Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 3, Verse 28: Krishna to Arjuna — Karma-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The knower of truth — tattva-vit (तत्त्वविद्, knower of reality) — understands the precise division: guṇas (गुण, the sense-faculties as products of prakṛti) move among guṇas (their sense-objects), not the ātman. Śaṅkara insists karaṇātmakāḥ guṇāḥ — the instruments of action are guṇa-nature alone — while the Self remains utterly uninvolved (asaṅga). Therefore the wise one does not cling (na sajjate), never generating the false sense of doership that binds the ignorant.

  divergence: Drawn from Śaṅkara's phrase 'guṇāḥ karaṇātmakāḥ guṇeṣu viṣayātmakeṣu vartante na ātmā — the ātman is not the agent.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  The tattva-vit understands that sattva and the other guṇas, as modes of Bhagavān's body (prakṛti), operate within their own respective functions — sva-guṇeṣu sva-karmeṣu. Because the jīva, itself a mode of Īśvara, correctly sees 'I am not the independent kartā,' it does not grasp. Action performed from this understanding becomes niṣkāma-kainkarya (selfless service), the very ground of bhakti-yoga.

  divergence: Anchored in Rāmānuja: 'sattva-ādayaḥ sva-guṇeṣu sva-karmeṣu vartante iti matvā ahaṃ kartā iti na sajjate.'

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva reads guṇa here as indriyādi (the senses and their constituents) and their objects as viṣaya-guṇas — both eternally distinct from the jīva, who is itself permanently distinct from Hari. The tattva-vit grasps this precise distinction of karman-bheda and guṇa-bheda: actions belong to the instrument-nature Hari has deployed, never to the jīva as independent agent. Attachment would be a category error about who owns what in Hari's creation.

  divergence: Directly from Madhva: 'karma-bhedasya guṇa-bhedasya ca tattva-vit; guṇā indriyādīni guṇeṣu viṣayeṣu.'

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha situates 3.27–3.28 together to show the contrast between the ignorant and the wise actor. On the Puṣṭi reading, prakṛti itself is Kṛṣṇa's own śakti-vibhāga, and the guṇas carrying out actions are His līlā-instruments — prayojakam (the impeller) is always Puruṣottama. The wise one sees that indriya-guṇas move among viṣaya-guṇas like a lotus leaf on water — untouched at the root — and rests in that recognition as prasāda, not as personal detachment earned by will.

  divergence: Vallabha: 'indriya-niṣṭhā guṇā viṣaya-guṇeṣu vartante iti mananāt' — contemplation of this as Śruti-grounded (citing BU 1.4.3 on the primal split).

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara reads the verse as a two-fold viveka (discernment): 'I am not of the nature of guṇas' (guṇa-vibhāga) and 'actions are not mine' (karma-vibhāga). The tattva-vit is one who knows both separations together, and therefore does not produce the knot of kartṛtva-abhiniveśa (insistence on being the doer). The indriyāṇi (senses) engage viṣayas (objects) — that transaction belongs to the instrument-world, not to the witnessing ātman.

  divergence: Śrīdhara: 'nāhaṃ guṇātmaka iti guṇebhya ātmano vibhāgaḥ; na me karmāṇīti karmabhyo'py ātmano vibhāgaḥ; kartṛtvābhiniveśaṃ na karoti.'

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana identifies viśeṣa (distinction): tattva is yāthātmya — things as they actually are — and viśeṣa lies in the compound guṇa-karma-vibhāga, where vibhāga means the ātman's self-luminous (svaprakāśa) standing apart from all mutable, inert (jaḍa) guṇas and their actions. The ātman is bhāsaka (illuminator), guṇas and karmas are bhāsya (illuminated); the wise do not confuse the lamp with what it lights. The address 'Mahābāho' signals that Arjuna's own saumudrika-lakṣaṇa (auspicious marks of a noble person) make this confusion unworthy of him.

  divergence: Madhusūdana: 'bhāsya-bhāsakayoḥ jaḍa-caitanyayoḥ vikāri-nirvikārayos tattvaṃ yo vetti sa na sajjate — does not produce the kartṛtva-abhiniveśa that the tattva-ignorant do.'