Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 4, Verse 27: Krishna to Arjuna — Jñāna-Karma-Sannyāsa-Yoga
Others pour all the acts of the senses and vital breath into the fire of self-restraint, a fire lit by knowledge.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
Others offer all the acts of the senses (indriya-karmāṇi) and the acts of the vital breath (prāṇa-karmāṇi) — contraction, expansion, and the rest — into the fire of ātma-saṃyama-yoga (self-restraint-as-yoga), kindled bright by discriminative understanding (viveka-vijñāna). The oblation is not outward action but inward dissolution: to cast these operations into the flame is to extinguish them, leaving only the witnessing Ātman. Where the lamp is fed by discernment rather than by oil, the light is the realization that no agent ever acted.
divergence: Śaṅkara uniquely emphasizes extinction (pralāpa) rather than redirection; the fire consumes the very sense-apparatus.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
Still others, through concentrated mental restraint (manaḥ-saṃyama), offer all indriya-karmāṇi and prāṇa-karmāṇi into that yoga-fire. The effort here is not annihilation but rectification — arresting the outward propulsion (pravṛtti) of the senses and breath so that mind, purified, may orient entirely toward Bhagavān. Every sense-act surrendered is an act of kainkarya (service).
divergence: Rāmānuja substitutes 'manaḥ-saṃyama' for Śaṅkara's broader 'ātma-saṃyama', locating restraint firmly in mind as Bhagavān's instrument, not in impersonal Ātman-realization.
- Madhvadvaita
These yogins pour their sensory and vital activities into the fire that is the means called ātma-saṃyama (ātma-saṃyamākhyopāya-āgni). The jīva, eternally distinct from and dependent on Hari, cannot dissolve itself — it can only surrender its instruments. The restraint is an act of devoted subordination: the jīva binds its senses and vital forces in homage to Viṣṇu, who alone is the independent agent.
divergence: Madhva's bhāṣya is compressed to a single compound. The doctrinal stress falls on upāya (means toward Hari), not on jñāna-illumination or devotional service as in the other schools. Rendering extrapolates from his consistent jīva-Brahman distinction.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
Those who are established in dhyāna offer into the yoga-fire kindled by jñāna — specifically the knowledge of the object of meditation (dhyeya-viṣayaka-jñāna). Vallabha places this practitioner in the middle rank of the three types of yajña-performers described in these verses. For the Puṣṭi-mārgin, even this meditative knowledge is ultimately Kṛṣṇa's own prasāda (grace-gift); the practitioner offers back what was never truly theirs.
divergence: Vallabha's threefold ranking is absent from other commentators; he reads this verse as the middle-tier yajña, bracketed by lesser and higher practitioners.
- Śrīdharabhakti
The dhyāna-niṣṭhas (those grounded in meditation) offer into the yoga-fire all the acts of the five jñānendriya (hearing, seeing, and so on), all the acts of the five karmendriya (speaking, grasping, and so on), and all ten operations of the ten prāṇas — from the outward flow of prāṇa to the upward thrust of udāna, to the functions of the five secondary prāṇas (nāga, kūrma, kṛkara, devadatta, dhanañjaya). The fire is one-pointed meditative absorption (dhyāna-ekāgrya), and it is kindled by thorough knowledge of the object of meditation.
divergence: Only Śrīdhara enumerates the five subsidiary prāṇas (nāga through dhanañjaya) and gives a physio-technical account of the oblation.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
After describing the laya-pūrvaka samādhi (Pātañjala, absorption through dissolution), Madhusūdana here presents the superior bādha-pūrvaka samādhi — absorption through sublation (bādhana), which is seedless (nirbīja) and admits no re-emergence. All seventeen constituents of the sūkṣma-śarīra (five jñānendriya, five karmendriya, five prāṇas, manas, buddhi) are offered into the fire of ātma-saṃyama-yoga, when that fire is super-illumined by Vedānta-mahāvākya-jñāna — the direct realization of brahma-ātma-aikyatā (Brahman-Ātman identity). This oblation is final: once ignorance is sublated, neither the collective subtle body nor its cause can re-arise.
divergence: Only Madhusūdana maps the verse onto the Pātañjala samādhi taxonomy and reads 'sarvāṇi' as referring to the full 17-fold sūkṣma-śarīra, not merely the gross sense-acts.