Digest Number 838

[Guest guest]

As I understand it the 3 gunas are the qualities of the creation.

Rajas - activity - the word rage is derived from it

Tamas - rather like slothfulness

Sattwa - balance - the word satisfaction is derived from it.

It is said that the gunas are operating at all times in various combinations.

Shantanand Saraswati describes them thus :

Sattva is a very light guna, in two senses. It gives light to the individual and makes his heart very light - it always keeps him in a happy, steady, evolving blissful situation. Rajas activates he individual but the movement is too fast and he doesn't come to any peaceful and steady situation. Tamas brings sloth and laziness and binds everything together, so with Rajas and Tamas the energies of nature are being dissipated and spent.

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The creation is full of the three Gunas. Everything is evolved out of these three Gunas and nobody can escape them. What we can escape is the clamouring for them and once we have escaped clamouring for any of the Gunas things should be easy; but it would be impossible to hold on to one of them and leave the others. Every man, every action and every thing is full of the three Gunas. No-one can escape them and we have to work with them.

Attachment of any kind is bound to bring misery and bondage, so avoid attachment, even to Sattva.

To meditate is to be in Sattva, but after meditation when you take up any activity, you come into Rajas; when you go to sleep you have to come under Tamas. To be in the world, to live in this creation, one has to use Sattva for a certain period, Rajas and Tamas for certain periods. One should not think that because Sattva is better one should have it all the time. That would be impossible and against nature. If one sees that Sattva is good, one should attempt meditation with more feeling and attention compared with other activities.

The creation is full of this trinity of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. This is the primal factor. The same three forces are repeated throughout the creation to its grossest form. For example, knowledge, change and ignorance; creation, existence and dissolution; in grammar: first, second and third person, or masculine, feminine and neuter gender and so on. The pattern of three repeats right through creation from the first impulse to the very end. A discriminating man should be able to see more of it in every created form. But one thing must be kept in mind that, although these forces are working through the creation, there is another factor which only observes the coming and going of these forces reacting on each other.

from Good Company by Shantanand Saraswati pub. Vega (Chrysalis Books) 2002

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