Bg 14.16
karmaṇaḥ sukṛtasyāhuḥ sāttvikaṁ nirmalaṁ phalam
rajasas tu phalaṁ duḥkham ajñānaṁ tamasaḥ phalam
Bg 14.17
sattvāt sañjāyate jñānaṁ rajaso lobha eva ca
pramāda-mohau tamaso bhavato ’jñānam eva ca
Bg 14.18
ūrdhvaṁ gacchanti sattva-sthā madhye tiṣṭhanti rājasāḥ
jaghanya-guṇa-vṛtti-sthā adho gacchanti tāmasāḥ
Translation
16. The fruit of good action, they say, is SATTWIC and pure; verily, the fruit of RAJAS is pain, and the fruit of TAMAS is ignorance.
17. Knowledge arises from SATTWA, greed from RAJAS, heedlessness, delusion and also ignorance arise from TAMAS.
18. Those who are abiding in SATTWA go upwards; the RAJASIC dwell in the middle; and the TAMASIC, abiding in the function of the lowest GUNA, go downwards.
Commentary
In this stanza, Krishna, the great conversationalist, is summarizing again what he has already mentioned in the previous stanzas. Herein, he is indicating in brief the results gained when a psychological being lives the three gunas severally.
THE FRUIT OF GOOD ACTIONS, THEY SAY, IS 'SATTWIC' AND PURE --- If we carefully analyse, we shall find that thought is the father of all action. Thoughts are the seeds sown, and actions the harvest gathered. Seeds of weeds cannot but produce weeds; bad thoughts can manifest only as bad actions. And the negative actions in the outside world, fatten the wrong tendencies of the mind and thus multiply the inward agitations.
It is, therefore, true in the logic of our philosophy --- and extremely true in the logic of our worldly experiences too --- that if one is to live a quiet, contented and cheerful life of service and devotion, of love and kindness, of mercy and compassion, and live thus a "good life," certainly such a life indicated the Sattwic nature of one's mind. And such an individual, living such a noble life, must necessarily grow in his inward purity.
It may be asked how one can start becoming good when one is already so bad at present. If actions are the expressions of thoughts, and if the existing mental nature is negative, how can we expect such an individual to bring about a change in the climatic conditions within his bosom? All religions, the world over, answer this question in their injunction and insistence that seekers of truth, devotees of the Lord, votaries of culture --- all must strive to live ethically a pure, moral, and noble life.
No doubt, disciplining the mind and changing the quality of thoughts are not easy jobs; but to change to type of actions and to discipline our external movements is relatively easy. Therefore, to practise goodness, to discipline our behaviour, to act the good Samaritan, are all the beginning of this great scheme of self-revival. When noble action is undertaken soon it becomes a habit and this external habit of discipline tends to discipline the mind.
Hence, the insistence, in all cultures, that from childhood, elders must be respected, authority should be obeyed, lies must not be uttered, scriptures are to be read, education must be undertaken, cleanliness must be practised etc. When these are enforced upon the child, it, perhaps, takes them all as varieties of tyranny under which it is compelled to live. In the long run, however, these rules bring about unconsciously a discipline in the minds of the children.
A thrilling joy of mental serenity, a state of minimum agitation, a capacity to direct this mental strength of such a dynamic mind towards any single-pointed self-application --- these are all indicated as the fruits of good actions, when the mind grows in Sattwa-guna and purity. Passions and agitations are the impurities in the mind; bad actions increase them; good actions, by their very nature, quieten the mind and sap its passions.
THE FRUIT OF 'RAJAS' IS PAIN --- This phrase only supports our commentary on the previous one. It has already been said that Rajas is of the nature of passion, giving rise to insatiable desires and extreme attachment, and in our attempts to fulfil them, we get drowned in a multiplicity of actions. (Stanzas 7, 12). Thus, one with a mind under the influence of Rajas, entertains desires, and in order to pacify the stormy conditions, one is forced to act in the world outside striving to acquire, to possess, to keep, to spend, to enjoy, to save, and to preserve what has been saved. Slowly, the individual is dragged into an entombing morass of suffocating death, in a stinking pit of pain and agony. "VERILY THE FRUIT OF RAJAS IS PAIN."
IGNORANCE IS THE FRUIT OF 'TAMAS' --- That dullness in action, heedlessness and illusion are the symptoms of Tamas in our subtle-body, has already been indicated. Here it is said that Tamas veils our discriminating capacity and foils our attempts at understanding and rightly judging the world of things and beings and the world of happenings around us.
Rajas breeds agitations in the mind. And Sattwa is that condition within us when the mind has least thought agitations and the intellect is clear and bright in its rational and discriminative powers. In short, Sattwa is the "condition of dynamic quietude" which is the creative moment in man's inward nature.
AND WHAT ARISES FROM THE 'GUNAS'?
The functions of the gunas, while they appear on the stage of the mind-intellect, are explained here.
FROM SATTWA ARISES WISDOM --- It has already been explained how Pure Consciousness, of Its own accord, has nothing to illumine or understand. In the Pure, Homogeneous Self, there is nothing other than Itself for It to understand, It being the Undivided and Indivisible One Eternal Truth. Consciousness reflected in the subtle-body is the 'intelligence' by which we gain knowledge of the world outside. The knower is the Spirit conditioned by the mind-intellect. Naturally, when the mind is pure and serene, when there is the least agitation in it, the light emerging through it is steady and properly focussed. Therefore, the result of the predominant Sattwa in our mind is ultimately the rediscovery of the Self, the experience of PURE WISDOM.
GREED, FROM 'RAJAS' --- When the mind is seething with a constant eruption of desires it will be continuously in a state of agitation, and, in its natural anxiety to pacify itself, it has to rush out into the world to procure and fulfil its endless demands; and in doing so it expresses its greed.
HEEDLESSNESS, DELUSION AND IGNORANCE ARISE FROM 'TAMAS' --- Inertia or indolence, 'Tamas,' veils the intellect. The capacity to discriminate between the right and the wrong, and the ability to reject the wrong and accept the right, are the privileges of man and not the impulses of an animal. True manhood comes to manifest only when one's intellect is clean and free from all shackles of false prejudices and wrong tendencies. Tamas veils the capacity to perceive rightly the world outside, and it also destroys our powers of right judgement.
When anything is not properly understood it is but natural that we will misunderstand it. This misunderstanding of the world outside compels us to expect joys, which are impossible to arise from the miserable state of our imperfections. Can there be even a single cup of sweet-water in the entire expanse of the saline-waters of the ocean? In a world of change and pain, how can there be constant joy, or even one instance of perfect happiness?
And yet, he who is under the deluding effects of Tamas in himself, miscalculates the world and expects from it these experiences, which are impossible, and in the delusion, curses the world for its imperfections!
MOREOVER:
In the ladder of evolution, we can conceive of these stages of development. The lowest state of development is seen in the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. The middle stage of evolution is seen in man who has intelligence, health and brightness. And a higher state of existence is seen in the disembodied heavenly beings. Here evolution means: "a greater awareness of experience, a lesser amount of agitations and a sharper power of intelligence." The yard-stick used here to measure evolution is the quantity of joy or happiness, peace or bliss, experienced by the being.
No doubt, in this measurement, the stone-life is of zero evolution, inasmuch as it has no awareness at all of the world. The plant-life comes next, wherein Consciousness has dimly started expressing Itself. In the animal kingdom, this Awareness has become clearer and more vivid. Of the animals, man is, no doubt, the greatest being with the fullest Consciousness and the sharpest intellect. But, man also has his own limitations, and functions only within a limited field of time and space. The ample possibilities reached when once these limitations of man are broken down are indicated as the greatest state of existence enjoyed by beings of a still higher evolution, and they are called the "Denizens of Heaven."
Every double-storeyed house must also have its staircase. Invariably, after climbing a few steps, there is a landing from which we turn and climb up the rest of the stairs to reach the rooms on the first floor. Those who are standing on the lower flight of steps are considered of a lower evolution. Those who are standing on the landing are of the middle type and those who are standing on the top-flights are of the highest evolution. The vegetable and the animal kingdoms stand on the lower rungs. Man stands on the landing and the Higher Beings on the upper flights of steps.
Remember, none of them has reached upstairs to enjoy the comforts of its halls and rooms. Those who are standing on the landing. have the freedom either to go up or to go down. If this picture has come into our mind, we have, to a large extent, understood the concept of evolution as conceived by Hindu - Philosophy, wherein "the evolution of a specimen is always measured by the degree of Consciousness unveiled through Matter in the given subject under observation."
THE SATTWA-ABIDING GO UPWARDS --- Those who are living a pure life of discrimination, clear thinking, right judgement and self-discipline, cultivate more and more Sattwa in themselves. When the mind is thus kept in quietude, at once creative and dynamic, it evolves upwards.
THE RAJASIC DWELL IN THE MIDDLE --- Those who are of Rajasic nature, with all their desires and agitations, ambitions and achievements, again and again manifest as men until they acquire the required purity.
THE TAMASIC GO DOWNWARDS --- Those who are revelling in misconceptions, heedless of the higher calls in themselves, deluded by their own lust and passion, existing in a state of drowsiness and inertness, devolve themselves into the lower natures.
The stanza is only summarising the ideas expressed earlier, when Krishna discussed the effects of the gunas even in the continuity of existence after death. But where then is the release? That even Sattwa binds us with our attachment to knowledge and happiness has been already explained. Then when can I be free? All these three, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas, are gunas meaning "ropes," that bind us down to the flesh and its sorrows, the world and its imperfections, the mind and its agitations, the intellect and its throbbings. When is man free to enjoy the Godhood, as a being totally released from all his contacts with the pluralistic world and from all his subtle attachments to it?
So far we were told at length of the nature of the gunas, of the symptoms from which the most predominating guna in us can be diagnosed, of their reactions in our life, and of how they affect our future, etc. We were told that the predominant gunas in us is the heritage which we gather from our past and the present is coloured by it and the future again is determined by the play of these gunas. All these are but explanations of the causes of bondage --- a sense of bondage rooted in illusion, arising from the fact that the Self in us gets identified with the Matter-vestures around it.
The experience of the finite world, the misery of the jerks, the sorrows of its imperfections, the tragedies of its disappointments --- all together constitute the samsara of the "ego," which is nothing other than the Infinite Self (Purusha), expressing through Matter (Prakriti), and identifying with it. Release can be had only when we transcend all the gunas.
A patient is suffering from high temperature, excruciating headache and back pain. All three are symptoms of his illness. When the fever is down the patient is still suffering. We can say the patient has fully recovered, not when these three symptoms have ended, but only when the patient has also regained his old health and energy. Similarly, the three gunas may be present in each of us, in different proportions, but the true release comes not only when all chains have been snapped --- meaning all the gunas are transcended --- but when we are also established in the Spiritual Experience.
This process of escaping from the subjective shackles on our psychological and intellectual nature is called "liberation" or Moksha. Bound by their own limitations, the greater possibilities in us are now idling away in our own bosoms. To redeem them from their prison-houses of confusions and pains, agitations and sorrows, passions and lust, is all that spirituality seeks.
karmaṇaḥ sukṛtasyāhuḥ sāttvikaṁ nirmalaṁ phalam
rajasas tu phalaṁ duḥkham ajñānaṁ tamasaḥ phalam
Bg 14.17
sattvāt sañjāyate jñānaṁ rajaso lobha eva ca
pramāda-mohau tamaso bhavato ’jñānam eva ca
Bg 14.18
ūrdhvaṁ gacchanti sattva-sthā madhye tiṣṭhanti rājasāḥ
jaghanya-guṇa-vṛtti-sthā adho gacchanti tāmasāḥ
Translation
16. The fruit of good action, they say, is SATTWIC and pure; verily, the fruit of RAJAS is pain, and the fruit of TAMAS is ignorance.
17. Knowledge arises from SATTWA, greed from RAJAS, heedlessness, delusion and also ignorance arise from TAMAS.
18. Those who are abiding in SATTWA go upwards; the RAJASIC dwell in the middle; and the TAMASIC, abiding in the function of the lowest GUNA, go downwards.
Commentary
In this stanza, Krishna, the great conversationalist, is summarizing again what he has already mentioned in the previous stanzas. Herein, he is indicating in brief the results gained when a psychological being lives the three gunas severally.
THE FRUIT OF GOOD ACTIONS, THEY SAY, IS 'SATTWIC' AND PURE --- If we carefully analyse, we shall find that thought is the father of all action. Thoughts are the seeds sown, and actions the harvest gathered. Seeds of weeds cannot but produce weeds; bad thoughts can manifest only as bad actions. And the negative actions in the outside world, fatten the wrong tendencies of the mind and thus multiply the inward agitations.
It is, therefore, true in the logic of our philosophy --- and extremely true in the logic of our worldly experiences too --- that if one is to live a quiet, contented and cheerful life of service and devotion, of love and kindness, of mercy and compassion, and live thus a "good life," certainly such a life indicated the Sattwic nature of one's mind. And such an individual, living such a noble life, must necessarily grow in his inward purity.
It may be asked how one can start becoming good when one is already so bad at present. If actions are the expressions of thoughts, and if the existing mental nature is negative, how can we expect such an individual to bring about a change in the climatic conditions within his bosom? All religions, the world over, answer this question in their injunction and insistence that seekers of truth, devotees of the Lord, votaries of culture --- all must strive to live ethically a pure, moral, and noble life.
No doubt, disciplining the mind and changing the quality of thoughts are not easy jobs; but to change to type of actions and to discipline our external movements is relatively easy. Therefore, to practise goodness, to discipline our behaviour, to act the good Samaritan, are all the beginning of this great scheme of self-revival. When noble action is undertaken soon it becomes a habit and this external habit of discipline tends to discipline the mind.
Hence, the insistence, in all cultures, that from childhood, elders must be respected, authority should be obeyed, lies must not be uttered, scriptures are to be read, education must be undertaken, cleanliness must be practised etc. When these are enforced upon the child, it, perhaps, takes them all as varieties of tyranny under which it is compelled to live. In the long run, however, these rules bring about unconsciously a discipline in the minds of the children.
A thrilling joy of mental serenity, a state of minimum agitation, a capacity to direct this mental strength of such a dynamic mind towards any single-pointed self-application --- these are all indicated as the fruits of good actions, when the mind grows in Sattwa-guna and purity. Passions and agitations are the impurities in the mind; bad actions increase them; good actions, by their very nature, quieten the mind and sap its passions.
THE FRUIT OF 'RAJAS' IS PAIN --- This phrase only supports our commentary on the previous one. It has already been said that Rajas is of the nature of passion, giving rise to insatiable desires and extreme attachment, and in our attempts to fulfil them, we get drowned in a multiplicity of actions. (Stanzas 7, 12). Thus, one with a mind under the influence of Rajas, entertains desires, and in order to pacify the stormy conditions, one is forced to act in the world outside striving to acquire, to possess, to keep, to spend, to enjoy, to save, and to preserve what has been saved. Slowly, the individual is dragged into an entombing morass of suffocating death, in a stinking pit of pain and agony. "VERILY THE FRUIT OF RAJAS IS PAIN."
IGNORANCE IS THE FRUIT OF 'TAMAS' --- That dullness in action, heedlessness and illusion are the symptoms of Tamas in our subtle-body, has already been indicated. Here it is said that Tamas veils our discriminating capacity and foils our attempts at understanding and rightly judging the world of things and beings and the world of happenings around us.
Rajas breeds agitations in the mind. And Sattwa is that condition within us when the mind has least thought agitations and the intellect is clear and bright in its rational and discriminative powers. In short, Sattwa is the "condition of dynamic quietude" which is the creative moment in man's inward nature.
AND WHAT ARISES FROM THE 'GUNAS'?
The functions of the gunas, while they appear on the stage of the mind-intellect, are explained here.
FROM SATTWA ARISES WISDOM --- It has already been explained how Pure Consciousness, of Its own accord, has nothing to illumine or understand. In the Pure, Homogeneous Self, there is nothing other than Itself for It to understand, It being the Undivided and Indivisible One Eternal Truth. Consciousness reflected in the subtle-body is the 'intelligence' by which we gain knowledge of the world outside. The knower is the Spirit conditioned by the mind-intellect. Naturally, when the mind is pure and serene, when there is the least agitation in it, the light emerging through it is steady and properly focussed. Therefore, the result of the predominant Sattwa in our mind is ultimately the rediscovery of the Self, the experience of PURE WISDOM.
GREED, FROM 'RAJAS' --- When the mind is seething with a constant eruption of desires it will be continuously in a state of agitation, and, in its natural anxiety to pacify itself, it has to rush out into the world to procure and fulfil its endless demands; and in doing so it expresses its greed.
HEEDLESSNESS, DELUSION AND IGNORANCE ARISE FROM 'TAMAS' --- Inertia or indolence, 'Tamas,' veils the intellect. The capacity to discriminate between the right and the wrong, and the ability to reject the wrong and accept the right, are the privileges of man and not the impulses of an animal. True manhood comes to manifest only when one's intellect is clean and free from all shackles of false prejudices and wrong tendencies. Tamas veils the capacity to perceive rightly the world outside, and it also destroys our powers of right judgement.
When anything is not properly understood it is but natural that we will misunderstand it. This misunderstanding of the world outside compels us to expect joys, which are impossible to arise from the miserable state of our imperfections. Can there be even a single cup of sweet-water in the entire expanse of the saline-waters of the ocean? In a world of change and pain, how can there be constant joy, or even one instance of perfect happiness?
And yet, he who is under the deluding effects of Tamas in himself, miscalculates the world and expects from it these experiences, which are impossible, and in the delusion, curses the world for its imperfections!
MOREOVER:
In the ladder of evolution, we can conceive of these stages of development. The lowest state of development is seen in the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. The middle stage of evolution is seen in man who has intelligence, health and brightness. And a higher state of existence is seen in the disembodied heavenly beings. Here evolution means: "a greater awareness of experience, a lesser amount of agitations and a sharper power of intelligence." The yard-stick used here to measure evolution is the quantity of joy or happiness, peace or bliss, experienced by the being.
No doubt, in this measurement, the stone-life is of zero evolution, inasmuch as it has no awareness at all of the world. The plant-life comes next, wherein Consciousness has dimly started expressing Itself. In the animal kingdom, this Awareness has become clearer and more vivid. Of the animals, man is, no doubt, the greatest being with the fullest Consciousness and the sharpest intellect. But, man also has his own limitations, and functions only within a limited field of time and space. The ample possibilities reached when once these limitations of man are broken down are indicated as the greatest state of existence enjoyed by beings of a still higher evolution, and they are called the "Denizens of Heaven."
Every double-storeyed house must also have its staircase. Invariably, after climbing a few steps, there is a landing from which we turn and climb up the rest of the stairs to reach the rooms on the first floor. Those who are standing on the lower flight of steps are considered of a lower evolution. Those who are standing on the landing are of the middle type and those who are standing on the top-flights are of the highest evolution. The vegetable and the animal kingdoms stand on the lower rungs. Man stands on the landing and the Higher Beings on the upper flights of steps.
Remember, none of them has reached upstairs to enjoy the comforts of its halls and rooms. Those who are standing on the landing. have the freedom either to go up or to go down. If this picture has come into our mind, we have, to a large extent, understood the concept of evolution as conceived by Hindu - Philosophy, wherein "the evolution of a specimen is always measured by the degree of Consciousness unveiled through Matter in the given subject under observation."
THE SATTWA-ABIDING GO UPWARDS --- Those who are living a pure life of discrimination, clear thinking, right judgement and self-discipline, cultivate more and more Sattwa in themselves. When the mind is thus kept in quietude, at once creative and dynamic, it evolves upwards.
THE RAJASIC DWELL IN THE MIDDLE --- Those who are of Rajasic nature, with all their desires and agitations, ambitions and achievements, again and again manifest as men until they acquire the required purity.
THE TAMASIC GO DOWNWARDS --- Those who are revelling in misconceptions, heedless of the higher calls in themselves, deluded by their own lust and passion, existing in a state of drowsiness and inertness, devolve themselves into the lower natures.
The stanza is only summarising the ideas expressed earlier, when Krishna discussed the effects of the gunas even in the continuity of existence after death. But where then is the release? That even Sattwa binds us with our attachment to knowledge and happiness has been already explained. Then when can I be free? All these three, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas, are gunas meaning "ropes," that bind us down to the flesh and its sorrows, the world and its imperfections, the mind and its agitations, the intellect and its throbbings. When is man free to enjoy the Godhood, as a being totally released from all his contacts with the pluralistic world and from all his subtle attachments to it?
So far we were told at length of the nature of the gunas, of the symptoms from which the most predominating guna in us can be diagnosed, of their reactions in our life, and of how they affect our future, etc. We were told that the predominant gunas in us is the heritage which we gather from our past and the present is coloured by it and the future again is determined by the play of these gunas. All these are but explanations of the causes of bondage --- a sense of bondage rooted in illusion, arising from the fact that the Self in us gets identified with the Matter-vestures around it.
The experience of the finite world, the misery of the jerks, the sorrows of its imperfections, the tragedies of its disappointments --- all together constitute the samsara of the "ego," which is nothing other than the Infinite Self (Purusha), expressing through Matter (Prakriti), and identifying with it. Release can be had only when we transcend all the gunas.
A patient is suffering from high temperature, excruciating headache and back pain. All three are symptoms of his illness. When the fever is down the patient is still suffering. We can say the patient has fully recovered, not when these three symptoms have ended, but only when the patient has also regained his old health and energy. Similarly, the three gunas may be present in each of us, in different proportions, but the true release comes not only when all chains have been snapped --- meaning all the gunas are transcended --- but when we are also established in the Spiritual Experience.
This process of escaping from the subjective shackles on our psychological and intellectual nature is called "liberation" or Moksha. Bound by their own limitations, the greater possibilities in us are now idling away in our own bosoms. To redeem them from their prison-houses of confusions and pains, agitations and sorrows, passions and lust, is all that spirituality seeks.
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