The Gunas of Nature
Insight into the functioning of our mind and the significance of sattva.
By Swami Durgananda
Reading time: 2 minutes
The Sanskrit term ‘guna’ is usually translated as ’quality.‘ The three gunas — sattva, rajas, and tamas — represent the characteristic parts and the substance at the basis of nature, prakriti. To attain liberation, we must transcend them as they are forms of avidya, ignorance. The gunas are the basis for identification with body and mind. The person who has left behind the three gunas is free from birth and death, decay and pain, and will attain self-knowledge.
The gunas manifest as sattva, rajas and tamas. Sattva represents purity, cleanliness, crystal, white. If a person is dominated by sattva, he or she exudes the light of wisdom and the power of discrimination. Pure and elevating thoughts and pure understanding are dominant in the mind of the person who turns away from sensual pleasures and toward knowledge.
However, it is possible to identify so strongly with sattva that attachment develops. At this point the sattvic person enjoys her or his own superiority and boasts about it.
For our spiritual development, it is most important to cultivate sattva in the overall thought pattern. Take for example driving a car: calmly and full of energy, fast but with control — that is what we mean by sattvic.
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Sattva when taking food means to eat unhurriedly and with pleasure, enjoying the taste and not to wolf down the food thoughtlessly. Sattvic means to continue a conversation calmly during a heated discussion; sattvic is the reaction of a surgeon who suddenly faces an unforeseen complication during an operation and reacts with control.
The principle applies to all ways of life. It also means to keep a sense of perspective and to remain calm, to approach something thoughtfully and to concern oneself with it until the matter is completed; it is this method which distinguishes a successful person.
Articles on the qualities of rajas and tamas will be published in the January and April issues of Om Yoga Magazine. Swami Durgananda, Yoga Acharya, is director of the European Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres.
Her practical and intuitive style of teaching is the result of intensive practice and over 50 years of teaching experience. She is the author of a commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and The Inner Path. Contact: Reith-office@sivananda.net
Om Magazine
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