BG 6.4 — Dhyāna-Yoga — Sūtrakṛt-Gītā

Bhagavad Gītā 6.4Chapter 6 · Dhyāna-Yoga · Krishna → Arjuna · anuṣṭubh

यदा हि नेन्द्रियार्थेषु न कर्मस्वनुषज्जते ।

सर्वसंकल्पसंन्यासी योगारूढस् तदोच्यते ॥

yadā hi nendriyārtheṣu na karmasv anuṣajjate

sarva-saṃkalpa-saṃnyāsī yogārūḍhas tadocyate

spokensingle-voice recital; rendered via IndicF5 conditioned on a Sanskrit reference clip

meaning

When you stop grasping at sense-objects and actions, and renouncing all intention has become your character, you are called established in yoga.

ekras · bhāṣya

When one no longer clings — neither to sense-objects nor to actions — and when the renunciation of all samkalpa has become his disposition, only then is he called yoga-arudha. The criterion is twofold: outer non-clinging plus inner samkalpa-tyaga, sustained as character, not as effort.

Shankara holds the verse with characteristic care. The non-clinging is not from exhaustion or external constraint; it is from having perceived the purposelessness of those objects and actions. The contemplating yogin no longer holds onto sound and the rest, nor to obligatory or occasional or even prohibited karmas, because the inner orientation that once made them pull no longer obtains. Sarva-samkalpa-samnyasa has become svabhava, his own nature; that is the criterion of arrival.

Madhusudana ties the yoga-arudha's non-attachment to a double vision. First, the seeing of mithyatva — the unreality — of sense-objects. Second, the seeing of the self as akartri-abhoktri-paramananda-advaya — neither doer nor enjoyer, pure non-dual bliss. The two sights together remove the abhinivesha-rupa anushanga, the I-clinging that is the real obstacle to yoga's full ascent.

Vallabha's gloss is deliberately compressed: the yoga-arudha does not cling even to actions that are properly his own — sva-kriya-nirvartyeshu api karmasu. Even one's dutiful ritual action, if owned rather than surrendered as Krishna's prasada, becomes a subtle form of ahamkara.

Madhva marks the verse as the definition of the yoga-arudha's distinctive mark: samyak-ananusanga, proper non-attachment, is svata — spontaneous in him; in others, it arises only through long effort.

Context

where

Chapter 6 · Dhyāna-Yoga · meter anuṣṭubh

who speaks

Krishna → Arjuna

preceded by — BG 6.3

For the seeker still climbing, action is the means; for the one who has reached the summit, stillness is.

What's going on

When you stop grasping at sense-objects and actions, and renouncing all intention has become your character, you are called established in yoga.

Vyavahāra · try it in your life

Advaita

Before beginning a task, pause and examine the saṃkalpa structure: 'I am doing X to obtain Y.' Śaṅkara's analysis says the craving for Y is itself the contaminant. Practical move: act, but explicitly bracket the outcome-narrative before you start. The bracket is not performance — it trains the perception that the outcome was never yours to own. Do this once daily with one high-stakes task.

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Rāmānuja's corollary is actionable: the ārurukṣu (one still climbing) uses karma-yoga — regular action from which sense-craving is being methodically disentangled — as the vehicle itself, not merely a stairway to abandon. In everyday terms: keep your job, your relationships, your obligations — but cultivate one daily moment of experiencing them as ātma-kainkarya (service from the self) rather than as procurement. The shift in felt quality, not the cessation of action, is the practice.

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Dvaita

Madhva's verse on natural vs effortful renunciation maps onto skill acquisition: early in a practice, non-distraction is an act of will; later it becomes constitutional. The everyday application is to identify which virtues in your current life are still effortful and which have become natural — and to treat the effortful ones not as failures but as sites of active Hari-dependence (pāratantrya). Effort acknowledged honestly is itself a form of surrender.

Śuddhādvaita

Vallabha's 'even one's own proper actions' as potential attachments points to a very concrete modern trap: the identity built around doing one's job well, parenting excellently, or being a 'good practitioner.' The Puṣṭi-mārga application is to let even these roles be Kṛṣṇa's gift rather than self-constructed achievements. Practically: at the end of each day, note one thing you did well and consciously offer it back rather than banking it as self-credit.

Bhakti

Śrīdhara's causal chain — saṃkalpa → attachment → action-binding — suggests that the upstream intervention is at the moment of intention-formation, before action begins. Everyday practice: when a desire arises, sit with the saṃkalpa itself for 30 seconds before acting. This is not suppression; it is the examination Śrīdhara identifies as the yogin's habitual posture. Over time the examination becomes instinctive — which is precisely his definition of śīla (character).

Advaita-Bhakti

Madhusūdana's double vision — mithyātva of objects plus ātma-as-pure-bliss — suggests a two-part daily bookend. Morning: recall one moment from the previous day when you mistook a contingent gain or loss for a permanent fact about reality (mithyātva check). Evening: recall one moment of intrinsic well-being that arose independent of circumstances (ānanda-trace). The gap between these two recollections is the practice space Madhusūdana is pointing at.

Adhiṣṭhāna · substrate signature

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mūlaGRETIL e-text of the Bhagavadgītā with Śaṅkara's commentary (data entry: Gaudiya Grantha Mandira) for chapters 1-17; sanskritdocuments.org sd_bgnew.itx for chapter 18; ingested via a local Ambuda TEI build; per-verse repairs logged in post_generation_repairs

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weightsa=1 · b=0.01 · e_v=0.005 · z=0.2 · h=0 · th=0.01

anchorfit on Ramsukhdas's Sādhak Sañjīvanī (1980), frozen across the eight-commentator panel; cross-validated R@4 = 71.6% on Śaṅkara

extracted2026-04-21

methodPaper 1, Section II.B

↓ view raw per-verse object (JSON)↗ per-verse-object schema ↗ substrate code (MIT) + data (CC-BY 4.0)

The schema generalizes to any bounded-polysemy corpus with discrete primary text units, attested witness traditions, identifiable schools, and formal substrate. Port the per-verse object; refit weights on a domain-appropriate Layer-3 anchor; ship.

Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 4: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga