Commentary on the Bhagavadgita : 15- Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, January 16, 2022. 7:00.PM

Discourse 41

The Fourteenth Chapter: Rising Above the Three Gunas

POST-15.

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When sattva has the upper hand in us, we feel satisfied, contented, relieved, and happy. 

Rajah karmani bharata : When rajas is preponderating, we feel like getting up and doing this work and that work, and never want to sit quiet. This is what rajas does. 

Jjnanam avrtya tu tamah pramade samjayatyuta : When tamas is predominating, we have no idea as to what to do and what not to do. 

There is confusion about the pros and cons of things. There is no proper judgment as to the way any step has to be taken in a given direction; and even if some step is taken, it will be a wrong step and it will end in some fumbling and catastrophic conclusion. This is what tamas does. Sattva leads to happiness and satisfaction, rajas to intense activity, and tamas to ignorance and inability to decide what is proper and what is improper.

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Rajas tamas cabhibhuya sattvam bhavati bharata, rajah sattvam tamas caiva tamah sattvam rajas tatha (14.10): 

No particular guna can be operating always in any person. They have a cyclic movement, as it were. Partly due to their fickleness and partly due to some karmas that a person has done in a previous birth, certain gunas operate for a shorter period or a longer period; but no guna can operate continuously throughout the life of a person. There is a coming and going of the gunas.

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When sattva rises up into action, it suppresses rajas and tamas for the time being. When rajas rises into action, it suppresses sattva and tamas. When tamas is predominant, it suppresses rajas and sattva. It does not mean that the suppressed qualities are destroyed. They are only made inoperative for the time being on account of the vehemence of the activity of a particular guna. Why they should be so very predominant at a particular time in the case of an individual is difficult to explain except in terms of the karmas of the past, because in some cases a guna may be there for a fraction of a moment, or it may there for days. But why this difference? This has to be attributed only to the deserts of the individual in terms of what one has done in the previous birth. Anyway, the principle behind the operation of the three gunas is that when one is active, the other two are inactive.

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Sarvadvaresu dehesmin prakasa upajanate, jnanaṁ yada tada vidyad vivrddham sattvam ityuta (14.11): 

When all the sense organs release in a kind of radiance, as it were, there is brightness in the face, there is a kind of composure in the personality of an individual, and there is a kind of calm and quiet aura around that person. If this is recognised in any individual, we must conclude that sattva is predominant in that person. There will be sparkling of the eyes, clarity of perception, radiance of the face, and perspicuity even in speaking and expression.

To be continued ...

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