Guṇa Traya Vibhāg Yog
Yoga of Discriminating the Three Gunas
Chapter Theme
This chapter explains the three basic qualities (guṇas) that shape our mind and actions: sattva (purity and clarity), rajas (activity and desire), and tamas (inertia and ignorance). It shows how these qualities bind the soul to the cycle of action and reaction.
Krishna teaches how each guṇa affects behavior, thought, and spiritual progress. Sattva brings knowledge and peace, rajas drives ambition and restlessness, and tamas leads to confusion and sloth.
The soul itself is separate from these gunas. True freedom comes when one understands the gunas and rises above them, not by identifying with them.
The chapter offers practical ways to reduce the influence of the gunas: steady practice, self-control, right knowledge, and surrender to the Supreme. Liberation is described as the state where the gunas fall away and the soul rests in its true nature.
Key Teachings
- The three gunas—sattva, rajas, tamas—determine our temperament and actions.
- Even sattva, though good, can bind if one clings to its results; the goal is to transcend all three.
- The soul is distinct from the gunas; self-knowledge frees one from their grip.
- Spiritual practice, disciplined living, and surrender help lift the seeker beyond the gunas.
Life Application
- Notice which guna dominates your mind today and adjust habits: reduce tamasic laziness, calm rajasic restlessness, and cultivate pure sattvic habits without attachment.
- Use simple practices—regular meditation, balanced diet, disciplined routine, and selfless work—to weaken unhealthy patterns and build clarity.
- Aim for detachment: do your duty with care but without clinging to outcomes, and practice surrender to something larger than the ego.
Reflection Question
Which of the three gunas most influences my choices right now, and what small step can I take to change it?
Verses in this Chapter
The Blessed Lord said, "I will again declare to thee that supreme knowledge, the best of all knowledge, having known which all the sages have gone to supreme perfection after this life."
Those who, having taken refuge in this knowledge, have attained unity with Me, are neither born at the time of creation nor disturbed at the time of dissolution.
My womb is the great Brahma; in it I place the germ; thence, O Arjuna, is the birth of all beings. Whatever forms are produced, O Arjuna, in any womb whatsoever, the great Brahma is their womb, and I am the seed-giving father.
These qualities, O Arjuna, born of Nature, bind fast in the body of the embodied, the indestructible: purity, passion, and inertia.
Of these, sattva, which is luminous and healthy due to its stainlessness, binds one by attachment to happiness and knowledge, O sinless one.
Know, O Arjuna, that Rajas is of the nature of passion, the source of thirst and attachment; it binds fast the embodied one by attachment to action.
But know thou Tamas to be born of ignorance, deluding all embodied beings; it binds fast, O Arjuna, through heedlessness, indolence, and sleep.
Sattva attaches to happiness, Rajas to action, O Arjuna, while Tamas, verily shrouding knowledge, attaches to heedlessness.
Now, O Arjuna, Sattva prevails, having overpowered Rajas and Tamas; then Rajas, having overpowered Sattva and Tamas; and then Tamas, having overpowered Sattva and Rajas.
When the wisdom-light shines through every gate of this body, then it may be known that Sattva is predominant. Greed, activity, the undertaking of actions, restlessness, and longing—these arise when Rajas is predominant, O Arjuna. Darkness, inertia, carelessness, and delusion—these arise when Tamas is predominant, O Arjuna.
If the embodied one meets death when Sattva is predominant, then they attain the spotless worlds of the knowers of the Highest. Meeting death in Rajas, he is born among those who are attached to action; and dying in Tamas, he is born in the womb of the thoughtless.
They say that the fruit of good action is Sattvic and pure; indeed, the fruit of Rajas is pain, and the fruit of Tamas is ignorance.
From Sattva arises knowledge, and greed from Rajas; heedlessness and delusion arise from Tamas, and also ignorance.
Those seated in Sattva ascend; those of Rajasic nature dwell in the middle; and those of Tamasic nature, abiding in the function of the lowest Guna, descend.
When the seer beholds no agent other than the Gunas and knows that which is higher than them, he attains to My Being.
The embodied one, having crossed beyond these three Gunas from which the body is evolved, is freed from birth, death, decay, and pain, and attains immortality.
Arjuna said, "What are the marks of one who has transcended the three qualities, O Lord? What is their conduct, and how do they go beyond these three qualities?"
The Blessed Lord said, "When light, activity, and delusion are present, he does not hate them, nor does he long for them when they are absent. He who, seated like one unconcerned, is not moved by the dualities, and who, knowing that the dualities are active, is self-centered and does not move.
Who is the same in pleasure and pain, who dwells in the Self, to whom a clod of earth, a stone, and gold are all alike, who is the same to the dear and the unfriendly, who is firm, and to whom censure and praise are one and the same. Who is the same in honor and dishonor, the same to friend and foe, abandoning all undertakings, he is said to have transcended the dualities.
And he who serves Me with unwavering devotion, he, crossing beyond the dualities, is fit for becoming Brahman.
For I am the abode of Brahman, the immortal, immutable, and everlasting Dharma, and absolute bliss.