No quality rules alone; each rises only by pressing the other two down.
Sattva, rajas, and tamas trade the lead in a perpetual rotation, and the commentarial record on this verse is itself uneven, rich in places, honestly silent in two.
Sattva rises to rule by overpowering rajas and tamas, Arjuna. Rajas rises by overpowering sattva and tamas. And tamas rises by overpowering sattva and rajas.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just named the three gunas and said that whichever one grows strong enough can bind a person to its own character. Now he explains how any one of them actually gets strong: not on its own, but always at the expense of the other two.
The teaching
Sattva comes to rule by overpowering rajas and tamas together. Rajas comes to rule by overpowering sattva and tamas together. Tamas comes to rule by overpowering sattva and rajas together. None of the three stands alone; each becomes dominant only in relation to holding the other two down, and none of the three holds the field forever. One is uppermost for a time, the other two lying suppressed beneath it, and then, as conditions shift, the balance turns and a different guna takes the lead. Whichever guna has risen sets its own characteristic work in motion at once: sattva's rising brings knowledge and happiness, rajas's rising brings action and craving, tamas's rising brings the veiling of knowledge, heedlessness, and sleep. You do not see the rising directly. You see it in its fruit. Sridhara, whose comment on this verse is unusually precise, names what tips the balance in the first place: the soul's own ripening merit, carried from its past action, is what permits sattva to overcome the other two, and the same logic explains the rise of rajas or tamas in their turn. Ramanuja adds a second cause working alongside the first, the unevenness of the food that nourishes the body, so that the rotation, while never arbitrary, is also never sealed off from what a person does and eats in the present. Not every voice in the commentarial tradition speaks equally at this verse. Two of the six acaryas usually gathered here, Madhva and Abhinavagupta, are recorded as having left no comment addressed to 14.10 specifically, Madhva none at all, Abhinavagupta's remark folded entirely into his treatment of the verse before. That silence is kept honest here rather than papered over with invented doctrine in their names.
The doubt that rises
If a guna's rise is rooted in ripening karma and even in food, how much of what rules you right now was ever truly yours to choose, and how much was simply waiting to come due?
Where the paths divide
A brief, functional reading tying mechanism to fruit.
Shankara's surviving comment here is short: whichever guna overcomes the other two at once begins its own characteristic work, sattva's being knowledge and happiness, rajas's being action and craving, tamas's being the veiling of knowledge. He adds nothing further distinct to this verse, letting it serve as a plain hinge between what has been said about the gunas' nature and what is about to be said about their marks.
The embodied self's fluctuating condition, driven by karma and food.
For Ramanuja, the three gunas belong to the very structure of the self once it is joined to nature, always attendant on it while embodiment lasts. Their rising and falling is driven by two named causes, the force of earlier action and the unevenness of the food that nourishes the body, and since the rising cannot be seen directly, it is known only by catching sight of what each guna does.
An honest silence, with only a clearly labeled extension offered.
The record available here states plainly that Madhvacharya offers no comment on this verse. Rather than invent one, that absence is kept as it stands. What can be offered, clearly marked as extrapolation and not as Madhva's word, is that on the architecture he applies elsewhere, the gunas would be read as strands of nature through which the Lord governs each soul according to its own nature and karma, so that a guna's rise would itself be his ordaining rather than an independent power.
No distinct comment here; a flagged conditional extension only.
Abhinavagupta's extant treatment folds 14.9 and 14.10 into one passage, with his full comment registered at the earlier verse and nothing separate recorded for this one. A conditional extension, clearly marked as such and not as his own words on 14.10, would read the gunas' alternation as consciousness's own freedom moving through different self-imposed contractions, lucidity, restlessness, and inertia, rather than as three independent substances in genuine competition.
Cause and fruit named together, in a perpetual rotation.
Sridhara gives the fullest account among the sources on file. Sattva rises only as the embodied soul's own ripening merit permits, and once risen it yokes the person to its own fruit, pleasure and knowledge. Rajas and tamas rise the same way, each yoking the person to its own distinct fruit, thirst and action, or heedlessness and indolence. He closes by naming the three gunas' rotation perpetual, each taking the field in its turn.
A minimal, confirming restatement rather than new doctrine.
Madhusudana's surviving remark here is compact: sattva prevails by overcoming rajas and tamas, rajas by overcoming sattva and tamas, tamas by overcoming sattva and rajas. Read for what it actually claims, it settles that the three-way relation is mutual and cyclical, each guna in its turn both conqueror and conquered, and it does not extend into further doctrine at this verse.
The sources that do speak agree on the shape of the rotation and, between Sridhara and Ramanuja, on two of its causes, ripening merit and the food that feeds the body. They do not agree, because two of the standard six voices did not address this verse at all, on how a Dvaita or a Kashmir Shaiva reading would finally cash out the mechanism. Anything offered in those two directions here is marked as extension, not as recovered doctrine, and the gap is left as a gap rather than quietly filled.
A question to carry
Right now, without changing anything yet, can you name which of the three, clarity, restlessness, or heaviness, currently holds the field in you, and by what fruit do you know it?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Watch which quality is setting up its shop in you just now. Force nothing. Let the seeing itself be the first small overpowering, and let whatever rises next, rise in its own turn.
Each school is voiced from the commentators named above. Their full words, every translation, and where the schools agree and differ wait in the reading desk just below. Open the commentary desk.
Having just said that a single guna can grow strong enough to bind, Krishna now names the mechanism itself: overpowering, not independent growth, is how any guna comes to rule.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
Sattva rises by overpowering rajas and tamas; rajas rises by overpowering sattva and tamas; tamas rises by overpowering sattva and rajas. The relation is mutual, not a fixed hierarchy.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse names a mutual, three-way rotation. Sattva rises by overpowering rajas and tamas; rajas rises by overpowering sattva and tamas; tamas rises by overpowering sattva and rajas. No guna stands alone; each becomes dominant only in relation to holding the other two down.
No guna holds the field for good. One is uppermost while the other two lie suppressed, and then the balance turns and another takes the lead.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 1 others’ words
The three gunas never share the field equally at the same moment. One is uppermost while the other two are suppressed, and then, as conditions shift, a different one takes the lead. A person's inner state is therefore a fluctuating dominance rather than a fixed mixture.
Sridhara names the cause precisely: ripening merit permits sattva's rise, and each risen guna yokes the person to its own fruit, ease and knowledge, or craving, or heaviness.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Whichever guna has risen immediately sets its own characteristic work in motion. Sattva's rising brings knowledge and happiness; rajas's rising brings action and craving; tamas's rising brings the veiling of knowledge, heedlessness, and sleep. The guna is known by its fruit, not observed directly in its rising.
Ramanuja adds a second lever within reach: alongside past action, the food that nourishes the body helps tip which guna surges ahead.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiRāmānuja · ŚrīdharaIn Rāmānuja and Śrīdhara’s words
Sridhara and Ramanuja both point to a cause behind the alternation: Sridhara names the ripening of the embodied soul's own past merit, adrishta, and Ramanuja names the force of earlier action together with the unevenness of the food that nourishes the body. On both readings, the rotation is not arbitrary; it is rooted in what a person has already done and consumed.
Where the record for an acarya is thin or silent, as with Madhva and Abhinavagupta at this verse, the honest course is to say so plainly rather than invent a confident voice the sources do not give.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
This verse is heard by all the sources on file as continuous with the two before it: having said that a single guna can grow strong enough to bind, Krishna now supplies the mechanism, showing that a guna's rise is always a matter of overpowering, never of independent or uncontested growth.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja places the three gunas within the very structure of the embodied self, always attendant on it while it remains joined to nature. Their rising and falling is driven by two named causes, the sway of earlier action and the unevenness of food, and the dominant guna at any time can be known only indirectly, through its effect.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
No comment from Madhva survives at this verse; the record states this directly rather than supplying one. What can honestly be offered is a labeled extrapolation: on the general architecture Madhva applies elsewhere, the gunas would be read as strands of insentient nature through which the Lord governs each soul's experience according to its own nature and karma, so that a guna's rise would itself be an act of the Lord's ordaining rather than an autonomous power the guna holds by itself. This remains a conditional extension, not Madhva's own recorded word on 14.10.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara gives the clearest account of cause among the sources on file: sattva rises only as the soul's own ripening merit, adrishta, permits, and once risen it yokes the person to its fruit, pleasure and knowledge; the same pattern holds for rajas and tamas with their own fruits. He closes by calling the three gunas' rotation perpetual, each taking the field by turns.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana's extant remark here is a compact restatement confirming the mutual, cyclical structure of the overpowering, without an elaboration distinct to this verse. Read plainly, it settles that the three-way relation is genuinely reciprocal, each guna in turn both conqueror and conquered, rather than a fixed hierarchy among the three.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Notice, without judging it, which of the three is setting up its shop in you just now: the clean lightness of sattva, the restless reaching of rajas, or the heavy pull of tamas. You are not asked to force a change. You are asked only to see clearly which one currently holds the field, since seeing it is already the first loosening of its grip.
Notice which quality is setting up its shop in you just now, and without forcing anything, let the noticing itself begin to loosen its hold.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
he verse names a mutual, three-way rotation. Sattva rises by overpowering rajas and tamas; rajas rises by overpowering sattva and tamas; tamas rises by overpowering sattva and rajas. No guna stands alone; each becomes dominant only in relation to holding the other two down.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The three gunas never share the field equally at the same moment. One is uppermost while the other two are suppressed, and then, as conditions shift, a different one takes the lead. A person's inner state is therefore a fluctuating dominance rather than a fixed mixture.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Whichever guna has risen immediately sets its own characteristic work in motion. Sattva's rising brings knowledge and happiness; rajas's rising brings action and craving; tamas's rising brings the veiling of knowledge, heedlessness, and sleep. The guna is known by its fruit, not observed directly in its rising.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Sridhara and Ramanuja both point to a cause behind the alternation: Sridhara names the ripening of the embodied soul's own past merit, adrishta, and Ramanuja names the force of earlier action together with the unevenness of the food that nourishes the body. On both readings, the rotation is not arbitrary; it is rooted in what a person has already done and consumed.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
This verse is heard by all the sources on file as continuous with the two before it: having said that a single guna can grow strong enough to bind, Krishna now supplies the mechanism, showing that a guna's rise is always a matter of overpowering, never of independent or uncontested growth.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara's brief comment treats the verse as a straightforward statement of mechanism and fruit: whichever guna overcomes the other two immediately begins its own work, sattva's being knowledge and happiness. He adds no further doctrinal claim distinct to this verse, letting it function as a plain link between the account of the gunas' nature just given and the account of their marks about to follow.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja places the three gunas within the very structure of the embodied self, always attendant on it while it remains joined to nature. Their rising and falling is driven by two named causes, the sway of earlier action and the unevenness of food, and the dominant guna at any time can be known only indirectly, through its effect.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
No comment from Madhva survives at this verse; the record states this directly rather than supplying one. What can honestly be offered is a labeled extrapolation: on the general architecture Madhva applies elsewhere, the gunas would be read as strands of insentient nature through which the Lord governs each soul's experience according to its own nature and karma, so that a guna's rise would itself be an act of the Lord's ordaining rather than an autonomous power the guna holds by itself. This remains a conditional extension, not Madhva's own recorded word on 14.10.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving comment treats 14.9 and 14.10 as one passage, with his full remark registered at 14.9 and none recorded separately here. A clearly conditional extension would read the gunas' alternation as consciousness's own freedom moving through different self-imposed contractions, lucidity, restlessness, and inertia in turn, rather than three independent substances competing. This is offered as an extension only, not as Abhinavagupta's own words on this verse.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara gives the clearest account of cause among the sources on file: sattva rises only as the soul's own ripening merit, adrishta, permits, and once risen it yokes the person to its fruit, pleasure and knowledge; the same pattern holds for rajas and tamas with their own fruits. He closes by calling the three gunas' rotation perpetual, each taking the field by turns.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana's extant remark here is a compact restatement confirming the mutual, cyclical structure of the overpowering, without an elaboration distinct to this verse. Read plainly, it settles that the three-way relation is genuinely reciprocal, each guna in turn both conqueror and conquered, rather than a fixed hierarchy among the three.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If a guna rises in me only because of past karma and even the food I eat, do I have any real say over which one rules me right now?
The sources that name a cause do not name an unbreakable one. Sridhara traces the rise of a guna to ripening merit, and Ramanuja to past action and to the food that feeds the body, but both describe a rotation, not a permanent verdict. What the past has set in motion, the present is already shown to unseat in its turn.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Because the verse itself insists that no guna reigns for long, the very structure that seems to limit you is also what leaves room to act: whatever holds the field now will yield to what presses against it, and food, named explicitly as a cause, is one lever plainly within your reach.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Where the surviving commentary stays silent, honesty is the better guide than invention: neither Madhva nor Abhinavagupta left a recorded word on this exact question at this verse, so the fullest answer available here rests on what Ramanuja and Sridhara actually say, not on a system extended past what it claims for itself.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
Notice, without judging it, which of the three is setting up its shop in you just now: the clean lightness of sattva, the restless reaching of rajas, or the heavy pull of tamas. You are not asked to force a change. You are asked only to see clearly which one currently holds the field, since seeing it is already the first loosening of its grip.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, open a tradition in the doorways below, or add a voice by name above.
Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.