pointed objection: one might argue that Bhīṣma and Droṇa, by siding with adharma (injustice) and betraying their śiṣya (disciple) Arjuna, have forfeited their gurutva (status as teachers) and that a smṛti injunction even permits abandoning a morally errant guru. Arjuna implicitly rejects this escape by calling them mahānubhāvān — great-souled ones of extraordinary tejas (spiritual luminosity), whose accumulated tapas (austerity) places them above ordinary moral stain, just as fire is not defiled by what it consumes. Yet even granting their greatness, Madhusūdana is unsparing: killing them yields only blood-smeared bhōgān (sense-enjoyments) in this world and suffering in the next — never dharma, never mokṣa (liberation). The verse maps the double trap: deny their gurutva and you still get only kingdom; honour their gurutva and you cannot kill them. Only the grace of Kṛṣṇa's jñāna can dissolve the trap from outside it.

  divergence: Madhusūdana: 'mahānubhāvān' as those whose tejas places them beyond the small-pāpa of artha-lobha (greed); yet 'rudhirapradigdhān bhōgān' are still all that guru-slaughter yields — the binary of worldly gain versus liberation is real, and killing resolves neither pole.