Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 3, Verse 32: Krishna to Arjuna — Karma-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Those who, opposed to this teaching, calumniate it and refuse to follow my ordinance — know them as utterly bewildered in all knowledge (sarva-jñāna-vimūḍha, confused across every domain of knowing) and ruined (naṣṭa). Śaṅkara reads their confusion as total: they err not merely in ritual but in the very discrimination (viveka) that would enable jñāna-mārga. Their refusal to practice niṣkāma-karma (desireless action) as preparatory discipline forecloses the purification of mind on which liberation depends. They are without genuine cit (consciousness): their cetanā (awareness) is vitiated at the root, hence the compound acetas (without discernment).

  divergence: Śaṅkara: 'sarvajñānavimūḍhān — sarveṣu jñāneṣu vividhaṃ mūḍhāḥ'; acetas = avivekina, lacking the discrimination that is the threshold of jñāna. He then pivots to ask why they refuse — drawing the next verse in as a causal explanation.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Those who do not act with the understanding that all things are Bhagavān's body (śarīra), Bhagavān's support (ādhāra), and exist solely to serve him (śeṣabhūta, subsidiary to the Lord) — and who go further and disparage this teaching — are confused about the very nature of reality at every level (karman, ātman, Paramapuruṣa). Rāmānuja insists their failure is metaphysical, not merely behavioral: because they lack the settled conviction (niścaya) that agency itself belongs to the Paramapuruṣa and is channeled through prakṛti, their intellect (cetas) cannot function rightly and they are acetas in the precise sense. This confusion cascades: wrong ontology → wrong action → loss of both liberation and devotion.

  divergence: Rāmānuja: 'ātmavastuṃ mac-charīratayā mad-ādhāraṃ mac-cheṣabhūtaṃ mad-ekapravartyam iti me mataṃ na anutiṣṭhanti'; cetas-kāryaṃ hi vastu-yāthātmya-niścayaḥ — the intellect's proper function is fixing the truth of things; lacking that, acetas.

• Madhvadvaita

  Even those who have renounced outward action (nivṛtta-karmin) are liberated only through the door of aparokṣa-jñāna (direct, non-mediated vision of Hari) — no other means (sādhana) achieves liberation independently. Those who reject the Lord's instruction thus destroy the very instrument through which Hari grants aparokṣa-dṛṣṭi (direct sight); they remain caught in the cycle because Hari, the supreme independent agent, withholds the liberating vision from those who contest his ordinance. Madhva reads the verse jointly with 3.31: the contrast is between the faithful who follow and are freed through knowledge, and the nihilists who deny Hari's superintendence entirely.

  divergence: Madhva (on 3.31–32 jointly): 'nivṛttādīni karmāṇi hy aparokṣeśa-dṛṣṭaye / aparokṣeśa-dṛṣṭis tu muktau kiñcin na mārgati' — renunciate action leads to direct vision of the Lord; that vision itself needs nothing further for liberation. Rejectors foreclose this path.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  *Abhyasūyantaḥ* (those who cavil, who find fault) in Kṛṣṇa's *matam* (teaching, which is nothing other than his own *svarūpa*-disclosure) do not follow it — *nānutiṣṭhanti*. In *śuddhādvaita*, Kṛṣṇa's teaching is not an external injunction but an expression of his own pure being, *śuddha-brahman*, untouched by *māyā*. To malign it is to turn away from *ānanda* itself. Such turning away is not merely intellectual error; it is exclusion from *puṣṭi* (the Lord's own grace-flow), for *puṣṭi-mārga* holds that Kṛṣṇa's favour, not human striving, is what opens a *jīva* to *jñāna*. *Sarva-jñāna-vimūḍhāḥ* — bewildered across all knowledge — because the one who rejects Kṛṣṇa's *matam* loses the *cit*-light that Kṛṣṇa himself is. The world is Kṛṣṇa's real self-manifestation, not illusion; confusion about it is confusion about him. *Naṣṭāḥ acetasaḥ*: ruined, devoid of inner consciousness — *acetas* names the state of one in whom Kṛṣṇa's *ānanda*, the ground of all *cit*, has not been kindled. Vallabha's rubric — *vipakṣe doṣam āha ye tv iti* — marks the verse as stating the fault in the opposing case, the case of those to whom *puṣṭi* has not descended.

  divergence: Vallabha's bhāṣya offers only the rubric *vipakṣe doṣam āha ye tv iti*; the reading is developed from *śuddhādvaita* *siddhānta* anchored on that phrase and the *mūla*.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Those who hate (dviṣanta, bearing ill-will toward) the teaching that all action is to be done for Īśvara (īśvara-arthaṃ karma kartavyam) and refuse to follow it — know them as devoid of viveka (discernment), bewildered in all action and in the brahma-viṣaya (the domain of brahman), and therefore lost. Śrīdhara's framing is characteristically devotional-practical: refusal to perform action for the Lord is not merely intellectual error but an act of hostility (dviṣanta) that inverts the bhakti-relationship and destroys the practitioner's discriminative faculty across the entire field of jñāna.

  divergence: Śrīdhara: 'me matam īśvarārthaṃ karma kartavyam ity anuśāsanam abhyasūyanto dviṣanto nānutiṣṭhanti tān acetaso viveka-śūnyān ataeva sarvajñāna-vimūḍhān naṣṭān viddhi.'

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  The particle 'tu' (but) in the verse signals not mere contrast but the presence of āstickyā-abhāva (absence of faith, atheism) — Madhusūdana reads the resisters as those whose intellect is actively corrupted (duṣṭa-citta) rather than merely uninformed. This corruption spreads: they are bewildered (vimūḍha) in relation to karma, to saguṇa-brahman, and to nirguṇa-brahman alike — bewildered in every mode of knowing (pramāṇataḥ, prameya-taḥ, prayojana-taḥ: in means, in object, and in purpose). They are therefore fallen from all puruṣārtha (the fourfold human ends) — not merely from mokṣa but from every good. This synthesis of Advaita's epistemic rigor with bhakti's insistence on śraddhā (faith) as prerequisite is Madhusūdana's signature move.

  divergence: Madhusūdana: 'ye nāstikyād aśraddadhānā abhyasūyanto doṣam udbhāvayantaḥ... tān acetaso duṣṭacittān ataeva sarvajñāna-vimūḍhān... pramāṇataḥ prameya-taḥ prayojana-taś ca mūḍhān sarvaprakāreṇa ayogyān naṣṭān sarvapuruṣārtha-bhraṣṭān viddhi.'