Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 7: Arjuna to Krishna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Reconstructed from the advaita school's doctrine, not translated from Śaṅkara's commentary at this verse.

  Kārpaṇya (the existential poverty of one who has not known the ātman) has seized my svabhāva — the natural disposition fit for action — and made it inoperative. Dharma-saṃmūḍha-cetāḥ: the cetas (inner organ of discernment) is confounded precisely because avidyā (the primal non-recognition of the ātman) makes transient bodily relations appear as the ground of obligation. The one who has not realized brahman — yo vā etad akṣaraṃ avidvān asmāl lokāt praiti sa kṛpaṇaḥ — grieves over what was never truly lost; his grief is not incidental weakness but the direct symptom of adhyāsa (superimposition of the not-self on the self). So I put my question: tell me what is niścitaṃ śreyaḥ — not conditional benefit like svarga, which depends on ritual cause and fades when the cause is exhausted, but the unconditional, the final good, niḥśreyasa. I stand before you as śiṣya; the guru-śiṣya relation is itself the prescribed door by which jñāna is transmitted. Tvāṃ prapannam: I have taken refuge in you — not merely as a counselor in battle, but as the one who can remove the root doṣa, the kārpaṇya born of ātma-ajñāna (non-knowledge of the self).

  divergence: The contaminated cell retained the school's reading but carried meta-narration (‘Śaṅkara does not comment directly') as part of the rendering itself, and soft-pedaled Ānandagiri's gloss that dharma here names paraṃ brahma — the supreme that ‘holds' all — making dharma-saṃmūḍha a direct index of brahma-ajñāna, not merely ethical confusion. The distinction between ānaikaāntika (non-certain, e.g. disease-removal) and ātyantika (unconditional, final) śreyas — drawn explicitly in the sub-commentary — is now folded into the reading of niścitaṃ śreyaḥ.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Having considered every angle — that even if the Dhārtarāṣṭras slaughter us mid-battle, their killing of ignorant men would be preferable to a victory stained by adharma — I see no clear path through my own reasoning. What I need is not my own weighing of pros and cons but the word of Bhagavān himself. I have surrendered at the lotus feet of the Lord; I am your disciple (śiṣya); declare to me with certainty what is my śreyas.

  divergence: Rāmānuja's commentary reads: having said that being slain by the Dhārtarāṣṭras who do not know dharma-adharma is better than sinful victory, Arjuna approaches Bhagavān's lotus feet as an utterly surrendered suppliant — atimātrakṛpaṇa — and asks for the certain śreyas.

• Madhvadvaita

  Reconstructed from the dvaita school's doctrine, not translated from Madhva's commentary at this verse.

  Kārpaṇya (miserly weakness, the fault of one who withholds what belongs to another) has seized my svabhāva (essential nature), and my mind is dharma-saṃmūḍha (utterly bewildered about duty). I ask you: declare with certainty what is śreyas (the supreme good) for me. I am your śiṣya (disciple); I am prapanna — surrendered to you. Command me. The kārpaṇya here is no surface grief. The jīva is paratantra (eternally dependent), and Arjuna's warrior-svabhāva belongs to Hari by constitution; to withhold that nature from Hari's service is the precise fault the term names. Dharma-saṃmūḍha-cetāḥ registers the condition of a paratantra consciousness that has substituted its own calculation for the will of svatantra Hari, the sole independent real. No jīva resolves such bewilderment by introspection alone, since the jīva‘s knowledge is itself dependent and finite. The single remedy is to place oneself under Kṛṣṇa's direct instruction — śādhi māṃ tvāṃ prapannam, “teach me, who am surrendered to you.” Prapatti here is not a preparatory posture but the jīva‘s acknowledgment of its own paratantra ontological status: Arjuna names what he always already is. The appeal to niścitam (what is certain, unambiguous) reflects Dvaita's insistence that Hari's word alone yields genuine niścaya (certitude), because pañca-bheda (the five-fold real distinction) between Lord, jīva, and matter is not dissolved by the disciple's longing — it is the ground on which the teaching stands.

  divergence: The contaminated cell imported meta-narration (‘Madhva does not comment… but his school insists') and replaced the mūla-grounded reading with consultant summary prose. The repair voices the Dvaita siddhānta directly: kārpaṇya as ontological misappropriation of Hari-gifted svabhāva, prapatti as the jīva‘s recognition of its paratantra status rather than a technique, and niścitam as the certitude only svatantra Hari can supply.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  The question asked across these three verses is plain: I am overwhelmed, I cannot see, I surrender. What the verse announces is not a philosophical puzzle but a devotional event — Kṛṣṇa is being invited to speak, and in that invitation the whole Gītā is born. Arjuna's kārpaṇya is the occasion of Bhagavān's prasāda; his helplessness is the opening through which the Lord's grace will pour.

  divergence: Vallabha's note is terse — ‘spasṭārtha' (self-evident meaning) covering 2.6–2.8 as a single question unit — signalling that the doctrinal weight lies in the event of surrender, not in analysis of the verse's terms.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  My natural warrior disposition — the courage and resolve proper to a kṣatriya — has been struck down by two blows simultaneously: kārpaṇya, the grief of anticipated bereavement, and the fault of being the one who would destroy his own lineage. Now I cannot even determine whether abandoning this battle and begging alms is dharma or adharma for a man of my station. Tell me what is certainly śreyas for me; I am your disciple, fit to be instructed; teach me who has come to you as a surrendered refugee.

  divergence: Śrīdhara glosses kārpaṇya as grief, the fault as svakula-kṣaya (lineage destruction), and svabhāva as śaurya-ādi-lakṣaṇa (the warrior characteristics of courage etc.) — all three collapsed together. The dharma-confusion is explicit: even bhikṣāṭana (mendicancy) is uncertain for a kṣatriya.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  The verse enacts the moment of proper gurūpasadana — the qualified seeker approaching the teacher — and Arjuna has just become qualified. Kārpaṇya is not mere emotional grief: as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad declares, whoever departs this world without knowing the imperishable is a kṛpaṇa; Arjuna's attachment to bodies he mistakes for ‘mine' is exactly this poverty of ātma-knowledge. The śreyas he seeks must be aikāntika (unfailingly accomplished) and ātyantika (permanently established) — not the contingent reward of svarga which, like a cured illness that recurs, can be lost again. I am your śiṣya; instruct me, Kṛṣṇa, not as a friend who might ignore my confusion, but as a teacher bound by compassion to teach.

  divergence: Madhusūdana cites BṛU directly for the kṛpaṇa identification; distinguishes aikāntikatva (non-contingency of result) from ātyantika (permanence, drawn from Sāṃkhya-Kārikā); and reads the śiṣya-declaration as Arjuna's move from the sakhā relationship to the formal guru-disciple frame that alone qualifies for vidyā.