Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 5, Verse 23: Krishna to Arjuna — Karma-Sannyāsa-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Whoever, while still alive and prior to the body's dissolution, can endure the surge arising from desire (kāma) and anger (krodhа) — that person alone is the yogi, the one truly at ease. Śaṅkara stresses that this surge (vega) carries unmistakable bodily signs: flushed eyes and trembling limbs mark anger's force, while horripilation and bright glances betray desire's upwelling. The warning runs until death itself, for the causes of kāma and krodhа are inexhaustible, so no reprieve is possible short of the body's final release.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Even within the span of sādhana practice, before the body is relinquished, one who is capable of arresting the surge of kāma and krodhа through the joy of ātmā-anubhava (self-experience) is declared fit (yukta) for that very realization. Rāmānuja frames this restraint not as cold suppression but as the natural outgrowth of tasting the ātmā's bliss; desire and anger simply cannot compete with that inner sweetness. The fullness of that bliss ripens after bodily release, but its qualifying taste must be cultivated here.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva reads the verse in the frame of praising renunciation (tad-parityāga-praśaṃsā): who is able to endure the surge of kāma and krodhа in this human body succeeds precisely here, where the arena of battle is most testing. The implication is sharp — higher planes such as Brahmaloka are attained only by those who have already conquered desire; the human embodiment is therefore the irreplaceable forge. The jīva's eternal distinction from Hari is assumed throughout: bearing this surge is an act of dependent striving within Hari's dispensation, not an autonomous feat.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  For the yogi whose singular puruṣārtha (life-aim) is mokṣa understood as participation in Kṛṣṇa's ānanda, the only route is bearing all opposition without abandoning the means of liberation. Vallabha insists: if one tolerates the vega of kāma and krodhа yet does not forsake the sādhanā, that alone marks the yukta who will taste brahma-ānanda; otherwise, the release that comes after the body's fall is mechanical, involving no human exertion (puruṣakāra) at all. He seals the point with Vasiṣṭha's verse: just as a body without breath feels neither pleasure nor pain, so one who achieves that equanimity while alive dwells at the threshold of kaivalya.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Mokṣa is the supreme puruṣārtha, and its greatest antagonist is precisely the vega born of kāma and krodhа — the agitation visible in the disturbance of mind, eye, and limb. Whoever can restrain that surge, not for a fleeting moment but right up to the body's fall, that person alone is the liberated one, the composed one, the one truly joyful. Śrīdhara adds a vivid counter-image: a corpse is unmoved even when lamented by weeping women or burned by grieving sons; the true yogi achieves that same imperviousness while still breathing.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana mounts the most elaborate analysis: kāma is the habituated longing for agreeable objects seen, heard, or remembered; krodhа is the blazing aversion to disagreeable ones; their vega is the moment when that intensity, grown river-flood-strong, sweeps even the unwilling person into the pit of sense-objects and carries them downward into great naraka (hell-states). Only the dhīra — the resolute one, firm as a great fish holding against the current — who through the vairāgya born of seeing the faults of sense-objects can make that vega fruitless before it spills outward into action, is genuinely human (nara) in the full puruṣārtha sense; all others remain animals wearing a human form.