Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 37: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Arjuna asks: the one who is 'ayati' (without full striving) yet 'śraddhayā upeta' (endowed with faith) — whose mind has slipped from yoga before attaining 'yoga-saṃsiddhi' (the complete fruit of yoga, which Śaṅkara glosses as 'samyag-darśana,' direct non-dual vision) — what destination does he reach? Śaṅkara's terse gloss identifies the crisis precisely: faith was genuine, but effort flagged and at the final moment 'bhraṣṭa-smṛti' (memory dissolved) — the aspirant died before the discriminative vision crystallized. The question is structurally about what happens to partial jñāna: does incompleteness condemn, or does the preparation itself carry forward?

  divergence: Śaṅkara: ayatiḥ aprayatnavān … aprāpya yoga-saṃsiddhiṃ yoga-phalaṃ samyag-darśanam

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads the question as arising from Arjuna's concern for the sincere devotee-aspirant who began yoga with genuine 'śraddhā' (faith) but whose 'abhyāsa' (practice) — the increasingly intensified effort that Rāmānuja insists is the engine of yoga — fell short of the consummation. The compound 'calita-mānasaḥ' (mind displaced) signals not apostasy but insufficiency of 'dṛḍhatara-abhyāsa' (ever-firmer repetition). What destination, asks Arjuna, awaits this incomplete servant of Bhagavān — one who loved but did not press through?

  divergence: Rāmānuja: śraddhayā yoge pravṛttaḥ dṛḍhatarābhyāsarūpa-yatna-vaikalyena yoga-saṃsiddhim aprāpya

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva's gloss is characteristically spare: 'ayatiḥ aprayatnaḥ' — the unenergetic one. For Madhva, effort in yoga is an act of dependent worship of Hari; the jīva (soul, eternally distinct from Brahman) who does not exert is simply one who has not fulfilled the mode of surrender appointed to him. The question points toward the Dvaita axiom that the soul's fate is calibrated by Hari's will operating through the soul's own qualified effort — neither automatic grace nor self-sufficient striving, but the two in exact proportion. Arjuna's question is really: does Hari's grace cover the gap left by insufficient 'prayatna' (exertion)?

  divergence: Madhva: ayatiḥ aprayatnaḥ (spanning 6.37-6.39)

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha opens a distinctive double question: Arjuna is asking about the one who is 'ubhaya-rahita' (lacking both renunciation and its opposite, i.e., engaged householder-practice) yet 'yoga-śīla' (habitually oriented toward yoga) — what fruit does such a one obtain? The vocative 'Kṛṣṇa' is unpacked as 'karṣaka' — the one who draws, the cosmic attractor. Vallabha's subtext is the Puṣṭi-mārga premise: even the stumbling aspirant has been drawn into Kṛṣṇa's orbit; the very question of 'fate' is superseded by 'prasāda' (grace-flow) which operates independently of the aspirant's technical completeness.

  divergence: Vallabha: ubhayarahito yoga-śīlaś ca … kṛṣṇa karṣaka ity anvarthasambodhanam sābhiprāyam

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara Svāmī draws a careful phenomenological portrait: the aspirant began in good faith — 'prathamaṃ śraddhopeta eva yoge pravṛttaḥ, na tu mithyācāratayā' (first engaged yoga with genuine faith, not as a hypocrite) — but later became 'ayati' in the precise sense of 'śithilābhyāsa' (loose in practice) and 'manda-vairāgya' (weak in dispassion), with a mind turned outward toward sense-objects. The question is: having neither completed jñāna nor maintained the devotional infrastructure, and dying before the fruit of yoga ('jñānam') ripened, what destination awaits? Śrīdhara frames the pathos clearly: a real practitioner, not a pretender, whose only fault was gradualism.

  divergence: Śrīdhara: śithilābhyāsa ity arthaḥ … manda-vairāgya ity arthaḥ … abhyāsa-vairāgya-śaithilyād yogasya saṃsiddhiṃ phalaṃ jñānam aprāpya

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana's treatment is the most architecturally elaborate: he situates the question within a careful taxonomy of yogīs (aparama and parama), and identifies the questioner's target as the 'jñāna-paripāka-śūnya' (one in whom knowledge-ripening is incomplete) who, having abandoned karma and upāsanā yet not attained tattva-sākṣātkāra (direct self-realization), dies mid-process. Such a soul falls between all three conventional paths — devayāna (path of the gods), pitṛyāna (path of the ancestors), and even the subhuman — creating genuine doctrinal suspense. Madhusūdana presents Arjuna's question as 'saṃśaya-paryākula' (agitated with uncertainty): the aspirant had 'sādhana-catuṣṭaya' (the fourfold qualification: viveka, vairāgya, śamādi, mumukṣutā) and approached a guru, yet 'āyuṣaḥ alpatva' (brevity of remaining life) cut the process short. This is not failure of intention but of time.

  divergence: Madhusūdana: jñāna-paripāka-śūnyatvena anaṣṭa-ajñānaḥ … āyuṣaḥ alpatvena maraṇa-kāle … yoga-saṃsiddhiṃ tattva-jñāna-nimittām ajñāna-tat-kārya-nivṛttim aprāpya