Mokṣa-Saṃnyāsa Yoga

Guṇa analysis extended — BG 18.20–18.44

Chapter 18's middle section (BG 18.20–18.44) is the final and most exhaustive application of the three-Guṇa framework — extending it to knowledge, action, doer, intellect, resolve, and happiness:

Three types of knowledge (18.20–18.22): Sattvic — seeing the one imperishable Brahman in all beings; Rajasic — seeing diverse separate entities; Tamasic — clinging to one limited thing as if it were all.

Three types of action (18.23–18.25): Sattvic — performed as ordained, without attachment, without love or hate, without desire for fruit; Rajasic — performed with great effort, by one who desires enjoyment, or from pride; Tamasic — undertaken out of delusion, without considering capacity, loss, harm, or ability.

Three types of doer (18.26–18.28): Sattvic — free from attachment, not speaking of himself, full of perseverance and zeal, unaffected by success or failure; Rajasic — passionate, desiring the fruits of action, greedy, injurious, impure, subject to joy and sorrow; Tamasic — undisciplined, vulgar, obstinate, deceitful, slothful, despondent, procrastinating.

BG 18.20–18.28. Gambhirananda (trans.), pp. 719–729.

BG 18.61–18.63 — God in all hearts; take refuge

Arjuna's response — BG 18.73

BG 18.30 — Sattvic intellect: the one who knows the right path

Among the extended Guṇa analysis, BG 18.30 on the three types of intellect is philosophically significant: pravṛttiṃ ca nivṛttiṃ ca kāryākārye bhayābhaye / bandhaṃ mokṣaṃ ca yā vetti buddhiḥ sā pārtha sāttvikī — "The intellect that knows the path of action and the path of renunciation, what ought to be done and what ought not to be done, what is to be feared and what is not to be feared, what is bondage and what is liberation — that intellect, O Pārtha, is Sattvic." The Sattvic intellect is defined by its discernment of the complete spectrum of spiritual choices — including, crucially, the distinction between bondage and liberation. This discernment is the intellectual prerequisite for acting rightly.

BG 18.30. Gambhirananda (trans.), pp. 733–735.

Śaṅkara on BG 18.66 — sarva-dharmān parityajya

Śaṅkara's reading of BG 18.66 is the most discussed in all of Vedānta commentary. His position: sarva-dharmān parityajya means abandoning the sense of personal agency in all Dharmic action. What is renounced is not the acts themselves (Kṛṣṇa has repeatedly said to perform prescribed action) but the ego-sense that "I am the doer of this Dharma." When the ego-doer is renounced and one takes refuge in Kṛṣṇa (= Brahman, for Śaṅkara), the person acts as an instrument of the divine, without karmic binding. Liberation is not earned through action but is the natural result of the ego's dissolution — "I shall liberate you from all sins" means the ignorance that generates karma is destroyed when the ego-doer is surrendered. Mā śucaḥ — "do not grieve" — is then the natural corollary: grief belongs to the ego-doer; without the ego-doer, there is no grief.

Rāmānuja reads the verse as the instruction to abandon all other means of liberation (other paths, karma, jñāna, upāsanā) and rely entirely on Viṣṇu's grace. This is the pinnacle of Prapatti (total surrender) — the highest Bhakti Yoga. Mā śucaḥ — the devotee who has surrendered need not grieve about liberation: God himself takes the responsibility.

BG 18.66. Śaṅkara, Gītābhāṣya (Gambhirananda trans., pp. 756–760); Thibaut, SBE Vol.48 (Rāmānuja on 18.66 — Prapatti).

BG 18.78 — Sañjaya's closing verse