Chapter 63
Act without doing,
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small steps.
The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty,
she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.
Audio of the Meeting
- June 26, 2016: Part One, Click Here>>
- July 3, 2016: Part Two, Click Here>>
Explanation of the Three Gunas: Sattva, Rajas & Tamas
The three gunas -
- sattva, or illumination and truth,
- rajas, or passion and desire, and
- tamas, or darkness, sloth, and dullness -
were orignially thought by the ancient Indian philosophers who first identified and named them, to be substances. Later they became attributes of the psyche.
Sattva is also intelligence, rajas is movement, and tamas is obstruction. The word guna means "strand" or "rope" and our inborn nature is conceived as a cord woven from the three gunas. They chain down the soul to thought and matter. They can exist in different proportions in a single being, determining his mental ourlook and his actions.
A man whose nature is dominated by sattva will be clear-thinking, radiant and truthful. A man whose nature is dominated by rajas will be passionate, quick to anger, and greedy. A man whose nature is dominated by tamas will be stupid, lazy, and stubborn. But most men will be found to have elements of gunas different from their dominating ones, i.e., to be motivated by a combination of gunas.
The aim of the upward-reaching Self is to transcend the gunas, break free of their bondage, and attain liberation.
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 18
Listen as I describe
the three kinds of understanding
and the three kinds of will, according
to the guna that prevails in each.
The understanding that knows
what to do and what not to,
safety and danger, bondage
and liberation, is sattvic.
Rajasic understanding
fails to know right from wrong,
when from when not to act,
what should from what should not be done.
Understanding is tamasic
when, thickly covered in darkness,
it imagines that wrong is right
and sees the world upside down.
The unswerving will that controls
the functions of mind, breath, senses
by the practice of meditation ---
this kind of will is sattvic.
Rajasic will is attached
to duty, sensual pleasures,
power, and wealth, with anxiety
and a constant desire for results.
That will is called tamasic
by which a stupid man keeps
clinging to grief and fear,
to torpor, depression, and conceit
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