Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 9, Verse 27: Krishna to Arjuna — Rāja-Vidyā-Rāja-Guhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Whatever spontaneously falls to you to do — eating, the Vedic (śrauta) or Smārta fire-oblation (homa), gift of grain or gold to brāhmaṇas, and bodily austerity (tapas) — do all of it as offering (arpaṇa) to Me, the Self. Śaṅkara's bhāṣya lists each verb (karoṣi, aśnāsi, juhoṣi, dadāsi, tapasyasi) as activity already obligated by birth-station, not newly prescribed; what changes is interior orientation, not the act. The fruit of this redirected action the teacher will explain in the following verse — 'hear what will come of it' — making this verse preparatory to karma-yoga as the purification that enables jñāna.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  All action — worldly maintenance of the body (deha-yātrā), eating for the body's sustenance, the daily and occasional Vedic rites of sacrifice, giving, and austerity — must be surrendered entirely to Me as their agent (kartṛtva), their enjoyer (bhoktṛtva), and their object of worship (ārādhyatva). Rāmānuja extends the verse beyond simple dedication: the deities invoked in yāga and dāna are themselves sustained by My will (mat-saṅkalpāyatta-svarūpa), so the worshipper, the action, the deity, and the fruit are all My modes (viśeṣaṇa). Surrender therefore means recognising that one's entire being as agent-worshipper-enjoyer subsists within Me as the supreme Śeṣin (paramaśeṣin) — a joyful, affection-saturated (atyartha-prīti-yukta) contemplation.

• Madhvadvaita

  Therefore — precisely because Hari alone is the independent Lord while the jīva (individual soul) is eternally and essentially dependent — whatever you do, offer it to Him. The Dvaita reading treats the verse as the inevitable corollary of the ontological distance established in the preceding verses: the jīva can never merge into Hari, so all action is by nature dependent worship (upāsanā) of a categorically superior being. Every act, from eating to sacrifice, is only proper when consciously acknowledged as performed through His power and placed before Him.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  You too — having taken refuge in the mode of Bhagavat-sevā (service to the Lord) with the disposition of yoga and bhāva-ārādhanā described above — should perform every worldly act (laukika-karma) and every obligatory Vedic rite (nityanaimittikakarma) as an offering to Me alone. Vallabha's bhāṣya insists that only fully surrendered objects are fit for use; unsurrendered things must be avoided altogether. The verse thus establishes the Puṣṭimārga (path of grace-nourishment) principle: every owned thing — cloth, food, wealth, ritual action — must first be dedicated (nivedita), then used in service; otherwise the servant eats before the master, which is inadmissible. Surrender is not a spiritual technique but the ontological condition of every relationship between the devotee and Kṛṣṇa's līlā.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Not only costly items like animals and soma need to be gathered and offered for worship; even the most ordinary acts — whatever you do by nature or by scripture, whatever you eat, offer, give, or perform as austerity — let all of it be made an offering to Me (mayy arpitam). Śrīdhara Svāmī's reading is deliberately inclusive: the verse deliberately broadens the scope of bhakti beyond formal yajña-materials to cover the full texture of daily life, so that no moment remains outside the field of devotion. The qualifier 'by nature' (svabhāvataḥ) or 'by scripture' (śāstrataḥ) is not limiting but embracing — both instinctive and disciplined acts are fit matter for offering.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  This verse names what My worship (bhajana) actually looks like: what you do even beyond scriptural compulsion out of natural inclination (rāgāt prāptam), what you eat for personal satisfaction or for efficient action, what you offer in the Vedic fire (nityam agnihotrādi), what you give to guests and brāhmaṇas, and the periodic penances you undergo to clear accidental sin (ajñāta-prāmādika-pāpa) — let all of that, worldly and Vedic alike, be placed in Me. Madhusūdana Sarasvatī emphasises via the ātmanepada (reflexive verb) form of the instruction that the fruit of this surrender belongs entirely to the surrenderer's own purification, not to any gain on Kṛṣṇa's part. Most significantly: no separate devotional act is required — the surrender-of-what-is-already-inevitable is itself bhakti. The Advaita undercurrent: the 'offering' does not make Kṛṣṇa richer; it makes the agent purer.