What is the root cause of our activities? Whether our physical faculties, called the body, or the soul, called the Aatma (which resides in every person). The physical body is called “Prakriti.” The Aatma is also known as “Jeeva.“ Prakriti is influenced by three qualities: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, known as “Guna Traya“. Aatma dictates the body to execute the activities. Aatma acts according to our past deeds, known as “Karma“. Aatma experiences pleasure and pain, comfort and sorrow through the physical faculties. One should mitigate the suffering and boost the performance of good and Godly deeds to eliminate the cycle of births and rebirths.
Valayapettai Sri Ramachariar said in a discourse that the attributes of sattva guna are goodness, joy, and nobility. It denotes freedom from fear, violence, wrath, and malice. Rajas represents the quality of energy, motion, and wealth seeking. The features of tamas are inertia, darkness, ignorance, indolence, and sleep.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says sattva generates attachment to happiness, rajas to action, and tamas to negligence. (Chapter-14 verse-9. )
Can fire and water, which are opposite, exist together? Similarly, can the three gunas, which are opposite to each other, exist in the same body? Even though all three are associated with the nature of the self conjoined with Prakriti in the form of the body, due to previous deeds’ dominance, sattva may preponderate over the other two or rajas or tamas as the case may be.
The fruit of sattva is a good deed, of rajas is pain and of tamas is ignorance. Those who rest in sattva rise upwards, those who abide in rajas remain in the middle, and those who are in tamas go downwards.
Food habits influence actions to some extent. A clean and good food habit will develop more sattva guna (Aahara suddhou sattva suddhi:).
Published - January 21, 2025 05:17 am IST
