Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 2: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga
What people call renunciation, Arjuna, know that to be yoga itself, for no one becomes a true yogin while still harboring desire for results.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
What the Śruti-knowers call sannyāsa (renunciation), O Pāṇḍava, know that very same to be yoga — for both share the inner act of abandoning saṅkalpa (intention toward fruit). The karma-yogī, even while performing action, renounces the saṅkalpa directed at results, exactly as the paramārtha-sannyāsī renounces all karma and its fruits entirely. No one whatsoever becomes a yogī — a mind-steadied one — while retaining unsurrendered saṅkalpa, because fruit-directed intention is itself the cause of mental distraction (citta-vikṣepa).
divergence: Direct — Śaṅkara's commentary explicitly glosses yoga as karma-karma-phala-parityāga-lakṣaṇa and identifies the shared element as kartṛ-dvāraka-sannyāsa-sāmānya; citta-vikṣepa causation of phala-saṅkalpa stated verbatim.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
What is called jñāna-yoga — genuine cognition of the ātman's own nature (ātma-yāthātmya) — know that to be this karma-yoga itself. For one who, through that ātmic self-recognition, has relinquished the false attribution of selfhood to inert Prakṛti, all undertakings naturally arise free of kāma-saṅkalpa. No karma-yogī in this teaching fails to fulfill that condition: 'whose every enterprise is stripped of desire-intention' (4.19) — and without such renunciation, no one can become a yogī at all.
divergence: Direct — Rāmānuja glosses sannyāsa as ātma-yāthātmya-jñāna, and asannyasta-saṅkalpa as the one who still projects selfhood onto anātman Prakṛti; quotes BG 4.19 verbatim as supporting pramāṇa.
- Madhvadvaita
Even sannyāsa is subsumed within yoga — the two are not rival paths but a single upāya (means) under Hari's sovereignty. The verse encodes a precise warning: without renouncing kāma-saṅkalpa and the like, how can any aspirant qualify as a true upāyavān — one possessed of the means? The jīva, eternally distinct from Brahman, can reach Hari only through that interior relinquishment; no external gesture of renunciation suffices while desire-intention survives within.
divergence: Direct — Madhva states sannyāso'pi yogāntarbhūta (sannyāsa is included within yoga) and asks rhetorically about the aspirant's qualification (upāyavān) should kāma-saṅkalpa remain unabandoned. Commentary is terse; the polemical edge is implicit in the framing.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
The apparent contrast between Sāṅkhya-renunciation (atyāga) and yoga-action (tyāga) is dissolved here — both names point to a single artha: the relinquishment of phala-saṅkalpa in whatever action one performs. What the ṛṣis call sannyāsa — renunciation as a mode of being — is none other than yoga when seen from within: in yoga's actions too, phala-saṅkalpa is precisely what is being relinquished. The implication is complete: a performer of karma who surrenders fruit-intention is a yogī; a yogī is precisely that performer.
divergence: Direct — Vallabha grounds the unity of Sāṅkhya and yoga in their shared structure of atyāga-tyāga (not-abandoning by abandoning), and the operative mechanism in the phala-saṅkalpa-tyāga within yogic action.
- Śrīdharabhakti
This verse secures karma-yoga's superiority by conferring on it the honorific of sannyāsa itself — the Śruti declares 'sannyāsa alone excels' (sannyāsa evātyarecayat), and Kṛṣṇa now shows that karma-yoga earns that title precisely because it too abandons phala-saṅkalpa. No karma-practitioner, no jñāna-practitioner, no one at all becomes a yogī while fruit-intention (phala-saṅkalpa) remains un-surrendered. When it is surrendered, the shared mechanism — absence of citta-vikṣepa — operates equally in both, making the sannyāsī a yogī and the karma-yogī a sannyāsī simultaneously.
divergence: Direct — Śrīdhara quotes the Śruti sannyāsa evātyarecayat and explains the equation through phala-saṅkalpa-tyāga-sāmya (equality in fruit-intention surrender) and resulting citta-vikṣepābhāva; no HTML or JS artifacts were present in this payload entry.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
The term sannyāsa, applied to karma-yoga, operates through lakṣaṇā (secondary denotation) — specifically tadabhāvāropaṇa (superimposition of that quality) — because yoga shares the key qualifying feature: relinquishment of phala-tṛṣṇā, which is itself the third kleśa-variant called rāga. Since yoga is citta-vṛtti-nirodha, and phala-saṅkalpa is a vṛtti (a rāga-type vṛtti), the karma-yogī who abandons that vṛtti achieves, in a secondary sense, both sannyāsa and yoga simultaneously. No one can be a yogī with unsurrendered saṅkalpa — all yogīs are by definition tyakta-phala-saṅkalpa.
divergence: Direct — Madhusūdana explicitly invokes gauṇī vṛtti (secondary denotation) and tadabhāvāropaṇa, identifies phala-saṅkalpa as the rāga-type among the five viparyaya-bhedas of Yoga-Sūtra, and connects yoga as citta-vṛtti-nirodha to validate the equation. Extended Yoga-Sūtra exposition is present in his commentary and underpins this reading.