Guna

These three modes have been given in the Sankhya system…the three names, sattva, rajas and tamas. Tamas is the principle and power of inertia; rajas is the principle of kinesis, passion, endeavour, struggle, initiation; sattwa the principle of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony.

Aurobindo provides the canonical Sankhya-Yoga definition of the three gunas as Nature’s fundamental qualitative modes and argues their primary significance is psychological and spiritual, not merely metaphysical.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis

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in all men there is in greater or less proportions a mingling of the gunas, a multiple personality and in most a good deal of shifting and alternation from the predominance of one to the prevalence of another guna

Aurobindo establishes that human character types — philosopher, warrior, inert masses — are determined by the proportional admixture and alternating dominance of the gunas in any individual’s nature.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis

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This is the guṇa that facilitates enlightenment. Therefore, the first aim of the Yoga taught in Patañjali’s Yoga-sūtras is to increase sattva, and thus gradually purge man’s nature of rajas and tamas.

Zimmer establishes sattva as the guna of spiritual clarity and the proximate goal of yogic practice, situating all three gunas within the cosmological framework of prakriti alongside their Jaina prefigurations.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951thesis

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mankind’s purer, more spiritual conceptions of the divinities originate where there is a predominance of sattva guṇa…wrathful, irascible, emotional views of God…spring from the impulses of rajas guṇa; while semidivine beings of malevolent character…are born of the darkness of tamas guṇa.

Zimmer extends the guna-framework into a theory of theological perception, arguing that the form in which the divine appears to any culture or individual is determined by the prevailing guna in their nature.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951thesis

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The theory of the three gunas tells us about the nature of our desires. When we have desires which require urgent satisfaction, none of us, no matter what we try to do, can divest ourselves of the belief that we are these desires.

Easwaran reads the guna-theory as a phenomenology of desire, arguing that identification with the gunas constitutes the fundamental error of conditioned selfhood.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis

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The energy of sattva and rajas is present in tamas, only it is locked up, potential. The more tamas is heated, the more power is released. As tamas melts, a tremendous stream of energy pours into our lives.

Easwaran offers a transformational dynamic of the gunas, proposing that tamas contains latent energy which, when activated through practice, advances the practitioner through rajas toward sattva.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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The lowest guna is tamas, the state of inertia…One of the interesting characteristics of our time is the belief that by dropping out of society and turning our back upon the world, we can become aware of the indivisible unity of all life.

Easwaran identifies tamas with passive withdrawal and insists the Gita explicitly rejects tamasic disengagement as a path toward spiritual unity.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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Tāmasic giving is that in which the gift is bestowed at an inappropriate place or time, from improper, wicked motives, or with contempt. ‘Desire (kāma), this furious, wrathful passion (krodha), which is born of the guṇa of violent action, is the great evil, the great hunger.’

Zimmer demonstrates the Gita’s application of the guna-triad to ethics and moral motivation, showing how each mode of action — including charity — is qualified as sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting

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The man is then sattwic, rajasic or tamasic or a mixture of these qualities and his temperament is only a sort of subtler soul-colour which has been given to the major prominent operation of these fixed modes of his nature.

Aurobindo maps the gunas onto personality as ‘soul-colour,’ distinguishing this outer temperamental conditioning from the deeper Purusha who is ultimately constrained by but not identical to Prakriti’s modes.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting

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He is the Ananta-guna, infinite quality and the infinite divine Personality which manifests itself through it.

Aurobindo introduces the concept of Ananta-guna — infinite quality — to describe the divine as the inexhaustible source from which all guna-combinations are drawn without being limited by them.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting

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he also had a powerful rajasic element which led him to experiment with psychoactive drugs…Wherever rajas is present like this, the Gita says, action is tainted to that extent.

Easwaran applies the rajasic category to the life of Aldous Huxley to illustrate how the guna of restless passion, however allied with intelligence, distorts moral influence and corrupts the fruits of action.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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building yourself up at someone else’s expense is partly rajasic, partly tamasic: rajas contributes the insecurity, tamas the insensitivity.

Easwaran uses the gunas analytically to diagnose interpersonal dysfunction, demonstrating that mixed guna-states rather than pure types characterize most harmful behavior.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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Sattvic science is characteristically pursued by individuals, but individual research is too idiosyncratic and too slow. Rajas wants fast results, and he needs results that pay.

Easwaran extends the guna-typology into a sociology of knowledge and institutional science, contrasting sattvic individual inquiry with the collectivized, instrumentalized character of rajasic research.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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tamasic people cannot get angry. It is not that they are forgiving; their desires are so feeble that if you thwart them, they shrug it off.

Easwaran offers a phenomenological portrait of tamas as affective deadness — the incapacity for desire, love, or anger — distinguishing it sharply from genuine detachment or equanimity.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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according to the classic Indian view, matter (prakṛti) [is constituted by the gunas — the three ‘constituents, powers, or qualities’ of prakṛti at which we glanced in our study of the leśyas of the Jainas]

Zimmer traces the philosophical genealogy of the guna-doctrine to non-Brahmanical sources in Jaina lesya theory, situating Sankhya’s three-guna analysis within a longer history of Indian psycho-cosmological categorization.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting

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These are demanding criteria. If you prescribe a lot of drugs, taking the path of least resistance to deal with some symptoms whose cause you hope will go away, you are not practicing sattvic medicine. The name of the proper guna begins with a T.

Easwaran applies the sattvic/tamasic distinction to medical practice, using the guna-framework as an ethical criterion for professional accountability and quality of care.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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The person who dies full of rajas, Krishna says, is born in a home where everybody is busy from morning till evening…nobody has enough time to sit still and cultivate the garden inside.

Easwaran invokes the Gita’s eschatological teaching on rebirth-conditions to illustrate the karmic consequences of dying in a predominantly rajasic state of mind.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975aside

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Another sign of rajas is restlessness, which is endemic in our modern civilization. Whenever you see someone who is restless, who travels around the world once a year or takes up one job after another, this may be a sign that he or she has real potential for meditation.

Easwaran reads rajas as the characteristic affliction of modernity — chronic restlessness and compulsive activity — while paradoxically identifying its excess energy as potential fuel for meditative transformation.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975aside

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