Bhashya
तस्य एवमकामयमानस्य कर्माभावे गमनकारणाभावात् प्राणा वागादयः, नोत्क्रामन्ति नोर्ध्वं क्रामन्ति देहात् ।स च विद्वान् आप्तकामः आत्मकामतया इहैव ब्रह्मभूतः ।सर्वात्मनो हि ब्रह्मणः दृष्टान्तत्वेन प्रदर्शितम् एतद्रूपम्— 'तद्वा अस्यैतदाप्तकाममकामं रूपम्' इति ; तस्य हि दार्ष्टान्तिकभूतोऽयमर्थ उपसंह्रियते— अथाकामयमान इत्यादिना ।स कथमेवंभूतो मुच्यत इत्युच्यते— यो हि सुषुप्तावस्थमिव निर्विशेषमद्वैतम् अलुप्तचिद्रूपज्योतिःस्वभावम् आत्मानं पश्यति, तस्यैव अकामयमानस्य कर्माभावे गमनकारणाभावात् प्राणा वागादयो नोत्क्रामन्ति ।किंतु विद्वान्सः इहैव ब्रह्म, यद्यपि देहवानिव लक्ष्यते ; स ब्रह्मैव सन् ब्रह्म अप्येति ।यस्मात् न हि तस्य अब्रह्मत्वपरिच्छेदहेतवः कामाः सन्ति, तस्मात् इहैव ब्रह्मैव सन् ब्रह्म अप्येति न शरीरपातोत्तरकालम् ।न हि विदुषो मृतस्य भावान्तरापत्तिः जीवतोऽन्यः भावः, देहान्तरप्रतिसंधानाभावमात्रेणैव तु ब्रह्माप्येतीत्युच्यते ।भावान्तरापत्तौ हि मोक्षस्य सर्वोपनिषद्विवक्षितोऽर्थः आत्मैकत्वाख्यः स बाधितो भवेत् ; कर्महेतुकश्च मोक्षः प्राप्नोति, न ज्ञाननिमित्त इति ; 'स चानिष्टः ; अनित्यत्वं च मोक्षस्य प्राप्नोति ; न हि क्रियानिर्वृत्तः अर्थः नित्यो दृष्टः ; नित्यश्च मोक्षोऽभ्युपगम्यते, 'एष नित्यो महिमा' इति मन्त्रवर्णात् ।न च स्वाभाविकात् स्वभावात् अन्यत् नित्यं कल्पयितुं शक्यम् ।स्वाभाविकश्चेत् अग्न्युष्णवत् आत्मनः स्वभावः, स न शक्यते पुरुषव्यापारानुभावीति वक्तुम् ; न हि अग्नेरौष्ण्यं प्रकाशो वा अग्निव्यापारानन्तरानुभावी ; अग्निव्यापारानुभावी स्वाभाविकश्चेति विप्रतिषिद्धम् ।ज्वलनव्यापारानुभावित्वम् उष्णप्रकाशयोरिति चेत्, न, अन्योपलब्धिव्यवधानापगमाभिव्यक्त्यपेक्षत्वात् ; ज्वलनादिपूर्वकम् अग्निः उष्णप्रकाशगुणाभ्यामभिव्यज्यते, तत् न अग्न्यपेक्षया ; किं तर्हि अन्यदृष्टेः अग्नेरौष्ण्यप्रकाशौ धर्मौ व्यवहितौ, कस्यचिद्दृष्ट्या तु असंबंध्यमानौ, ज्वलनापे-क्षया व्यवधानापगमे दृष्टेरभिव्यज्येते ; तदपेक्षया भ्रान्तिरु-पजायते-- ज्वलनपूर्वकौ एतौ उष्णप्रकाशौ धर्मौ जाता-विति ।यदि उष्णप्रकाशयोरपि स्वाभाविकत्वं न स्यात्- यः स्वाभाविकोऽग्नेर्धर्मः, तमुदाहरिष्यामः ; न च स्वाभाविको धर्म एव नास्ति पदार्थानामिति शक्यं वक्तुम् ॥
In plain words
For someone who no longer wants anything, there is no action left to drive him anywhere, so nothing carries his breath and his organs — speech and the rest — out and upward through the body. They simply stay. A person who knows this, whose only desire was the Self itself, has already, right here, become brahman. Earlier the text pointed to exactly this as an image of the one Self of everything: 'This is what he looks like, this one whose every desire is fulfilled, who wants for nothing.' Now it draws the actual case together, in the phrase 'one who has stopped desiring.' And how is someone like this set free? Like this: the one who sees the Self as it really is — undivided, without a second, the way it is in deep dreamless sleep, nothing but the unbroken light of awareness itself — that very person, wanting nothing, has no action left and so nothing to drive his breath out of his body. He is brahman right here, even though from the outside he still looks like someone with a body. Already brahman, he simply merges into brahman. He has no desires left that could mark him off as something less than brahman — so he is brahman right now, not at some later moment after his body falls away. When a knower dies, nothing new happens to him that didn't already apply to him living: 'he attains brahman' means nothing more than that he does not pick up another body. If death actually produced some new state, the entire point every Upanishad is making — that the Self is one, without a second — would collapse; liberation would then be the product of action, not of knowledge, and that is unacceptable. It would also make liberation temporary, because nothing an action produces ever lasts, while scripture calls liberation eternal: 'this glory is eternal.' And nothing can be eternal except what already belongs to a thing's own nature. If freedom is simply the Self's own nature — the way heat belongs to fire — then it cannot possibly be something that shows up only after a person makes an effort. Fire's heat and its light are not produced the instant the fire acts; to say they both come right out of the fire's activity and are also natural to it is a plain contradiction. Someone might say: heat and light only 'become evident' once burning happens. Fine — but that is simply because someone else's perception was in the way, and burning removes that obstruction; it is not that burning produces them. Fire, once burning starts, becomes visible through its heat and light — but that visibility isn't what makes the fire what it is. What actually happens is this: heat and light were there all along as fire's own properties, just unconnected to a particular observer's awareness; once burning clears the obstruction, that observer's perception catches up, and only then does it look, mistakenly, as if the burning had produced them. If you insist that even heat and light aren't natural to fire, then show us what is — because you cannot claim that nothing has a nature of its own.
Close to the Sanskrit
Of him who is thus without desire, since there is no action, and therefore no cause for departure, the vital breaths — speech and the rest — do not depart; they do not go upward out of the body. And that knower, having attained all his desires, is, by making the Self alone his desire, brahman itself, right here. For, as an illustration of brahman as the Self of all, this very form was shown earlier: 'That indeed is this form of his, of one whose desire is attained, who is without desire' — thus it was said; and it is the corresponding case for that illustration which is now being summed up, by the passage beginning 'now, one without desire' and so on. How does one who has become such attain release? — this is now explained: he who sees the Self as free of distinction, non-dual, like the state of deep sleep, whose nature is the unceasing light of pure consciousness — of that very one, being without desire, since there is no action and no cause for departure, the vital breaths — speech and the rest — do not depart. Rather, that knower is brahman right here, even though he appears as embodied; being brahman itself, he attains brahman. Because he has no desires that would be causes for limiting him as not-brahman, therefore, right here, being brahman itself, he attains brahman — not at a time after the falling of the body. For the dead knower's attainment of a different state is not a state different from that of the living one; it is said that he 'attains brahman' by the mere absence of taking up another body, and by nothing more. For if there were an attainment of a different state, then the meaning that all the Upanishads intend regarding liberation — namely, the oneness of the Self — would be contradicted; and liberation would come to be caused by action, not brought about by knowledge — and that would be undesirable; and impermanence would then attach to liberation, for a thing produced by an action is never observed to be permanent; yet liberation is accepted as permanent, on the authority of the Vedic wording, 'this glory is eternal.' And it is not possible to conceive of anything permanent other than what is natural, one's own inherent nature. If that freedom, like the heat of fire, is the Self's natural condition, then it cannot be said to be something dependent on, and following, a person's effort; for indeed neither the heat of fire nor its light immediately follows upon the fire's own activity; to say that they follow upon fire's activity and are yet natural is self-contradictory. If it be objected that heat and light 'follow upon the activity of burning' in that sense — no, because that is due only to a dependence on the removal of an obstruction caused by another perception; fire, preceded by burning and the like, becomes manifest through the two qualities heat and light — that does not depend on fire itself; rather, because of another's perception, the two properties heat and light of the fire were kept obscured, unconnected in some perceiver's perception, and, through the agency of burning, they become manifest to that perception only when the obstruction is removed; and, depending on that, the mistaken notion arises that these two properties, heat and light, were produced, preceded by the burning. If it is claimed that even heat and light are not themselves natural — then let them point out to us whatever property of fire is natural; and it cannot be said that no natural property whatsoever exists for things.