Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 71: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga
Whoever gives up all desires and moves through the world free of craving, possessiveness, and ego attains peace.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
The saṃnyāsī (renunciant) who has abandoned all kāmāḥ (desires) without remainder and moves through the world with only the bare residue of bodily life is niḥspṛhaḥ (one from whom longing has departed) even with respect to that bare survival, and bears no abhinivelśa (clinging) of 'this is mine' toward even the minimal objects required to sustain the body. Such a one, free of self-aggrandisement rooted in scholarship or attainment, is the sthitaprajña (one of steady wisdom) described throughout this passage. He attains the śāntiḥ (peace) characterized as the cessation of all saṃsāra-duḥkha (suffering of conditioned existence), which Śaṅkara names nirvāṇa — and this is no other than becoming brahma-bhūtaḥ (constituted as Brahman) itself.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
The kāmāḥ here are the viṣayāḥ (sense-objects) — śabda (sound) and the rest — that are 'desired' precisely because they are other than the ātman; the puruṣa who relinquishes these entirely and moves about niḥspṛhaḥ (without craving) and ममता-रहित (without possessiveness) in them has simultaneously shed the false deha-ātma-abhimāna (identification of self with body). Having thus recovered clear vision of his own ātman as a mode (prakāra) within Bhagavān, he attains śāntiḥ — not a personal extinction but the full flowering of kainkarya (loving service) in which the jīva rests undisturbed in its proper relationship to Īśvara.
- Madhvadvaita
Madhva's terse gloss makes the logic sequential and causal: the puruṣa who abandons the viṣayāḥ (objects) through nisspṛhatā (the state of being without grasping) and acts without the twin faults of ahaṃkāra (I-maker) and mamakāra (mine-maker) is declared the real puruṣa — the genuinely conscious individual whose dependence on Hari alone is unobstructed. Only such a one attains mukti (liberation), which for Madhva is never merger but is the eternal, blissful service of Viṣṇu by a numerically distinct jīva who has been granted that grace.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
Vallabha accents the qualifier prākṛtān: it is the prākṛta-kāmāḥ (desires born of māyā's overlay) that are renounced, not the ānanda (bliss) that is Kṛṣṇa's own svarūpa-śakti (essential power) flowing through the jīva. The one who has become svātmārāma (delighting in its own true self, which is nothing other than a spark of Kṛṣṇa's ānanda-svarūpa) is naturally niḥspṛhaḥ toward the prākṛta and naturally nirahāṃkṛta (devoid of false ego) — and in that very naturalness, being svarūpa-sthaḥ (established in its own true form), is kṛtārthaḥ (purpose-fulfilled). The śāntiḥ it attains is Kṛṣṇa's own peace.
- Śrīdharabhakti
Śrīdhara sets the verse on a pragmatic and interior axis: the one who has relinquished prāpta-kāmāḥ (desires already obtained) by treating them as upekṣya (worthy of indifference), who is niḥspṛhaḥ toward the aprāpta (not-yet-obtained), and who moves through life antarṙṙṙdṛṣṭiḥ (with gaze turned inward) — experiencing prārabdha-karman (matured past karma) and going wherever karma leads without possessiveness — is the one who attains śāntiḥ. The inner gaze (antardṛṣṭi) is the operative mechanism: one who consumes experience without being consumed is neither augmenting vāsanā (subliminal impressions) nor generating new karma.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Madhusūdana constructs an exhaustive three-fold taxonomy of kāmāḥ to be abandoned: the bāhya (outer — house, field, and the like), the āntara (inner — the daydream-kingdoms of manaorājya), and the vāsanāmātra (trace-impression form, a mere fragrance of desire the renunciant barely grazes in passing, 'like the touch of grass underfoot on a road'). The sthitaprajña who has shed all three is nirahāṃkāraḥ in both its senses — free of the crude body-identification (aham-idaṃ) and free of subtle self-congratulation grounded in scholarship or spiritual attainment. Such a one attains the śāntiḥ that is the cessation of avidyā (nescience) and its entire product-world — a peace that is simultaneously jñāna-bala (the force of knowledge) and the fourth answer to Arjuna's question about the sthitaprajña.