Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 3, Verse 19: Krishna to Arjuna — Karma-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Therefore, stripped of all attachment (asakta — free from saṅga), perform without ceasing the obligatory action (kārya karma — nitya-naimittika duty). Śaṅkara anchors this in sattva-śuddhi: the person who acts for Īśvara, not for fruit, purifies the inner organ, and that purification opens the gateway to jñāna, which alone delivers liberation (mokṣa). Niṣkāma-karma is thus not the destination but the indispensable purgative — asakti removes the dirt; jñāna removes the self that was dirty.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads 'asaṅga-pūrvakam' (attachment-preceded action) as practice sustained yāvad-ātma-prāpti — until the ātman itself is reached — meaning karma-yoga is complete self-disclosure, not mere purification. The practitioner simultaneously holds the non-doership insight (akartṛtva-anusandhāna) while performing every act as kainkarya to Bhagavān, so that karma and bhakti are a single motion; the 'param' obtained is the ātman realized through that very devotional agency.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva's terse gloss (asamprajñāta-samādhi alone removes the obligation to act; short of that, act) frames asakti as dependent surrender to Hari's sovereign will. The jīva is eternally distinct and categorically dependent (paratantra), so 'freedom from attachment' does not mean self-sufficiency but the cessation of the jīva's self-referential craving; action continues as worship (pūjā-rūpa karma) until asamprajñāta-samādhi supervenes and dissolves the very occasion of duty.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha opens by locating Arjuna outside the Sāṅkhya-jñāna track ('you are not a Sāṅkhya-knower') — his adhikāra (entitlement) is direct bhakti-action for Bhagavān, not renunciation. The 'param padam' obtained is Kṛṣṇa's own abode, reached because the prescribed nityа and naimittika acts become vehicles of bhagavat-kāmanā (desire directed wholly at the Lord); Vallabha explicitly resolves the apparent paradox of desire in detachment by redefining asakti as the removal of every kāma except the single kāma for Kṛṣṇa.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara reads this verse as a sharp boundary: karma-yoga's redundancy applies only to the jñānin (one already abiding in knowledge); for everyone else, nityа-naimittika duty performed without phala-saṅga (attachment to result) is compulsory. The route to liberation runs through citta-śuddhi (inner purification) and then jñāna — asakti is the operative discipline that keeps action from producing binding saṃskāras, so the path flows: asakta-karma → śuddhi → jñāna → mokṣa.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana synthesizes: because Arjuna is a mumukṣu (liberation-seeker) still under karmādhikāra, not yet a jñānin, the Śruti injunction 'tam etaṃ vedānuvacanena brāhmaṇā vivididiṣanti yajñena dānena tapasā' applies — prescribed action (nityа-naimittika karma) is itself the Śruti-ordained search for Brahman. Asakti plus Īśvara-orientation produces sattva-śuddhi, then jñāna-prāpti, then mokṣa; the 'sat-puruṣa' who succeeds is precisely the integrated aspirant who holds both the śāstra-injunction and the devotional orientation, no one else.