Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 6, Verse 8: Krishna to Arjuna — Dhyāna-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The yogin whose inner instrument (antahkarana) is made content by jnana (scriptural knowledge of truths) and vijnana (direct self-experience of those same truths) stands immovable — kutastha, like an anvil struck but unshaken — because the mind no longer grasps outward. Having subdued the senses, he sees clod, stone, and gold as equally irrelevant to the Self; such a one alone is called yukta, absorbed. Shankara's point: satisfaction here is not emotional warmth but the cessation of the mind's restless seeking — alampratyaya, the verdict 'enough,' which is possible only when scripture-knowledge has become first-person fact.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  The karma-yogin becomes fit for atma-avalokanam (self-witnessing yoga) when his mind is saturated by jnana — knowledge of the atman's true nature — and vijnana — knowing that nature as categorically unlike (visajatiya) anything prakrti produces. Established in that one undivided consciousness common to all states (deva, human, beast), indifferent to what prakrti offers because he has seen prakrti as simply other, he treats clod and gold with equal purposelessness. Ramanuja specifies this satisfaction as readiness, not arrival: the yukta is now qualified (arha) for full yogabhyasa, not yet at the bhakti-summit.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva reads jnana as sravanamananam-born knowledge and vijnana as aparoksa-jnana — direct, non-inferential perception of Visnu — citing Shambhu's testimony: 'what arises from hearing and reflection is jnana; vision of Visnu is vijnana.' The yogin whose senses are conquered and whose mind is thus rendered kutastha (like akasa, sky-like, immovable) is thereby installed in full yoga-sampurnata. The crucial Dvaita inflection: the self-conquered state matters because it places Paramatman squarely, unmistakably, in the heart — aparoksa-knowledge of Hari is the actual fruit, not mere equanimity.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha compresses sharply: jnana is aupadeshika (received instruction), vijnana is aparoksa-anubhava (direct experience beyond the teacher's words), and when both have saturated the atman, the yogin is not merely stable but superior — vishishyate — even among equally stable persons. The mark of supremacy is sama-buddhi toward the entire spectrum from friend to enemy, from virtue to its opposite; equanimity toward inanimate objects (clod-stone-gold) is given but the real test is sama-buddhi toward persons. Pusti-marga implication: this saturation arrives as Krsna's prasada-grace, not as the practitioner's earned achievement.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara follows the aupadeshika/aparoksa-anubhava distinction (jnana as instruction, vijnana as direct experience) and draws a crisp chain: saturation of the citta by both makes the mind nirakanksa — free of wanting — which in turn produces nirvikarata (no-modification, kutastha), which in turn produces conquered senses, which in turn produces genuine indifference to clay, stone, and gold as objects, not merely tolerance. Sridhara's precision: the indifference is heyopadeyabuddhi-shunya — the mind has lost the very mechanism that would grade things as to-be-rejected or to-be-acquired. Only then is the yogin rightly called yoga-arudha.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudana preserves Shankara's two-tier definition (scriptural knowledge / direct self-appropriation) but adds a middle step: vijnana arises specifically through vicara — inquiry that removes the doubt about scripture's validity — and only thereafter yields aparoksa-karana, direct first-person confirmation. The result is a yogin who is vikarasunya even in the presence of sense-objects — not suppressing reaction but structurally incapable of it — whose senses have been withdrawn from raga-dvesa-driven contact, and who qualifies as a paramahamsa-parivrajaka, a renunciant of supreme non-attachment. The synthesis: bhakti-saturated jnana produces this stability; equanimity toward objects is its exterior sign, not its interior engine.