Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 27: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Supreme happiness (sukham uttamam) arrives on its own — it is not seized — when the mind is fully pacified (praśānta-manas) and rajas (the agitating quality) is extinguished. The yogin becomes brahma-bhūta (established as Brahman), meaning he holds the firm conviction 'all this is Brahman alone,' and is thereby free of dharma, adharma, and every stain (akalmaṣa). Śaṅkara reads brahma-bhūtam as jīvan-mukti: not liberation after death but freedom already present once superimposition is dissolved.

  divergence: Śaṅkara glosses brahma-bhūtam directly as jīvan-muktam — the one liberated while still living — and akalmaṣam as dharma-adharma-ādi-varjitam (free of both merit and sin), not merely 'pure.' Praśānta-rjasam is prākṣīṇa-moha-ādi-kleśa-rajasam: the dust of delusion-class afflictions ground to nothing.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  The yogin whose mind is fixed motionlessly on the ātman (ātmani niścala-manas) — and for that very reason has burned off every stain, subdued rajas, and come to rest in his own true nature (sva-svarūpeṇāvasthitam) — is approached by supreme happiness (uttama-sukha) which is itself of the form of ātman-experience (ātmānubhava-rūpam). Rāmānuja's brahma-bhūtam is not dissolution into an undifferentiated absolute but the jīva abiding in its own authentic form — distinct, luminous, unsullied.

  divergence: Rāmānuja explicitly glosses brahma-bhūtam as sva-svarūpeṇāvasthitam — 'abiding in its own nature' — not as identity with nirguṇa Brahman. The causal chain is internal: motionless mind → stain-burning → rajas-subduing → self-abiding → bliss arises. The particle hi is read as causal: bliss comes because the yogin has achieved just this.

• Madhvadvaita

  *Sukham uttamam* (supreme happiness) comes to this *yogin* — *praśānta-manasaṃ* (of wholly stilled mind), *śānta-rajasaṃ* (with passion quieted), *brahma-bhūtam* (Brahman-become), *akalmaṣam* (stainless). In the Dvaita reading, *brahma-bhūtam* cannot mean identity with Brahman: the *jīva* remains *paratantra* (eternally dependent), ontologically subordinate to *svatantra* Hari across all states. 'Brahman-become' names the *jīva*'s fullest realization of its own Brahman-reflective nature — luminous, purified, *akalmaṣa* — not a dissolution of *bheda* (real distinction) but its consummation. The *sukham uttamam* is the bliss of Hari-proximity, a beatitude received from Hari's grace, never self-generated. *Śānta-rajas* marks the erasure of the *rajas*-driven impulse that sustains *saṃsāra*; once *rajas* is stilled and the mind *praśānta*, the *jīva* is fit vessel for that supreme happiness to arrive — *upaiti*, it comes to him. The movement is receptive, not self-sufficient: happiness approaches the purified *paratantra* *jīva* because Hari, the *svatantra* ground of all *sukha*, grants it.

  divergence: No bhāṣya by Madhva or Jayatīrtha on BG 6.27. Reading drawn from Dvaita *siddhānta*: *pañca-bheda*, *taratamya*, and the doctrine that *brahma-bhūtam* names Brahman-reflection in the *jīva*, not *tādātmya* (identity). The receptive grammar of *upaiti* — happiness arrives — aligns with the *paratantra* character of the *jīva*.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha frames the verse as yoga-sukha-āpti — the obtaining of the bliss intrinsic to yoga — and his pivot word is 'tataśca' (and therefore): the quieted mind (praśānta-manas), the stilled perturbation of rajas, and the brahma-bhāvāpanna (one who has attained the state of Brahman) are not three achievements but one. The supreme happiness (uttama-sukha) that arrives is not earned by the yogin — it comes (upaiiti, third-person active) as prasāda, Kṛṣṇa's gift descending into the vessel the yogin has emptied.

  divergence: Vallabha uses brahma-bhāvāpannam (attained to the bhāva of Brahman) rather than brahma-bhūtam, signaling that in Puṣṭi-mārga idiom the movement is toward Kṛṣṇa's own nature, not an impersonal absolute. His sutra is: 'yoginam uttamam sukham brahma-bhūtam upaiti prāpnoti' — the happiness is itself brahma-bhūta (saturated with Brahman-quality) when it arrives.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara situates the verse within the cumulative logic of pratyāhāra and related practices (pratyāhārādibhiḥ punaḥ punar mano vaśī-kurvan — repeatedly bringing the mind under control): when rajas dissolves (rajo-guṇa-kṣaye sati), yoga-bliss arrives naturally. Śrīdhara specifies the bliss as samādhi-sukha — the happiness of deep absorption — and says it comes of its own accord (svayam eva upaiti). The yogin does not grasp; the happiness meets him.

  divergence: Śrīdhara's key gloss is samādhi-sukham svayam eva upaiti: 'the happiness of samādhi comes to him spontaneously.' He links rajo-kṣaya causally to both the quieted mind and the stainless Brahman-state, treating them as sequential unfoldings of one rajas-dissolution rather than independent qualities.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana unpacks the verse's three qualifiers with surgical precision: praśānta-manas means the mind has become niṣkriya (trace-impression-only, vṛtti-śūnya — empty of modifications); śānta-rajasam means free of vikṣepa (distraction-force), which is rajas's specific function; akalmaṣam means free of laya-hetu (the cause of dissolution into inertia), which is tamas's function — so akalmaṣa covertly marks tamas-absence, not just ethical purity. Brahma-bhūtam is the jīvan-mukta who has reached brahma-prāpti with the steady conviction 'all is equally Brahman.' Supreme happiness arrives because — as Madhusūdana notes via the particle hi and appeal to BG 6.21 — the self's own bliss becomes self-luminous when subject-object duality collapses in dreamless-sleep-like clarity.

  divergence: Madhusūdana's signature contribution here is identifying akalmaṣa as pointing to tamas (laya-hetu) rather than to ethical sin, making the three qualifiers a precise map of the tri-guṇa dissolution: rajas quieted, tamas dissolved, only pure sattva remaining as the threshold of brahma-bhūti. He cites Śrīdhara's 'evam ukrtena prakāreṇa' and extends it.