Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga
Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga • 27 verses
Krishna explains the three gunas — sattva, rajas, and tamas — the fundamental qualities of nature that condition all human experience and behavior. Understanding these gunas is essential to transcending their binding influence.
Chapter Overview
Three strands run through everyone, and Krishna names them plainly.
Sattva is clear and light, and it binds you with happiness and with the wish to know — pleasant chains are still chains. Rajas is heat and wanting, and it binds you to activity for its own sake. Tamas is heaviness, and it binds with inattention, laziness and sleep.
None of them is absent from anyone. They take turns, one rising as the others recede, and you can read which one is up by how the day feels — lucid, restless, or foggy.
Arjuna asks how a person gets past them. Krishna's answer is not a technique. Such a person does not hate clarity when it goes or chase it when it comes. Praise and blame land the same way. A lump of earth, a stone and gold hold equal weight.
The gunas keep turning. He simply stops arguing with the weather.
Key Verses
श्रीभगवानुवाच | परं भूयः प्रवक्ष्यामि ज्ञानानां ज्ञानमुत्तमम् | यज्ज्ञात्वा मुनयः सर्वे परां सिद्धिमितो गताः ||१४-१||
śrībhagavānuvāca . paraṃ bhūyaḥ pravakṣyāmi jñānānāṃ jñānamuttamam . yajjñātvā munayaḥ sarve parāṃ siddhimito gatāḥ ||14-1||
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 the supreme perfection after this life.
इदं ज्ञानमुपाश्रित्य मम साधर्म्यमागताः | सर्गेऽपि नोपजायन्ते प्रलये न व्यथन्ति च ||१४-२||
idaṃ jñānamupāśritya mama sādharmyamāgatāḥ . sarge.api nopajāyante pralaye na vyathanti ca ||14-2||
They who, having taken refuge in this knowledge, have attained to unity with Me, are neither born at the time of creation nor are they disturbed at the time of dissolution.
मम योनिर्महद् ब्रह्म तस्मिन्गर्भं दधाम्यहम् | सम्भवः सर्वभूतानां ततो भवति भारत ||१४-३||
mama yonirmahad brahma tasmingarbhaṃ dadhāmyaham . sambhavaḥ sarvabhūtānāṃ tato bhavati bhārata ||14-3||
My womb is the great Brahma; in that I place the germ; thence, O Arjuna, is the birth of all beings.
सर्वयोनिषु कौन्तेय मूर्तयः सम्भवन्ति याः | तासां ब्रह्म महद्योनिरहं बीजप्रदः पिता ||१४-४||
sarvayoniṣu kaunteya mūrtayaḥ sambhavanti yāḥ . tāsāṃ brahma mahadyonirahaṃ bījapradaḥ pitā ||14-4||
Whatever forms are produced, O Arjuna, in any womb whatsoever, the great Brahma is their womb and I am the seed-giving father.
सत्त्वं रजस्तम इति गुणाः प्रकृतिसम्भवाः | निबध्नन्ति महाबाहो देहे देहिनमव्ययम् ||१४-५||
sattvaṃ rajastama iti guṇāḥ prakṛtisambhavāḥ . nibadhnanti mahābāho dehe dehinamavyayam ||14-5||
Purity, passion and inertia these alities, O Arjuna, born of Nature, bind fast in the body, the embodied, the indestructible.