Showing posts with label RajaGuna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RajaGuna. Show all posts

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Three modes (gunas)

According to Vedic scriptures all variety of species of life is created by a combination of three basic modes of material energy, in Sanskrit called gunas. Here is again seen a limitation of other languages because they lack suitable synonym. Closest is probably the Latin word modus. Guna is therefore a kind of modus operandi (means of functioning) of material energy. They are called:
- sattva-guna (harmony, goodness)
- raja-guna (activity, passion)
- tama-guna (inertia, ignorance)
Bodies of individual species can be compared to various apartments or houses of different sizes, shapes and colors temporarily inhabited by embodied soul. Bodily forms limit (under the control of three modes) its freedom of movement and activities as well as possibilities of individual enjoyment.











Raja Guna

Rajas, is responsible for motion, energy and preservation and thereby upholds and maintains the activity of the other two gunas, known as sattva and tamas.

Rajas is the force which promotes or upholds the activity of the other aspects of Nature (prakriti) such as one or more of the following:
1) action,
2) Change, mutation;
3) passion, excitement;
4) birth, creation, generation. I

f a person or thing tends to be extremely active, excitable, or passionate, that person or thing could be said to have a preponderance of rajas. It is contrasted with the quality of tamas which is the quality of inactivity, darkness, and laziness, and with sattva, which is the quality of purity, clarity, calmness and creativity.

Rajas is viewed as being more positive than tamas, and less positive than sattva, except, perhaps, for one who has "transcended the gunas" and achieved equanimity in all fields of relative life. The rajas stage of life gives a slight clue to the realization of the Absolute Truth in the forms of fine sentiments in philosophy, art and culture with moral and ethical principles, but the mode of sattva is a still higher stage of material quality, which actually helps one in realizing the Absolute Truth.