Commentarial tradition approaches the Udāna as both a record of inspired utterances and a tightly woven part of the larger Theravāda doctrinal fabric. The verses are never treated in isolation: each is framed by an elaborate background narrative that explains the events, persons, and mental states that gave rise to the Buddha’s exclamation. In this way, the verse becomes the distilled insight at the climax of a specific situation, and the Buddha’s words are read as a compassionate response to the spiritual needs of particular listeners. Commentators also pay close attention to the Buddha’s inner joy, compassion, or realization at such moments, understanding the udāna as an overflow of awakened experience.

Alongside this narrative framing, the commentaries work systematically to embed the Udāna within established doctrine. Brief and often poetic lines are unpacked with reference to standard categories such as the four noble truths, dependent origination, the aggregates, and the unconditioned nibbāna. Famous passages that speak of the “unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned” are explicitly identified as referring to nibbāna, treated as a real, unconditioned dhamma outside the five aggregates and knowable through supramundane realization. Verses that might appear paradoxical or radical are interpreted as descriptions of the cessation of craving, views, and continued existence, rather than as nihilistic denials of meaning.

A further strand of interpretation is philological and ethical. Commentators carefully gloss key terms and images—such as “island,” “far shore,” or “freedom from proliferation”—and relate them to familiar doctrinal and simile traditions found elsewhere in the canon. At the same time, they draw out the moral and practical implications of each story: praise of renunciation, sense restraint, mindfulness, solitude, contentment, and meditative absorption is made explicit. The Udāna thus becomes a manual of conduct and contemplation, where each inspired verse both illuminates a doctrinal point and offers concrete guidance for practice.

Taken together, these approaches reveal a consistent hermeneutic: the Udāna is read as concise, luminous expressions of core Buddhist teaching, always anchored in specific narrative circumstances yet fully harmonized with the wider Theravāda corpus. The commentaries present its verses as pedagogical tools—condensed wisdom suitable for memorization and reflection—while ensuring that their poetic symbolism remains firmly tethered to the established understanding of suffering, its cessation, and the path leading to that cessation.