Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 19: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  As a lamp standing in a windless place does not flicker, so the antahkarana (inner instrument) of the yogin whose citta (mind-stuff) is completely restrained remains motionless in samadhi. Sankara specifies this is the mind engaged in atmanusthana (abiding in the Self) — the yogin is not merely calm but dissolved into one-pointed awareness, the simile marking the cessation of sarva-vrtti (all mental modifications). This steadiness is not quietude of temperament but the fruit of accumulated yogabhyasa (yogic practice) whereby the mind, stripped of all outward movement, rests in its own luminous ground.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Ramanuja reads the lamp as the atman itself — radiant and unflickering — once all manovrttiexcept atma-visaya (the mind-movement directed to the Self alone) is withdrawn. The yata-citta yogin whose entire inner life has been freed from sakala-itara-manovrthi (every other mental current) stands like the windless lamp: steady in luminosity, not merely still. For Ramanuja the point is not the extinction of the flame but its perfect, undimmed brightness — the atman shines with jnana-prabha (the radiance of knowledge) when protected from the wind of distraction.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva's compressed gloss — 'the yoga that has Bhagavan as its object belonging to the jiva' — makes explicit what the lamp simile is really pointing to: the yata-citta yogin achieves stillness not by turning inward to an impersonal Absolute but by fixing on Hari as the sole object. The flickering is the pull of anything other than Bhagavad-visaya (the field that is the Lord); the windless state is pure paratantra-bhakti (dependent devotion) in which the jiva, radically distinct from Brahman, burns steadily only because it is wholly subordinated to Him.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha identifies the lamp's stillness as the condition of citta established in the form of atma-aikyakara (the shape of identity-with-the-Self) — not merger into an abstract Absolute but the mind taking on the very form of Krsna-brahman. The 'windless place' (nirgate-vata desa) is the inner clearing produced by Pust-marga grace, where the distracting winds of worldly desire and svabhava (one's own habitual nature) have been removed not by the yogin's effort alone but by the prasada that creates the protected space. The flame's steadiness is therefore lila-given, not merely technique-achieved.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara glosses yata-citta as nitkampa-prakasaka (shining without trembling) and reads the verse as describing citta established in atma-aikakarata (singular unity with the Self). The lamp in the vata-sunya desa (wind-empty place) does not waver because no causal disturbance reaches it; similarly the yogin's citta, whose sole abhyasa (practice) has made the atman its exclusive object, holds steady and luminous. Sridhara's voice is philologically careful: he glosses both the steadiness and the radiance as co-equal properties — the lamp does not merely stop moving, it illumines without interruption.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudana situates the verse at the pivot between samprajnata-samadhi (samadhi with a cognitive object) and asamprajnata-samadhi (samadhi beyond all objects): the lamp simile applies precisely at the nirodha-bhumi (ground of cessation) where all citta-vrtti are arrested. He explicitly argues that reading atmanah as 'of the Self' rather than 'inner' is necessary to preserve the drstantika-labha (the gain pointed at by the analogy) — if citta were always atma-akara there would be nothing left for yoga to accomplish. The synthesis: Krsna-bhakti produces the sattvodreaka (rise of sattva) that makes this nirodha available, so the lamp's perfect stillness is simultaneously jnana and devotional fruition.