The three gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas, are the qualities that, in Samkhya philosophy and in the Bhagavad Gita, compose all of material nature in shifting proportion. Sattva is clarity and balance, rajas activity and agitation, tamas inertia and obscurity. They are applied to foods, temperaments, times of day and states of mind.
Facts
Overview
- Entries in the Atlas
- 3
- What Defines This Grouping
- The three qualities - sattva, rajas and tamas - whose shifting proportion constitutes prakrti in Samkhya. A scheme of analysis applied to foods, actions and states of mind, not a set of substances. 1
- Size of the Traditional Set
- 3 gunas 1
Attestation
- Era of Attestation
- The classical statement is Isvarakrsna's Samkhyakarika, c. 350-450 CE; the doctrine is older and appears in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita. 1
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The Three Qualities of Nature
The three gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas, are the qualities that, in Samkhya philosophy and in the Bhagavad Gita, compose all of material nature (prakriti) in shifting proportion. Sattva is clarity, harmony and balance; rajas is activity, passion and agitation; tamas is inertia, dullness and obscurity, and everything in the manifest world is a mixture of the three.
The doctrine is a cornerstone of the Samkhya analysis of reality and runs through Hindu thought, ethics and psychology: foods, actions, states of mind and stages of life are all classified by their predominant guna.
Ethics and liberation
In the Gita and later Vedanta the gunas frame a path of self-understanding: to recognise how the three move in oneself, to cultivate sattva over rajas and tamas, and ultimately to become free of all three is part of the way to liberation. The scheme thus links cosmology, psychology and spiritual practice.
The atlas describes each guna, its character, and its role in Samkhya and Vedantic thought. The gunas connect to the wider Indian analysis of the self gathered under The Body and to the yogic and Vedic traditions.
Enter a year to compare these entries as the atlas records them at that moment. Leave it empty for the present. A year before the common era is entered with a minus sign, so 44 BCE is minus 44.