Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 5, Verse 24: Krishna to Arjuna — Karma-Sannyāsa-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  One whose sukha (joy) resides wholly within the ātman, whose ārāma (delight) is the ātman alone, whose jyoti (luminosity) is the ātman's own self-revealing light — such a yogin, already brahma-bhūta (established as Brahman) while living, attains brahma-nirvāṇa here and now. Śaṅkara reads the triple qualification as converging on a single fact: the apparent seeker already is what is sought. The prefix 'antar-' (inner) in all three epithets signals that no outward object ever stood between the jīva and Brahman; the bondage was always purely the superimposition of extroversion.

  divergence: Śaṅkara's commentary explicit: antaḥ ātmani sukhaṃ yasya ... brahmaṇi nirvṛtiṃ mokṣam iha jīvann eva brahma-bhūtaḥ san adhigacchati — liberation is attained while alive, not posthumously.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Abandoning every external pleasure — viṣaya-sukha — entirely, the sādhaka whose ānanda (bliss) rests in ātma-anubhava (direct experience of the self-as-body-of-Bhagavān) and whose jñāna (knowledge) is ātma-eka-jñāna (knowledge of the self alone in its qualified reality) becomes brahma-bhūta and gains the brahma-nirvāṇa that Rāmānuja glosses as ātma-anubhava-sukham. The self that delights here is not featureless consciousness but the real individual, a śeṣa (dependent mode) of Nārāyaṇa, whose inner joy is participation in Bhagavān's own bliss-nature. Inwardness is not isolation but the most intimate proximity to the inner controller.

  divergence: Rāmānuja: bāhya-viṣayānubhavaṃ sarvaṃ vihāya antaḥ-sukhaḥ ātmānubhava-eka-sukhaḥ ... ātma-eka-jñānaḥ ... brahma-nirvāṇam ātmānubhava-sukhaṃ prāpnoti.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva distinguishes the joy of ordinary encounter — ārāma born of seeing another person — from the joy arising at the kāma-kṣaya (extinction of desire) that reveals the ātman's own svayam-jyotiṣṭva (self-luminosity). That inner light is not the jīva's own possession; it is the reflection of Mahāviṣṇu's svajyotiṣṭva, the Lord's own self-luminance shining through the purified jīva. Brahma-bhūtatva for Madhva is the state of being established in one's own dharma as a permanently distinct entity filled — but not fused — with Hari's light. The 'eva' in 'antar-jyotiḥ eva' marks the exclusive provenance of that light: it comes from inside because Bhagavān is inside.

  divergence: Madhva: svajyotiṣṭvān mahāviṣṇoḥ antar-jyotiḥ tat-sthitaḥ; and the Nāradīya citation on ārāma as kāma-kṣaya-udita sukham.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha frames this verse as a corrective: mere endurance of kāma-krodha (desire-anger) impulses does not itself deliver mokṣa — the yogin who gains brahma-nirvāṇa is the one in whose antaḥ-ātman (inner self) the sukha, ārāma, and jyotiḥ are already dwelling as Kṛṣṇa's own being. The jīvanmukta's liberation is precisely this: the saṃsāra dissolves for him inwardly while the world's prapañca (manifest display) remains — it is never negated, because prapañca is Kṛṣṇa's own lilā-prasāda (grace-play). Inner joy is not withdrawal but recognition of Kṛṣṇa as the ānanda already present at the root.

  divergence: Vallabha: na kevalaṃ kāma-krodha-vega-sahanamātreṇa mokṣa-prāptiḥ; tasya saṃsārasya layo mukṭau na prapañcasya karhicit — the world's display is never dissolved, only the bondage to it.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara reads the triad — inner sukha, inner ārāma (sport/play), inner jyotiḥ (vision/light) — as three degrees of interiority that together constitute brahma-sthiti (abiding in Brahman). Joy not in viṣayas (sense objects), delight not outside (na bahiḥ), vision not in gīta-nṛtya and the like — this threefold negation of the external is itself the definition of the brahma-nirvāṇa the verse promises. Śrīdhara holds the balance between jñāna and devotion: brahma-bhūta here is a lived position of brahma-laya (absorption in Brahman), not a merely philosophical proposition.

  divergence: Śrīdhara: antaḥ ātmany eva sukhaṃ yasya na viṣayeṣu; antaḥ eva jyotiḥ dṛṣṭiḥ yasya na gīta-nṛtyādiṣu; brahmaṇi bhūtaḥ sthitaḥ san brahmaṇi nirvāṇaṃ layam adhigacchati.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana offers the most analytically layered reading: antar-sukha refutes pleasure from all external objects (bāhya-viṣaya-janita-sukha-śūnya); antar-ārāma refutes even subtle sensory pleasures that arrive unbidden — moonrise, the scent of ketakī, cool Gaṅgā water — showing that even yādṛcchā (chance-arrived) sensory delight has been extinguished; antar-jyotiḥ then specifies the mechanism: in samādhi the sense organs produce no prātibhāsa (apparent impression) at all, and in vyutthāna (emergent waking) whatever appears is seen as mithyā (falsity), so no bāhya-viṣaya can generate sukha. The triple 'eva' marker governs all three epithets simultaneously. Brahma-nirvāṇa is glossed as the parama-ānanda of Brahman approached as nirvāṇa = upaśama of kalpita-dvaita (projected duality); and since the jīva was always brahma-bhūta, it is nityaprāptam eva prāpnoti — arriving at what was never absent.

  divergence: Madhusūdana: samādhikāle śabdādi-pratibhāsābhāvāt; vyutthānakāle mithyātva-niścayān na bāhya-viṣayais tasya sukhotpattiḥ; brahma-nirvāṇaṃ = kalpita-dvaita-upaśama-rūpatvena; nityaprāptam eva prāpnoti.