Bhagavad Gita Chapter 14: Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga, Sattva Rajas Tamas

Chapter 14 is a science of human nature. Nature is made of three gunas: sattva (light, calm, knowledge), rajas (movement, desire, restlessness) and tamas (darkness, inertia, confusion). Everyone has all three in shifting proportions. Recognising them is the first step to understanding and changing oneself.

Verses 1 to 4: the father of all

"I will tell you again the supreme knowledge, the highest of all knowledge, knowing which all the sages reached perfection. Those who take refuge in it and attain my nature are not born at creation nor troubled at dissolution."

"My womb is the great Brahman, primal nature; in it I place the seed, and from it all beings are born. 'Sarva yonishu kaunteya murtayah sambhavanti yah, tasam brahma mahad yonir aham bija pradah pita': whatever forms are born in any womb, son of Kunti, nature is their mother and I am the father who gives the seed (14.4)."

Verses 5 to 8: how the three gunas bind

Sattvam rajas tama iti gunah prakriti sambhavah
nibadhnanti mahabaho dehe dehinam avyayam (14.5)

Meaning: Sattva, rajas and tamas, the gunas born of nature, bind the imperishable self to the body, mighty-armed one.

• Sattva: pure, illuminating and free from disorder, it binds by attachment to happiness and knowledge.
• Rajas: of the nature of passion, born of craving and attachment, it binds by attachment to action.
• Tamas: born of ignorance and deluding all, it binds by carelessness, laziness and sleep.

Verses 9 to 13: which guna is rising

Sattva attaches to happiness, rajas to action, and tamas, veiling knowledge, to carelessness. Sattva rises by overpowering rajas and tamas; rajas by overpowering sattva and tamas; tamas by overpowering sattva and rajas.

• When the light of knowledge shines through all the gates of the body, know that sattva has grown.
• Greed, activity, selfish undertakings, restlessness and craving arise when rajas grows.
• Darkness of mind, inertia, carelessness and delusion arise when tamas grows.

Verses 14 to 18: the results of the gunas

One who dies when sattva prevails reaches the pure worlds of the wise. One who dies in rajas is born among those attached to action; one who dies in tamas is born among the deluded. The fruit of good action is pure and sattvic, of rajas sorrow, of tamas ignorance.

"From sattva arises knowledge, from rajas greed, and from tamas carelessness, delusion and ignorance (14.17)." Those in sattva rise upward, the rajasic stay in the middle, and the tamasic, in the lowest guna, go downward.

Verses 19 and 20: beyond the gunas

When the seer sees no doer other than the gunas and knows what is beyond them, they attain my being. Going beyond these three gunas, which are the source of the body, the embodied one is freed from birth, death, old age and sorrow and attains immortality.

Verses 21 to 25: marks of one beyond the gunas

Arjuna asks: "Lord, what are the marks of one who has gone beyond the three gunas? How do they behave, and how do they cross beyond them?"

Krishna says:

• One who does not resent illumination, activity or delusion when they arise, nor long for them when they cease;
• who sits as one unconcerned, undisturbed by the gunas, knowing "the gunas are acting", and stays steady;
• who is the same in pleasure and pain, rests in the self, regards a clod, a stone and gold alike, is even towards the pleasant and unpleasant, firm, the same in blame and praise;
• who is the same in honour and dishonour, to friend and foe, and has given up all selfish undertakings, is said to have gone beyond the gunas.

Verses 26 and 27: devotion is the way

"One who serves me with unwavering devotion goes beyond the gunas and becomes fit to be one with Brahman (14.26). For I am the abode of Brahman, the immortal and imperishable, of eternal dharma and of perfect bliss (14.27)."

What this chapter teaches

• Watch your day: when the mind is calm and clear (sattva), restless (rajas), dull (tamas). Recognising this is the start of change.
• Sattvic food, good company, regular sleep and good books increase sattva.
• Even attachment to goodness binds; the goal is to rise above the gunas.
• Steady devotion is the ladder by which the three gunas are crossed.