Of vain hopes: those whose hopes, whose expectations, are vain. So too of vain actions: whatever actions, such as the fire-oblation, are performed by them become vain, fruitless, because of their contempt for the Blessed Lord, their slighting of Him who is their own Self. So too of vain knowledge: their knowledge too is fruitless. They become bereft of discernment, devoid of discrimination. Further, they have taken to the demonic Nature, the disposition of the rākṣasas, and the asuric Nature, the deluding one, which holds the body to be the Self; resorting to it, they become given to such speech as 'cut', 'split', 'drink', 'eat', 'seize another's wealth', doers of cruel deeds, by the scripture 'demonic, indeed, are those worlds' (Īśā 3). But those who, full of faith, have set out on the path of liberation marked by devotion to the Blessed Lord.

Having resorted to the deluding nature, demonic and asuric, which conceals My being possessed of supreme compassion and the rest in My manhood, they are of vain hopes, their wishes vain, their wishes fruitless; of vain actions, their undertakings vain; of vain knowledge, fruitless in knowledge, since their knowledge is perverse with regard to all My things, moving and unmoving, and with regard to Me; mindless, in every matter without the knowledge of how things truly are. Holding Me, the Lord of all, to be equal to others, whatever they wish to do toward Me, whatever they undertake their works for, all of it becomes vain. This is the meaning.

Krishna states the fruit for them, with 'of vain hopes'. Those of vain hopes: nothing hoped for by the haters of the Lord is attained, and their works of sacrifice and the rest, and their knowledge, are equally vain. By no means at all, by devotion to Brahma, Rudra and the rest, is any human end of the world to come attained by them; that is the sense. He will say, 'those haters, cruel, the lowest of men, I cast into the cycles of transmigration' (16.19) and the like; and the Moksha-dharma says, 'he who, by act, mind or word, would hate the imperishable Vishnu, his fathers sink in hell for everlasting years; how should he who hates the God Narayana, Hari, the best of the wise, not be hateful to the self of every world?'. And the Shandilya branch of the Samaveda says, 'one who has supreme knowledge and devotion to Narayana, the lotus-seated and the rest, and one full of hatred toward Him, the lowest of all, there is none equal to that hater, the slayer of embryos and of endless beings'. As for the words 'Chaidya and the rest, the kings, through hatred' (Bhagavata 7.1.30) and 'the kings who held Him for a foe, Shishupala, Paundra, Shalva and the rest, by meditating on Him with their unprepared minds in the matters of His gait, His play, His glances and the rest, in lying down, sitting and so on, attained likeness to Him; what then of those whose minds were bound to Him in love?' (Bhagavata 11.5.48), these are spoken to make known that He prizes devotion, and for the sake of constant meditation and praise; for the Lord, even to a hater who was once His devotee and is a hater only by the force of a curse, gives the fruit of devotion itself. For Shishupala and the rest were devotees before, and haters only by the force of a curse; this is known from the telling of the curse of their attendant-hood, which is preceded by a question about it; otherwise, why would that, which is not the topic, be spoken? And the statement of likeness to the Lord is meant to make known that, even to haters, He gives only the fruit of their former devotion, without regard to their hatred. He will say, 'My devotee does not perish' (9.31). Nor is there a conflict with 'the disposition is the cause of the becoming' and the like, for it is fitting that for those whose disposition is hatred there should be only hatred; otherwise the unwished result would follow, that even haters of the teacher should attain teacher-hood. Nor is there a special exemption for those of unprepared mind, since the sin of those very ones, Hiranyakashipu and the rest, is recorded: 'Hiranyakashipu too, by reviling the Lord, was about to enter the darkness, but passed beyond it through the power of his son Prahlada' (Bhagavata 4.21.47); and from Prahlada's begging a boon of the Lord, from 'in that my father reviled you' onward to 'therefore let my father be purified of that hard-to-cross, hard-to-end sin' (Bhagavata 7.10.15-17). In many texts there is the prohibition of hating Him; the statement of likeness is made only in a few places, and the prohibition is stated in the very place where the likeness is told. The conflict with the great purport has been told before. Sentences that have reasoning behind them are stronger than those that lack it, and the reasonings have been given; the others have no recourse at all. And even where two sentences are on a level, the one in keeping with the world is the stronger, and what is in keeping with the world is His prizing of devotion, not the other. Their devotee-hood has been told, 'I think the gods to be the Bhagavatas, who, toward the Lord of the three, had their minds set on the path of wrath' (Bhagavata 3.1.24) and the like. Therefore it is established that the haters of the Lord have no recourse at all. Krishna states the cause of the hatred, with 'a rakshasic nature'.