तत्त्ववित्तु महाबाहो गुणकर्मविभागयो: | गुणा गुणेषु वर्तन्त इति मत्वा न सज्जते || 28|| |
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Commentary
Mind and heart are made of the material that created Maya or the power of delusion. Maya oscillates continuously between the three gunas of sattva, rajas and tamas. In the morning, a person may be sattvic, praying to God and enjoying peace. Sometime later his mind enters the rajasic state pursuing some goal passionately but when others are not behaving as per his expectations, his mind expresses tamasic state becoming distrurbed and angry. When he is in one state or guna, all the people that he is interacting with are in some other states. Naturally there will be conflict, apathy, disengagement or indifference when such fluctuations are interacting constantly.
People do not see the world as it is but as they perceive through their predominant gunas. If a man is in the sattvic state, everything is nice and good. If he is in a rajasic state, everyone seems to act selfishly. If he is in a tamasic state, nobody seems to be good anymore. The realized saint sees everything with clarity. His spiritual vision evolves although the world remains the same. He clearly sees the interaction of one person’s gunas with another person’s gunas.
Gunas are the qualities of Prakriti or Nature not man. All the tendencies in each guna including calmness, well-being, peace of sattva; or desire, passion, selfishness of rajas; or anger, jealousy, pride and other tendencies in tamas, have existed in Prakriti before the birth of animals and humans. Even places, objects and food express gunas. When food rots, the place and the objects that are in contact with the decayed food are also in tamasic state. These numerous qualities of three gunas will continue to exist in Nature but experiencing them personally, man believes he is the doer. He ascribes someone as good or bad, not knowing that the other person is also experiencing different states of gunas. The saint evolves to a state of Nirguna by not getting disturbed by such interactions of gunas and clearly knows that he is not the doer.