3.1.1 1. Two inseparable companions of fine plumage perch on the self-same tree. One of the two feeds on the delicious fruit. The other not tasting of it looks on.
3.1.2 On the self same tree, the Jiva drowned as it were and perplexed, grieves owing to helplessness. Hut when he sees the other, the lord who is worshipped by all, and his glory, lie becomes absolved from grief.
3.1. 5.This Atman within the body, resplendent and pure, can be reached by truth and tapas, by sound knowledge and by abstinence from sexual pleasures constantly practised; he is within the body, resplendent and pure; him, assiduous Sanyasins see, their faults removed.
3.1. 8. He is not grasped by the eye; nor by speech; nor by other senses; nor by tapas; nor by karma; when one’s mind is purified by the clearness of knowledge, then alone he sees the indivisible (Brahman) by contemplation.
3.1.2. He, who broods on and longs for objects of desire, is born there and there with such desires; but of him whose desires have been fulfilled and who has realised, the Atman, the desires end even here (in this world).
Shankara’s Commentary:
Com.—This text shows that the primary help to him who is desirous of emancipation is the renunciation of all desire. He who covets visible or invisible objects of desire, brooding on their virtues is born again and again with those desires of external objects which are incentive to the performance of good and bad deeds. Wherever his desires direct him to perform karma for the realisation of their objects, he is born with those self-same desires in those objects.
But of him who from a sound knowledge of the absolute truth has all his desires fulfilled, because the Atman is the object of his desire and whose Atman through knowledge has been made to assume its highest, i.e., true form by the removal of the lower form imposed on it by ignorance, all desires impelling him to do meritorious and sinful deeds are destroyed even while his body lasts.
The drift is that desires do not spring up, because the causes of their rising are destroyed.
3.2.3 This Atman cannot be attained by dint of study or intelligence or much hearing—whom he wishes to attain—by that it can be attained. To him this Atman reveals its true nature.