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

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  *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

  *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.