Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 24: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Every desire (kāma) whose very birthplace is saṅkalpa (mental resolve) must be relinquished without remainder — not suppressed but abandoned with the discrimination that sees them as rootless constructions. The mind alone, sharpened by viveka (discernment), is both the disease and the physician: it bred the desires and it alone can restrain the entire congregation of senses from every direction. Until this discrimination is steady, yoga is merely preparatory gymnastics for the jñāna that alone liberates.

  divergence: Śaṅkara glosses saṅkalpa-prabhavān as 'those whose origin (prabhava) is saṅkalpa'; nirlepa ('without residue') qualifies tyaktvā; vivekayuktena modifies manas to stress that disciplined intellect, not mere will-power, governs the senses.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Kṛṣṇa distinguishes two classes of desire: those born of sensory contact (sparśaja) — cold, heat, pleasure — which cannot be wholly avoided, and those born of mental resolve (saṅkalpa-ja) — sons, land, reputation — which can be relinquished by the mind itself through sustained non-association (tad-ananya-anusandhāna). For the unavoidable sparśaja desires, the practitioner abandons the elation and aversion they trigger; the senses are then gradually withdrawn from every object, the mind anchored in the Self, until no thought of 'other' remains. This graduated quieting is service to Bhagavān, not mere asceticism.

  divergence: Rāmānuja's bhāṣya explicitly splits kāmas into sparśajāḥ and saṅkalpajāḥ, specifying putra-pautra-kṣetra (sons, grandsons, fields) as concrete saṅkalpa-born examples; śanaiḥ śanaiḥ (gradually) and dhṛti-gṛhītayā buddhyā (with resolute, discerning intellect) govern the withdrawal.

• Madhvadvaita

  Not a single desire — not even a slight, occasional one directed at any object — is permissible for the yogin; 'all' and 'without remainder' are not rhetorical flourishes but hard limits. The emphatic particle eva ('alone') after manas is Madhva's signal: no external instrument — ritual, physical posture, regulation of breath in isolation — can govern the senses; only the mind, in direct dependence on Hari's will, has that power. The jīva's complete otherness from Brahman makes this restraint possible only as an act of surrender, not of autonomous mastery.

  divergence: Madhva's concise bhāṣya presses sarvān aśeṣataḥ: even a single occasional desire for any object is impermissible; the eva in manasaiva is foregrounded to deny any non-mental instrument of sense-control.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's commentary on this verse is embedded within a block spanning 6.22–6.25, where the focus is the characterisation of the yoga attainment: what is gained (iṣṭa-prāpti, cessation of aniṣṭa) defines the yoga, and that yoga — paradoxically named 'union through separation from suffering' (duḥkha-saṃyoga-viyoga) — must be practised with resolute effort (niścayena). The abandonment of saṅkalpa-born desires is therefore not a stand-alone ascetic act but the clearing that makes space for Kṛṣṇa's prasāda to fill the practitioner; desire does not die by force but is displaced by a superior sweetness.

  divergence: Vallabha's bhāṣya does not gloss 6.24 in isolation; it covers 6.22–6.25 together, with the key terms being iṣṭa-prāpti, duḥkha-saṃyoga-viyoga, and niścayena. The rendering above is anchored in that bracketed commentary; independent line-level glosses for 6.24 are absent in this transmission.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara identifies these yoga-hostile (yoga-pratikūla) desires as those whose seed lies in saṅkalpa; they must be abandoned along with their subliminal residues (sa-vāsanān), not merely suspended at the surface. The instrument of restraint is a mind that has cultivated the perception of defect in sense-objects (viṣaya-doṣa-darśin); from that seeing, the senses — perpetually expanding outward in every direction — are specially restrained. The syntax connects back to 6.23: 'yoga must be practiced' is the governing verb that 6.24 specifies as its precondition.

  divergence: Śrīdhara glosses yoga-pratikūlān (hostile to yoga), sa-vāsanān (with latent impressions), and viṣaya-doṣa-darśin (perceiving defect in objects); he explicitly notes the syntactic dependence on the prior verse (pūrveṇānvayaḥ).

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Desires arise from saṅkalpa, and saṅkalpa itself is a false superimposition (aśobhana-adhyāsa) of beauty and desirability onto objects that, when examined, are no better than vomited food eaten by a dog — from the lowest sense-pleasure to the heights of Brahmaloka. This vivid disgust-inquiry (vicāra-janya-aśobhanatva-niścaya) dissolves the adhesion of superimposed beauty and thereby extinguishes desire at the root rather than at the branch. Once desire is thus eliminated, its effect — outward movement of the senses — automatically ceases; the mind, now equipped with viveka, withdraws the senses from every object in a gradual, complete pratyāhāra.

  divergence: Madhusūdana's elaborate bhāṣya provides the śvavānta-pāyasa simile (vomited food), the full range srak-candana to Indraloka-Pārijāta, and the technical term vicāra-janya-aśobhanatva-niścaya for the cognition that dissolves superimposition; śanaiḥ śanaiḥ and pratyāhṛtya are also in the source.