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Jan. 7, 2024
Thoughts on the Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 14: Verses 6 - 10)
In this episode, host Rahul N Singh explores the concepts of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, the three gunas or qualities according to Hindu philosophy, as mentioned in Chapter 14 of the Bhagavad Gita. The discussion plunges deep into each guna, emphasizing their attributes and impacts on action and consequence. The host explains how these gunas compete to control matter and, in turn, human behaviour. He emphasizes the importance of balanced action with correct knowledge, more prevalent in the Satiric state, and warns listeners about the delusions and incorrect perceptions attributed to Rajasic and Tamasic states. Apart from the spiritual discourse, the host also offers information about the podcast's Patreon benefits and encourages listeners to engage more with the podcast through various platforms.
Translation used: The Bhagavad Gita Comes Alive: A Radical Translation by Jeffrey Armstrong
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Transcript
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Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bearded Mystic Podcast and I'm your host Rahul N Singh.
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Today we will be continuing on with my thoughts on the Bhagavad Gita and today we will be looking at chapter 14 verses 6 to verse 10.
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There's a lot to go through because although these are not many verses we're going through but there's so much to capture and so much to understand that it requires our patience, it requires us to think, it requires us to more or less be and most of all to be in awareness, to be in that pure consciousness state so that We then can observe these three gunas in a more effective manner and we can observe the way they function within us.
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So we addressed that we will be looking at how to transcend the three gunas, that's what Sri Krishna will be talking about in chapter 14.
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We will be going through that today.
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So let's get started with verse six.
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O Arjuna, of the three gunas, the qualities of sattva are the most transparent, illuminating and healthy.
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Like knotted ropes, each guna binds us to matter.
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Through our attraction to specific material experiences, sattva binds us to matter, through our attraction to knowledge, beauty and happiness.
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So let's break this verse down and there's a lot to again capture in these verses.
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And especially this one.
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So let's look at the first part of that verse.
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O Arjuna, of the three gunas, the qualities of sattva are the most transparent, illuminating and healthy.
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So here we know that Sri Krishna is talking about the highest guna that there is out of the three.
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So the one that has the most benefits.
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For us to have, although this is still something that binds us, but it's okay if this is the one that's predominantly within us.
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So first of all, he says sattva is transparent because it gives us knowledge.
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So what happens is, you could say sattva is a gateway into a hint that there is something like eternal happiness, like an end of suffering, like true illumination of knowledge.
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So there is that aspect in sattva.
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It's more or less a reflection of the highest, not necessarily is the highest, but a good reflection, a reflection that we can at least try to go towards.
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It's illuminating because it gives beauty, the beauty that shines everywhere when you feel that things are beautiful, when you think that life is beautiful and life has many wondrous elements and you are overwhelmed with beauty, you can say that you are in sattva at that time.
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And it's healthy because it gives happiness.
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One of the most important things is, is that sattva at least is a state we feel when we are happy or content.
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Although this happiness is short lived, but it's something we can feel, it's something that we can go towards.
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And the person who is sattvic tends to be honest and pure in heart.
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This is something we can see in people who are sattvic and who are more or less really honest, wonderful human beings.
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We see that they are transparent, we see that they are illuminating, and we see that they are healthy.
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And remember healthy here is not just in terms of physical health, but even mental health.
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This is the most important thing.
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Someone in sattva is someone who is able to go towards the higher ideals of life.
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So they will be striving towards knowledge.
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They will be at least doing karmakand and doing the rituals, doing the necessary spiritual activities, but somehow you'll find that those spiritual activities link us to the earth somewhat, link us to nature, to prakriti somewhat.
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So that's why it's sattvic and not something really transcendent like brahm gyan.
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Then in the next part it says, like knotted ropes, each guna binds us to matter through our attraction to specific material experiences.
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So each guna holds us down in some way towards the body.
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Each guna will have its own material experience.
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It will keep us bound within maya.
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But remember that even though this will bind us within Maya, will bind us within Prakriti and we will feel like this is how we can live the highest life in terms of the earth, we need to remember that the formless awareness within us, The observer within is untouched because it's aware of everything, it's the seer of everything, it's not the objects that are seen or anything like that.
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What does sattva bind us to?
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He mentioned this and Sri Krishna is going to go into how each guna binds us towards material experiences and what are those material experiences for sattva.
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Sri Krishna says, sattva binds us to matter through our attraction to knowledge, beauty and happiness.
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So sattva binds us to matter through attraction to knowledge because we seek to utilize our intellect.
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But a lot of our knowledge is intellectual rather than experiential.
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Knowledge helps us to know who we are.
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We will get the theory, but not necessarily the experience of transcendence, where we go from the object to the subject, where we go away from name and form to nirgun.
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Knowledge also defines the righteous way to live, it teaches us dharma, we try to live the best of our svadharma, our own personal path in life, and beauty as in it sees beauty all the way around like everywhere is it considers to be beautiful it sees the beautiful colors and flowers it sees the wonderful stars in the night sky you know it sees that everything is illuminating and radiant.
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Divinity is seen in this beauty and happiness is felt when we do rituals.
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It's felt when we are doing spiritual practice.
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It's felt when we are being one with Brahman and it's felt when we're reading the Gita or spiritual texts like the Bhagavad Gita.
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We understand how sattva can bind us, and the way to know and to recognise this within yourself is to see if you're getting attracted towards knowledge, that means sattva is predominant.
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If you're getting attracted towards beauty, you want to look at more art and culture, and just appreciating art and culture.
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In general, you like to slow down and watch the world and observe nature.
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You can see that you're attracted to beauty, and if you are somewhat happy, you feel happy just being, you know, just casually, naturally, that tends to be sattva.
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But remember, this happiness is not something that is the same, it kind of fluctuates.
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So, you feel happy, but you know that sadness is around the corner type of thing.
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Sri Krishna says in verse seven.
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Next, O Arjuna, Rajas uses the promise of unlimited pleasure to create extreme attachment to matter by generating unlimited desires that ensure our Atma in various material entanglements.
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Rajas binds us to matter through our insatiable hungers for material pleasure.
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This is a very, very Interesting verse and the way I would interpret this for you very, very quickly before we go deeper into it is that Sri Krishna is talking about the restless mind.
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The chachala mind, you know, you find those people who have an itch to do something.
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So in the Sattvic one, you'll find that people are more happy to be in solitude.
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They're happy to just feel relaxed and they don't need to be doing something.
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They're comfortable in being themselves, being alone.
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Whilst someone in Rajas has to be doing something.
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You know, those people that just can't sit at home, can't relax.
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They say they have to go shopping, they have to do this and that.
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They are full of rajas.
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That's the predominant one.
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We're gonna break this verse down, again like we did with the previous verse.
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Next O Arjuna, Rajas uses the promise of unlimited pleasure to create extreme attachment to matter by generating unlimited desires that ensnare our Atma in various material entanglements, very interesting words isn't it that he uses, so first of all, It sayrajaegis uses the promise of unlimited pleasure.
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You think that if you get what you desire, you're going to be happy forever.
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You get that new car, you get that new house, you get that promotion at work, you get that dream job.
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You earn millions or billions in turnover.
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It's exactly what you wanted.
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You think you will have unlimited pleasure.
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Yeah, but what happens is, with the promise of unlimited pleasure, by thinking you will, if you get those things, it will cause you happiness.
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You get attached to matter even more.
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So what will happen is.
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You start chasing these material pleasures, you start chasing, these goals in life and what happens is you chase them even in your dreams.
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You get so entangled in them.
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That's why he says, so what happens is unlimited desires are created.
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And these unlimited desires mask away our true happiness.
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So what happens is we are building up this pseudo happiness.
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We have a desire, we meet it, we get happy.
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Then repeat.
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We get a desire, we then achieve that desire, we feel happy, we feel pleasure, and then it's repeat.
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But what happens is we're getting attached to prakriti, we're getting attached to nature.
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What happens then, our Atma is ensnared, so the, the awareness within us that is constant, that is changeless, within the body, our attention doesn't go towards it, our mind cannot focus on it, because our mind is focused on desires.
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So what happens here is, the Atma is ensnared into just chasing desires.
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You get that dream job, you get that dream house, you get that dream spouse, you get the dream, anything you want, you basically are just chasing that.
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Now, Sri Krishna is not saying do not chase those things, but understand their limitation is all he's saying.
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You know, we, we can somewhat misunderstand this.
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Sri Krishna is just saying don't limit yourself to this.
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If you do, then you're going to be trapped.
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So What happens is, because of that, then we get into various material entanglements.
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What are those entanglements?
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We've got to make sure people are happy around us.
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We may feel that we are unhappy with the things we got, that we thought would give us pleasure, that did give us pleasure.
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Now we want to get rid of it in order to feel pleasure.
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That's what tends to happen.
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For example, you may get the very car that you wanted, and five years down the line, this car isn't exactly what you want now.
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Technology's upgraded, you want something new.
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So you just get entangled, you know, and the other entanglements you can feel is like anger, you can feel, and with that you cannot focus properly, you cannot keep your attention, you cannot calm yourself down, you can get into a depressive state, you can get into some sort of psychological entanglement where you cannot find peace.
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So those are the things.
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And then Sri Krishna says, rajas binds us to matter through our insatiable hungers for material pleasure.
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We are constantly hungry for material pleasures and that's what Rajas binds us towards.
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If that's that rope that we've talked about before, that rope is basically rajas binds us even more when we keep pulling on that rope of hunger towards material pleasure.
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We constantly think the material pleasures are going to bring us happiness.
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So we continue to chase it, we continue to go towards it, we continuously want it.
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And we'll do anything to chase them, yet what happens is we get more entangled.
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And you find this, we find people that you know they constantly have to upgrade their house or do something in the house or they will find some sort of negativity and they'll have to improve on it.
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They will constantly take on more than they can actually achieve.
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Those are the people in rajas.
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And, and actually, if you're around them, they stress you out.
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You know, that's the number one indicator if you want to be around someone who's rajas.
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You'll find that, one, they cause stress for themselves, and two, they want to hand their stress to you.
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Even though they've taken on that stress.
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You'll see that these people, and why do they do it?
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They may claim to be selfless, but actually what it is, is to gain respect in society, or it's to gain respect amongst peers or family members, it's to show one's enthusiasm, we can find that in people and then they get stressed because they can't get what they want because they basically are asking for too much and they know they're getting overwhelmed with with the delivering of those things.
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Those people are entangled in rajas.
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And the one way I think of rajas is the hustle culture.
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When we're part of that work till you drop dead basically.
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This is actually very detrimental to our spirituality.
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If you are truly dharmic person, you cannot be in the hustle culture, all these coaches today, who are trying to get you to buy their coaching course or telling you, you must work to get what you want, that's how you're going to get happy, those people who are in that hustle culture, they aren't looking really for happiness, they are trying to get your money because their mind is restless of thinking of business ideas of how to get more money from you.
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So this hustle culture is a very dangerous one.
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The way of the sage is to be calm and everything will happen as it is meant to happen.
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There is no need to force something.
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There is no need to deliberately force yourself into action.
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That's what rajas does.
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Tamas is avoiding of the action, whilst Sattva is very different.
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Sattva is let the action come to me I will respond when it arrives, I'm not going to be, in this matter you shouldn't be proactive and neither should you be reactive, someone inside the sattva will be, they will deal with it at the time, because then they will analyse with their intellect on what's the best thing to do.
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And then verse 8.
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And finally Arjuna, tamas causes delusion and bewilderment that destroy wisdom and cause addiction, destructive behaviors and excessive sleep.
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This causes the inclination to violate the laws of nature on a regular basis.
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Just as sattva is enlightening, tamas is darkening.
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Tamas binds us to matter through ignorance and acts of destruction.
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Again, a very deep verse and If we look at this, Sri Krishna has talked about sattva, rajas and tamas, we've just, we haven't got deep into the tamas aspect, but what you can understand is, he's showing us an evolution, but in this case, he's showing us the highest and shows what the lowest looks like.
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Most of us probably are in the rajas and tamas.
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We mostly are either turbulent in mind, restless, or we're just too tired to do anything.
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We are predominantly in those categories and really self actualization is sattva.
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So we've got to go towards more sattva.
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Let's break this verse up and let's go deeper into this.
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And finally Arjuna, tamas causes delusion and bewilderment that destroy wisdom and cause addiction, destructive behaviors, and excessive sleep.
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This is important because today's day and age, I find this to be the problem, predominantly.
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One, we have a lot of rajas, but this, it's like rajas and tamas are battling each other.
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That's what it's looking like.
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First of all, we know that tamas causes ignorance and delusion.
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Once there's delusion, you think you just name and form, the higher truths aren't really looked into.
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For example, more or less, you'll just do things out of blind faith rather than knowing why you do something, why you do a ritual.
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You don't read the scriptures.
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You just follow whatever somebody says.
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You don't think about it.
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You don't exercise your intellect.
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That causes ignorance and delusion.
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That's why in spirituality, even if you have a Guru, you'll find the Guru will always be there to answer your questions, deal with your doubts.
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They will never tell you do not doubt and just believe in me.
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Any guru who does that does not follow the Vedantic approach.
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And that's why it's really important to recognize that no guru should take you towards blind faith.
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It should be, they should be the one that tells you question.
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And the guru should answer.
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The guru must answer and or whoever is able to give that knowledge or mantra diksha or anything like that, they should be able to answer.
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So tamas causes ignorance and delusion.
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Yeah, the biggest delusion is that we think we are body and mind, or name and form, and not that pure witness consciousness.
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We lose our wisdom when we are spiritually lazy, and like I mentioned, if you give all your power to your guru without then asking questions, you've given your power too soon.
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I'm not saying that eventually you should not surrender everything to the Guru but I think that comes at a later stage.
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So originally there has to be this element of doubt and answering those doubts, that enquiry needs to be done.
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And we get addicted to those things that harm us.
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So whether that's alcohol, whether that's drugs, whether that's gambling, whether that's addicted to shopping.
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Those things that just cause harm and this addiction harms ourselves, our money or even harms our loved ones.
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So this addiction will cause destructive behavior.
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We may get angry, we may feel greedy, we may feel jealous, and all these things weigh us down and that's why it's tamas, that's why it's in darkening.
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And then we sleep too much, for example, what we need to try to do is sleep enough to get the body and mind rested.
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And also pursue spiritual practice, that should be the ideal or the goal.
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But if you're in tamas, you're like, ah, I'll just sleep for a bit longer.
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The body needs sleep, so you'll think of reasons of creating more delusion.
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And else what'll happen is, you'll just be like, oh, I can't be bothered to do this, I can't be bothered to do that.
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That is not what Sri Krishna is looking for.
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Then the next part of the verse is, this causes the inclination to violate the laws of nature on a regular basis, just as sattva is enlightening, tamas is darkening.
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When we do this, when we're in tamas, we are actually violating the laws of nature on a regular basis.
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We harm nature through our actions of overconsumption because of our addiction.
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And we don't think of how our behavior is affecting nature.
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So When we say nature, even say you recklessly drive while you're drunk and you kill somebody or you injure somebody, you're not only causing harm for that person, but you're causing harm for those people that know that person.
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You're causing disturbance in their mind.
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So that's what happens when we are violating the laws of nature.
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Nature tends to be harmonious, but we deliberately like to stick our nose in it and cause more problems.
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We then continue to be attached to our ignorance and we get addicted to this maya and even though sattva enlightens us with knowledge, tamas brings in the darkness of avidya of ignorance and this tends to be perpetuated when we follow things blindly, when we do not look to think for ourselves, when we are not doing shravana, manana, nidhidhyasana.
00:22:52.490 --> 00:22:54.069
So we're not even doing shravana here.
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We're too tired to listen, yeah.
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Who has the time for spirituality?
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That's the type of mindset they have.
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In the next part of the verse, Sri Krishna says, Tamas binds us to matter through ignorance and acts of destruction.
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It binds us to matter through deep ignorance, we are totally invested in the idea that we're the body and mind only, and we're not pure consciousness, we bypass the watcher within, the witness within, we ignore it, and acts of destruction are like speaking rudely, stealing from others, standing in falsehoods is the acts of destruction, so we are defending those that condemn those that are powerless, you know, things like that.
00:23:36.244 --> 00:23:37.515
Those people are in tamas.
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So as a society, if we are to develop, we need to go towards more sattva.
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Now what's happening is that we need to analyze as a nation, as an individual, as a family unit, are we more in tamas, are we striving towards rajas and then are we striving towards sattva as a result?
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The highest to attain is sattva, but if we, we have to ask ourselves, are we evolving or are we getting worse?
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That's an important question that we must answer.
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In verse 9.
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Sattva is balanced action with correct knowledge.
00:24:14.515 --> 00:24:16.964
causing well being and abundant happiness.
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Rajas creates with partial knowledge, dominated by attachment and selfish desires, which at first produce intense pleasure, but end in pain.
00:24:28.424 --> 00:24:40.704
Tamas is the deluded state, by being in which ignorance appears to be freedom, but in fact leads to darkness, negligence, misery, and finally extreme bondage.
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We're gonna break this verse up, there's lots to talk about possibly here, so let's break this up and see what we discover together.
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So sattva is balanced action with correct knowledge, causing well being and abundant happiness.
00:24:54.894 --> 00:25:07.164
So when we have the correct knowledge, so we're living according to the scriptures, we're striving towards that, we're meditating, we are doing spiritual rituals, we're going to pilgrimages, we're doing all these good things.
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We are thinking of others, we are serving others with humility, with kindness, with compassion.
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Then you can consider that our actions that we do because they're based on the correct knowledge, based on The higher ideals in life, they cause well being and abundant happiness.
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The happiness is in a great portion.
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Now, remember, this is not everlasting happiness, but it's abundant happiness.
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It's happiness that is, you can say, there's a lot there.
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Our actions are more pure and clear, and people praise behaviour.
00:25:44.099 --> 00:25:46.920
This is something we see in a lot of spiritual people.
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A lot of them are more or less in this way, where You know they have the correct knowledge because they're teaching you the highest.
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Remember, whoever teaches you about Brahman is providing you with the correct knowledge.
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They cause well being.
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They know what can make you happy.
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They know what can make you blissful and abundant happiness.
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They at least give you happiness, that's the most important aspect in them.
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Then Sri Krishna says, rajas creates through partial knowledge, dominated by attachment and selfish desires, which at first produce intense pleasure, but end in pain.
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Since with rajas we cannot concentrate, our knowledge is partial, we can't capture the nuances, we are constantly battling for attention, for focus.
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So, this means that We can never sit still and because of that we're constantly attached to reaching our desires.
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Until we reach our desires we're not going to rest, we're not going to chill out.
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And this then makes our desires very selfish and it's all based if I get something, if I achieve something, if I attain something.
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So what happens is we get those things, we achieve it, it causes pleasure.
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But it can end up giving pain too.
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For example, if you eat that one slice of chocolate cake, it's nice.
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But if you eat a whole cake, it's gonna make your stomach upset.
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That pleasure turns into pain very quickly.
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But over abundance in anything will cause us pain eventually.
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Maybe we enjoy working out.
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