He does not hate a disagreeable action, an inauspicious, desire-prompted action which, by setting a body going, is a cause of transmigration, thinking 'what use is this'; nor does he cling to an agreeable action, an auspicious obligatory action, growing fond of it as 'this is a cause of liberation, since it leads to purity of being, to the rise of knowledge, and to the standing in that knowledge'. Who is this relinquisher? One endowed with the relinquishment of attachment and fruit already described, the man who, doing the obligatory actions, has given up attachment to action and its fruit. When does he neither hate the disagreeable action nor cling to the agreeable one? When he is filled with sattva, pervaded and joined with sattva, which is the means of discerning self from non-self; and being so, he is wise, joined with the insight that is knowledge of the self; and being wise, his doubt is cut, the doubt raised by ignorance, for he is settled in the conviction that abiding in the very nature of the self, and nothing else, is the supreme means to the highest good. The qualified man who, in the way described, has by the practice of the discipline of action gradually had his being refined, and has come to know the self, free of birth and all change, as actionless and as his very self, he, renouncing all actions with the mind, neither acting nor causing to act, attains the standing in knowledge marked by freedom from action. The purpose of the discipline of action taught earlier is stated by this very verse. But the man who, though qualified, takes the body for the self and so is 'an embodied being', who is ignorant and holds fast to the unexamined conviction 'I am the doer', for him, since the giving up of all action is impossible, the qualification is only for the performance of enjoined action together with the giving up of its fruit, not for the giving up of action itself. To show this, the Lord says.

Thus, the man filled with sattva, wise, of the knowledge of the truth as it truly stands, and for that very reason of doubt cut, the relinquisher of attachment, fruit, and agency in action, does not hate disagreeable action, and does not become attached to agreeable action. Disagreeable action is action of unwished fruit; agreeable action is action of wished fruit, the form of heaven, a son, cattle, food, and the rest. Since toward all action he is free of the sense of mine, since he has given up all fruit other than Brahman, and since he has given up agency, toward those two, while they are being done, he makes neither delight nor hatred. By 'disagreeable action' the inadvertent sinful action is here meant, since it is heard, in 'not he who has not ceased from ill conduct, not the unstilled, not the uncollected, nor he whose mind is unstilled, can reach this by insight', that not having ceased from ill conduct obstructs the rise of knowledge. Therefore the relinquishment of agency, attachment, and fruit in action is the scriptural relinquishment, not the relinquishment of the action's own form. The Lord says this.

This is a brief sub-gloss. For a fuller reading of this verse, see Madhusūdana, Śaṅkara, or Rāmānuja above.

Madhvacharya does not comment on this verse.