Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 35: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Undoubtedly, O mighty-armed, the mind is restless and hard to restrain — Śaṅkara does not soften this admission. Yet the mind's errant movement (vikshepa-rupa pracarah, the wandering tendency) is checked by abhyāsa (practice), defined here precisely as the repeated uniform movement of attention on a single ground (samana-pratyaya-avrtti), and by vairāgya (dispassion), defined as cultivated disgust (vaitrishnyam) toward all enjoyments seen and unseen, born of sustained perception of their defects. These two together restrain — and ultimately arrest — the cittavrtti (fluctuations of the mental field).

  divergence: Śaṅkara emphasizes that what is being restrained is the citta's outward movement (vikṣepa), not desire per se — the goal is cessation of all vṛtti (nirvṛtti), preparing for jñāna.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  The mind's restlessness is conceded without doubt; yet Rāmānuja frames the remedy relationally: abhyāsa here is the practice that generates the mind's inclination (abhimukhya) toward ātman as the locus of all auspicious qualities (guṇākara), drawing attention inward to Bhagavān's indwelling presence. Vairāgya is the disinterest (vaitṛṣṇya) arising from seeing defect (doṣākara) in all objects other than ātman — not cold renunciation but the natural cooling of appetite when the superior object is tasted. Together these gradually (kathaṃcit) bring the mind under hold.

  divergence: Unlike Śaṅkara's purely technical cittabhūmi framing, Rāmānuja locates abhyāsa in the recognition of ātman-as-Bhagavān's-body — practice is relational worship, not neutral repetition.

• Madhvadvaita

  *Asaṃśayam* (without doubt), O *mahābāho* — the mind is *durṇigrahaṃ calam*, difficult to restrain and unsteady. Yet by *abhyāsena* (repeated practice) and *vairāgyeṇa* (dispassion) it is *gṛhyate*, caught and held. Jayatīrtha, glossing 6.35–36 together, heads off the objection that the verse on *saṃyata* (restraint) is superfluous — *na ca iti* marking that the mind does not simply settle on its own, the way a *matta-mātaṅga* (rutting elephant), exhausted, grows calm of itself. A mind satisfied by sense-objects might occasionally seem self-restrained, but this is no real *niyama*. The rejoinder: *śubhā* — it is the auspicious disposition (*śubhecchā* and its sequence) that is indicated here, linked by *sada* to what precedes. Because mind-regulation is *mukti-bījatvāt* — the seed of liberation — Kṛṣṇa names its fruit as *mukti*. For the *paratantra* *jīva*, even the capacity to take up *abhyāsa* is no self-sufficient achievement; the *bheda* between the Lord who guarantees and the *jīva* who strives remains real throughout.

  divergence: The B-cell now quotes Jayatīrtha's Sanskrit verbatim — matta-mātaṅga, na ca iti, śubhecchā, mukti-bījatvāt — and follows his specific argumentative move (dismissing the objection that the saṃyata-verse is redundant). The prior rendering was a generic Dvaita projection with no bhāṣya anchoring.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's commentary is brief but decisive: Kṛṣṇa accepts Arjuna's diagnosis and confirms that restraint comes through abhyāsa and vairāgya — yet in Puṣṭi-mārga, both are suffused with Kṛṣṇa's prasāda (grace). Abhyāsa is not dry repetition but loving recollection of Kṛṣṇa's form (svarūpa-smaraṇa); vairāgya is not world-negation but the natural indifference of one whose taste (rasa) has shifted entirely to Kṛṣṇa's līlā. The mind is tamed not by discipline alone but by the sweetness that makes all else tasteless.

  divergence: The Vallabha reading is the most condensed in the panel; its force comes from what is implied — that both abhyāsa and vairāgya are prasāda-received, not self-generated.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara provides the most structurally complete reading: abhyāsa is the repeated arising of a vṛtti (mental movement) in the form of Paramātman (paramātmākāra-pratyayā vṛttiḥ), which counters the mind's tendency toward laya (dissolution into dullness); vairāgya counters vikṣepa (scattering into objects) by withdrawing appetite from all sensory content. Together they bring the mind to the state described in the Yoga-śāstra: 'vṛtti-śūnyasya brahma-ākāratayā sthitiḥ' — when the mind's movements cease, it rests in Brahman-form, the condition called samprajñāta-samādhi.

  divergence: Śrīdhara uniquely names the two obstacles being addressed — laya and vikṣepa — mapping them onto the two remedies, and explicitly connects the outcome to samādhi-śāstra terminology.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana distinguishes two modes of mental restraint — haṭha (forcible suppression, which fails because the heart-lotus cannot be physically sealed) and krama (graduated restraint, which succeeds). The two seed-forces driving the mind are prāṇa-spanda (vital oscillation) and vāsanā (latent impression); abhyāsa targets the first through prāṇāyāma and concentrated practice, vairāgya targets the second by dissolving the impressions through viveka-knowledge and sādhusaṅga (company of the wise). Following Patañjali's sūtra ('abhyāsa-vairāgyābhyāṃ tan-nirodhaḥ'), he concludes that all other aids — sādhusaṅga, adhyātma-vidyā — are ultimately subsumable under these two.

  divergence: Most analytically elaborate in the panel: Madhusūdana explicitly argues haṭha-restraint is impossible (hṛdayakamala cannot be sealed), making krama-restraint the only viable path — a philosophical argument absent from all other commentators.