Chapter 14
Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga
Yoga through Understanding the Three Modes of Material Nature · 27 verses
This chapter is traditionally treasured as the Gita's account of the three gunas, the strands of nature, and the title means the yoga of dividing them. Guna means a basic quality of prakriti, which is nature, the material ground of the world.
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Krishna says he places a seed into nature, the womb of all beings, so every birth is the joint work of nature and the Lord. Three gunas run through everything: sattva, which is clarity and calm; rajas, which is restless drive and craving; and tamas, which is dullness and delusion. Each binds the self that wears a body, though the self in its own nature stays untouched. Krishna gives the marks of each guna, how each shapes action, and where each carries a person at death. He then describes the one who has crossed beyond all three. Such a person stays even in pleasure and pain, in praise and blame, watching nature move without being pulled in. This is steadiness, not coldness. The means to cross over is unswerving devotion to Krishna. The chapter closes by naming Krishna as the ground of Brahman, the deathless, and unbroken happiness. On what reaching that goal finally is, whether full identity with the supreme or an abiding likeness near a personal Lord, the schools genuinely differ; Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, Shuddhadvaita, and Bhakti each read it in their own way.
- 1Krishna said: I will explain once more the supreme knowledge, the best of all knowledge. Knowing it, all the sages have passed from here to the highest perfection.
- 2Those who take refuge in this knowledge come to share my own nature. They are not born when creation begins, and they do not suffer when it dissolves.
- 3The great Brahman is my womb. In it I place the seed. From that, Arjuna, all beings are born.
- 4Whatever forms are born from any womb, Arjuna, the great Brahman is their womb, and I am the father who gives the seed.
- 5Goodness, passion, and ignorance: these are the qualities born of Nature. They bind the imperishable embodied self to the body, Arjuna.
- 6Of these, goodness is pure, and so it gives light and is free of disease. It binds through attachment to happiness and attachment to knowledge, sinless one.
- 7Know that passion is made of longing, born of thirst and attachment. It binds the embodied self through attachment to action, Arjuna.
- 8Know that ignorance is born of unknowing and deludes all the embodied. It binds through negligence, laziness, and sleep, Arjuna.
- 9Goodness binds one to happiness, Arjuna, and passion to action. Ignorance veils knowledge and binds one to negligence.
- 10Goodness rises by overpowering passion and ignorance, Arjuna. Passion rises by overpowering goodness and ignorance. And ignorance rises by overpowering goodness and passion.
- 11When the light of knowledge shines through all the gates of this body, then know that goodness has grown strong.
- 12Greed, activity, the undertaking of actions, restlessness, and craving: these arise when passion grows strong, Arjuna.
- 13When tamas dominates, these arise: lack of light, inertia, negligence, and delusion.
- 14When the embodied self dies while sattva is dominant, it reaches the pure worlds of those who know the highest.
- 15Dying while rajas dominates, one is born among people attached to action. Dying while tamas dominates, one is born in the wombs of the deluded.
- 16They say the fruit of good action is pure, born of sattva. The fruit of rajas is pain. The fruit of tamas is ignorance.
- 17From sattva arises knowledge. From rajas, greed. From tamas arise negligence, delusion, and ignorance.
- 18Those settled in sattva rise upward. Those given to rajas stay in the middle. Those given to tamas, caught in the lowest quality, go downward.
- 19When the seer sees no agent other than the qualities, and knows what is beyond the qualities, that one attains My nature.
- 20Having transcended these three qualities, which give rise to the body, the embodied self is freed from birth, death, old age, and sorrow, and attains immortality.
- 21Arjuna said: By what signs is one known who has gone beyond these three qualities? How does such a person act? How does one transcend these three qualities?
- 22Krishna said: He does not hate light, activity, or delusion when they arise, nor does he long for them when they cease.
- 23He sits like one indifferent, unmoved by the qualities. Knowing that it is only the qualities that act, he stays firm and does not waver.
- 24He is the same in sorrow and happiness, settled in the Self. A clod, a stone, and gold are alike to him. The pleasant and the unpleasant are the same. He is steady. Praise and blame are the same to him.
- 25The same in honor and dishonor, the same toward friend and foe, having renounced all undertakings: such a one is said to have gone beyond the gunas.
- 26And the one who serves Me with unswerving devotion goes beyond these gunas and becomes fit for Brahman.
- 27For I am the ground of Brahman, the immortal and changeless, the eternal dharma, and absolute bliss.