The understanding that knows engagement and withdrawal, engagement being the path of action, the round of scripturally enjoined objects, a cause of bondage, and withdrawal being the path of renunciation, a cause of liberation; since 'bondage' and 'liberation' stand in the same sentence, engagement and withdrawal are understood as the paths of action and of renunciation; and that knows what is to be done and what is not, the enjoined and the prohibited, in worldly and in Vedic matters, that is, what is to be performed and what is not, by one whose understanding rests on scripture, for whom and with what regard to place, time, and the rest, in the case of actions with a seen or an unseen end; and that knows what is to be feared and what is not, the cause of fear such as a thief or a tiger, and of fearlessness, in matters seen and unseen; the understanding that knows bondage with its cause and liberation with its cause, Partha, is of sattva. Here knowledge is a function of the understanding, and the understanding is what has functions; constancy too is just a particular function of the understanding.

Engagement is the duty that is the means of prosperity; withdrawal is the duty that is the means of liberation; the understanding that knows those two as they truly are; and what is to be done and what is not, of all the classes settled in either the duty of engagement or the duty of withdrawal, the understanding that knows, in the particular conditions of place, time, and state, 'this is to be done, this is not to be done'; fear and fearlessness, the place of fear being the turning-away from scripture, and the place of fearlessness being conformity to it; bondage and release, the truth of transmigration and the truth of its ending; the understanding that knows these, that is the sattvic understanding.

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.