As a kindled fire, well kindled and blazing, reduces its fuel, the firewood, to ashes, O Arjuna, so the fire of knowledge, knowledge itself being the fire, reduces all actions to ashes, makes them seedless. The fire of knowledge cannot directly, like firewood, burn actions to ash; the meaning is that the right vision is the cause of all actions becoming seedless. By its force, the action by which the body has been begun, since its fruit has already set in, is exhausted only by being enjoyed; but all actions done before the arising of knowledge and not yet bearing fruit, and those done alongside knowledge, and those done in countless past births, all these the fire of knowledge reduces to ash. Since it is so, therefore.

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

As a fully kindled fire reduces a heap of fuel to ashes, so the fire that is knowledge of the truth of the self reduces to ashes the heap of the many karmas, set going from beginningless time, that cling to the individual self.

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.