He utterly casts off, wholly relinquishes, all desires, the various forms of longing, that have entered the mind, the heart, O Pārtha. With the casting-off of all desires, since there is then no cause for satisfaction and only the body remains to be maintained, one might expect activity like that of a madman or a heedless man; so He says: content in the Self alone, in the inmost Self, by his own self, without depending on any outward gain, content through the gaining of the nectar-savour of the vision of the supreme reality and having had enough of everything else, the knower in whom the insight born of the discernment of self and not-self stands firm is then said to be of settled insight. He is a renouncer who has given up the longing for sons, wealth and worlds, taking his delight and his play in the Self. Further.

The Blessed Lord spoke. When a man, content in the self alone by the mind that rests on the self alone, by that contentment utterly gives up all the desires within the mind other than the self, then he is called a man of steady wisdom. This is the summit of the standing in knowledge. Next is told the state, lower than that, the not-far-removed state of one settled in knowledge.

Since the activity of moving about and the rest is not preceded by any strong intention, being like the activity prompted by sense-objects, Krishna, who will display this with 'what is night for all beings' (2.69) and the rest, first states the mark here. The intention behind the question is, being thus filled with the supreme bliss, why does he engage in activity at all? With the thought that for one whose Brahman-nature is slightly veiled by the action that has begun to bear fruit a residual tendency, an activity prompted by slight intention, may well arise, Krishna removes the difficulty. The man of knowledge gives up all desires for the most part, since even in Suka and others a slight trace is seen; and as the text says, 'the men of knowledge, the seers of truth, desire devotion to your feet', so they do desire that. When a clinging is seen in Indra and the rest, then they have been overpowered, as it is said, 'in the men who hold office, by reason of their great work, there is a rising and an overpowering even in knowledge; therein they differ from the rest'. For this very reason it is to be understood that, owing to that difference, if clinging and the like are present in those who hold no such office, they are not men of knowledge. Nor is the mark here stated of one who is engaged in samadhi, for attachment is denied in 'he who has no fondness anywhere' (2.57) and the like. For one engaged in samadhi there is no attaining of the welcome or the unwelcome, in the case of objectless samadhi; in samadhi with an object there is no such conflict, yet there is no rule that the mark holds only there. As the tradition says, 'desires and the rest do not arise even in men of knowledge whose minds are scattered, since their stains are shaken off by knowledge, through their resort to God'. Desires lie in the mind, and so Krishna shows, with 'those that lie in the mind', that it is fitting they be given up there, in the mind itself, once the knowledge that runs counter to them arises. That conflict is stated in 'even the taste turns away from him when he has seen the Supreme' (2.59); and this is not to be explained away on the ground that it is not seen, because persons differ. 'By the self' means by the supreme Self; being established in the supreme Self alone, contentment comes to one who stands in that which is called the Self, by His grace alone, as the Narayana-rama-kalpa says, 'having given up the objects, for one who then takes his stand in Rama, contentment comes from God, and in no other way at all'. So the self here is not the living being.