#gunas

Balance The #Gunas, balance The Mind!

I'd looked forward to meeting up with my Bhagavat Gita this morning. Today I would be reading Chapter 14: The Three Gunas, one of my favourites.

As I thought about this - in anticipation as it were - I thought how these days I seemed to be deep into and under the influence of Tamas: the inclination to want to sleep; the inability to concentrate for long (and even short) periods; the 'can't be bothered' attitude to writing (and to everything else for that matter). This all strongly suggested to me that my life at this time was what you might call Tamasic.

Sloth, ignorance, madness, delusion. At the risk of belaboring the point, I will just say that yes, all these and more seem to define my state - my condition - at this time.

So, I got to do my daily Bhagavat Gita reading, and I did indeed read about the Three Gunas. As always it struck me as a clear, succinct, concise, and accurate description of how life works as an embodied entity in the material world.

Later, as I returned to Hinduism for Dummies (which I am reading to increase my knowledge and understanding of the culture from which the Bhagavat Gita sprung), I was surprised (pleasantly) to see that I was at the point in the book where the author describes The School of Matter and Spirit: Samkya. This is the notion that we live in a dualistic universe comprised of matter (Prakriti) and spirit (Purusha).

And Prakriti is in fact consisting of the three Gunas, the three elements or modes, that make up material nature. It is the balance of these three Gunas that, interacting with purusha (soul), determine the condition of each individual living entity.

Rajas is the Guna, or mode of nature that holds the qualities of activity, energy, desire, passion; it is actually the force that 'makes things happen'. As such it isn't of itself a bad thing or any kind of negative force.

However, it can become a negative when the three Gunas are out of balance in such a way that Rajas takes control, leading the living entity in the direction of desire, pain, suffering, sense gratification, and misery.

Which leads us to the conclusion already noted that it is combination of these three Gunas, and, we can say, the mix of the quantities of each, that dictate the nature of the living entity. Or to be more precise, it is the Guna that dominates at any given time that defines that nature.

There are a couple of sentences in Hinduism for Dummies describing this process that I like:

Perusha's (soul's) presence causes excitation in Prakrita (matter) leading to an imbalance in the three qualities (Sattva, Tamas, and Rajas), which in turn leads to the production of a great variety of entities (beings, things). The level of imbalance depends on any experience present in the particular purusha (soul).

This, the author says, applies from one life to the next. Equally, I think, the balances of the Gunas changes on a continual basis moment to moment, day to day, never sitting still. Flowing from a state in which one or other of the Gunas dominate to a greater or lesser degree.

And, as I mentioned at the opening of this post, I feel at this particular time that Tamas is ruling my nature. But, I've been thinking: is this true? I mean to say, what led to this current and unpleasant state of my nature?

The mere presence of soul, as I quoted above, excites the Gunas and gets them struggling for dominance. At the moment, Tamas is on top. But how did Tamas achieve this dominance? The simple answer is this: Rajas. The nature of my activity, my attachment to the senses and their gratification; my identification with the world, or to be exact, my body and its pains, pleasure, its ups and downs.

Of course without some kind of dynamic interaction between spirit and matter, body and soul, there is no life. No physical life that is. In the Bhagavat Gita Krishna tells Arjuna that the Gunas - the modes of material nature - can and must be transcended if one is to achieve realisation of the Self and thus find liberation.

In the meantime, as we in mortal existence strive for this liberation, we need to find ways to balance the three Gunas.

Sattva. The mode of goodness, light, awareness (knowledge), happiness, joy, love, is the mode we want in control. I do think, though, that by definition, living as a material being in a material universe makes it impossible for any of us keep Sattva on top all the time.

However, the key is to try. It is the striving for those desirable qualities - love, compassion, awareness, calmness, gentleness - that will lead eventually to our lives becoming balanced and harmonized with Sattvic qualities and action.

At least, that's the plan. At least in making the effort we can look forward to even at the very least some fleeting moments of Sattvic existence. After that? Never mind about what happens next. For the great and vast majority of us living entities achieving this balance in any kind of long-term sustained manner will be the work of too many lifetimes to count.

The bottom line: do good, be good. And as Ram Dass wrote: Be here now

Peace

Pre-determinism and freewill are part of the same process. Yes, the events in your life are going to unfold when they’re supposed to unfold. The lesson plans have been predetermined in advance by your past actions. So, you can relax and trust that the universe loves and cares about you and nothing *wrong* is happening to you.

However, you are here to take the tests, then pass or fail, just like in school (call that freewill). Just because you know the tests are planned does not mean you have passed them. That is why you are in school, to take the tests then pass or fail. When you go to university, the teachers already have the lesson plans laid out as well. However, they are teaching the same lesson to all the students. But in the real Universe-ity, the planets are teaching different lessons to every being at different times in perfect accordance with their karma. The truth is, each planet is not even “separate” from you. Each planet created a different part of you, through the three worlds, through the three gunas. They are the specific energies of your higher self. They are not lording over you from above. They are bubbling up in your consciousness at the appropriate time.

There is no karma that we need to overcome with our freewill. We instead need to relax into the beauty of the cosmic will and intelligence felt by the planets. What most people refer to as free will is often the ego asserting itself over the process, trying to get its desires fulfilled. When correctly understood, we see that studying astrology is studying the science and mechanics of how your higher self communicates with your worldly, limited self.

In my understanding, this trinity is mirrored also into the field of Ayurvedic medicine as a Doshic system, meaning:

Sulphur = Vata Dosha

Salt = Kapha Dosha

Mercury =  Pitta Dosha