Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 22: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Having gained this — the ātman itself — one thinks no other gain surpasses it, for the ātman (self) is its own completeness and lacks nothing further. Established in this ātma-tattva (self-reality), the knower is not shaken even by heavy suffering such as a weapon-blow. Śaṅkara reads the verse as the culminating description of samādhi-yoga — the state named from verse 6.20 onward by successive qualifying marks, now capped by this double criterion: peerless gain and immovable stability.

  divergence: Śaṅkara subsumes the yogin's stability entirely into jñāna: the unmoveability is not emotional fortitude but the natural immobility of one who has already recognised the self as untouched — no effort, only recognition.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Having once tasted this yoga and then paused from it, the sādhaka (practitioner) longs for nothing else — no other gain seems superior — because the yoga is itself proximity to Bhagavān. Even uninterrupted in yoga, one is not shaken by grief as grave as separation from a beloved son endowed with good qualities. Rāmānuja's reading is personal and relational: the 'gain' is not an abstract ātman but the experiential contact with Bhagavān, and the grief-test is concretely a devotee's grief, not a philosopher's thought-experiment.

  divergence: Uniquely among the schools, Rāmānuja frames the verse from the side of the yogin who has temporarily left the state, not one continuously established in it — emphasising longing and re-entry as the devotional posture.

• Madhvadvaita

  The gain that surpasses all gains is nothing other than the direct vision of Bhagavān Hari in his true form (tattvaḥ bhagavad-rūpatvāt). Established in that vision, the jīva (individual soul) — ever distinct and dependent — is not displaced by any sorrow, because the jīva's nature is fully held by Hari and sorrow cannot reach what Hari sustains. Madhva's minimal gloss is characteristically compressed: the entire significance of the verse collapses into the one phrase about Bhagavān's inherent form.

  divergence: Madhva supplies no elaboration on 'lābha' (gain) or the grief-test — the verse is doctrinal shorthand: any unsurpassable gain or unmoveable stability must, by the Dvaita axiom, be an attribute of Bhagavān's nature, not of the jīva's achievement.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  This yoga — whose fruit is the attainment of what is desired and the removal of what is undesired — is described here: upon gaining it one sees no other gain beyond it. The yoga is called yoga (union) precisely because it is the cessation of union with duḥkha-saṃyoga (pain-conjunction); the name 'yoga' carries this paradoxical mark of a union that is really a separation. Therefore, says Vallabha, this yoga must be practiced with resolute, sustained effort (niścayena, sārdha-śloka).

  divergence: Vallabha alone foregrounds the paradoxical semantic of the word yoga itself, treating 6.22 as definitional rather than merely descriptive — and uniquely reads Kṛṣṇa's teaching as grace-inflected prasāda: the effort commanded (sa niścayena) is itself only possible because Kṛṣṇa's grace enables it.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  The commentary of Śrīdhara Svāmī establishes the unmoveability of the yogin from the bhakti-philological side: the ātma-sukha (self-bliss) gained here is niratīśaya (without superior) — there is simply nothing greater to seek. Even great physical sufferings like heat and cold cannot displace someone established in it. Śrīdhara concludes that this verse also implicitly defines yoga by its outcome: the removal of anartha (unwanted) is its negative criterion.

  divergence: Śrīdhara's register is devotionally inflected but not theistic in the Rāmānuja sense: 'ātma-sukha' still references the inner self, not Bhagavān, keeping one foot in Advaita even while his tone is warmer than Śaṅkara's.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana first closes the argument of 6.20 ('where the yogin does not move from the truth') by unpacking why: having gained the nirṛttika-citta-avasthā (the state of consciousness whose movement has ceased), achieved through continuous practice ripening to fullness, the yogin sees no further gain — the smṛti (scriptural memory) is invoked: 'there is nothing beyond the self-gain.' He then distinguishes two sources of potential disturbance and negates both: sensory desire cannot unseat samādhi, and even gross physical assault — 'śastra-nipāta and the like' — cannot shake it; how much less any minor affliction.

  divergence: Madhusūdana alone uses a formal a-fortiori (kuta eva) logical structure within his gloss, and uniquely splits the verse's second half into two sub-arguments — one about sensory vāsanā (latent desire), one about physical assault — treating them as doctrinally distinct threats to samādhi.