Geeta Darshan #3

Now, let us take the sutra:
O Arjuna, know the rajas, in the form of passion, to be born of desire and attachment. It binds this embodied soul through attachment to actions and to their fruits.

These three gunas are binding elements. In Sanskrit, the word guna also means “rope,” that by which one is bound. They are called gunas also because they bind. That is why we call the Supreme “nirguna.”

Nirguna does not mean “without any qualities.” Nirguna means “unbound”—there is no bondage upon That. These three binding gunas are not in it. It is beyond their bondage. Nirguna means utterly free. And that which is hidden within you is also utterly free—but there are bonds around it. Bondage does not destroy your freedom; it only obstructs it.

No bondage destroys freedom. If someone puts handcuffs on me, my freedom is not destroyed; it is only obstructed. I cannot exercise it, but it is not gone. Tomorrow the chains may break; my freedom was with me—it was only blocked.

So no consciousness loses its freedom, but obstacles arise. And when we become attached to our obstacles, then trouble becomes great. That is our trouble.

We have no chains on our hands. And if we do, we have mistaken them for ornaments. We have inlaid diamonds, silver, gold in them. We have painted them in many colors. Now if someone tries to break our chains, we think he is an enemy, destroying our beauty, our ornaments.

Once someone takes his chains for ornaments, his freedom becomes very difficult. If someone takes the prison for his home and begins to decorate it, there is no way to free him. The first step to freedom is to know: I am in a prison. It is not to be decorated; it is to be broken. What binds me are not ornaments; they are chains. They are not to be gloried in but to be dropped.

O Arjuna, know the rajas, in the form of passion, to be born of desire and attachment; it binds this embodied soul by attachment to actions and their fruits.

Krishna says sattva binds by attachment to happiness and by the pride of knowledge.

What we call erudition is a personality bound by sattva. What we call saintliness too is a personality bound by sattva. It has two cravings. One is for happiness. Therefore it seeks heaven—meaning a place with no sorrow, only joy. It will do everything—austerities, worship, sacrifice—to attain heaven, a realm of pure pleasure without pain. Sattva binds such people.

Heaven too is bondage. Gods are not free.

There is a tale in Buddha’s life: when Buddha became fully enlightened, Brahma and many gods came and bowed at his feet to request his teaching. Hindus were hurt by this story—“Why should our gods go to Buddha?”—but the point is priceless. Whosoever the gods, they must bow at the feet of Buddhahood. Buddha belongs to none; gods may belong to anyone. But whenever Buddhahood happens, even gods must bow and seek the way.

Brahma said, “Instruct us, because we too are bound. You are free even of happiness; we are bound by happiness. Our lives are full of joy, but fear of loss remains. Whatever is possessed brings fear of losing it.

“The wealthy may have wealth, but fear of losing it torments. So we tremble: when will our joy be snatched away? Our joy was earned by merit; merit has a measure. When merit is spent, joy will be spent and we will be thrown back into suffering. We are shaken, frightened. Assure us. You are free even of happiness. Nothing can be taken from you now; you are beyond fear. Nothing can be stolen or erased from you. You have arrived at the utterly free state for which even the gods yearn.”

Sattva can carry you to godhood. It is the purest chain, the most beautiful chain. Those who deeply crave joy, peace, even bliss—such people will not be freed of sattva, because sattva gives pleasure. And that which gives pleasure binds us.

Those who have attachment, dependence—who depend on another person for their happiness: the husband who says, “I cannot live without my wife,” or the wife who says, “If my husband dies, I will become sati; I cannot live without him.” Sati is the ultimate symbol of attachment: my life depends wholly on another’s; without him it has no meaning, no essence—then dying seems proper, even more worthwhile than living.

When someone binds himself by such attachment, that which arises from attachment and desire is called rajas. Or, the embodied one’s attachment to action and its fruits generates rajas.

Attachment is to become bound—so bound that it feels as if my life-force is not in me but in the other. This can happen with a person or a thing. Some people’s life-force is locked in their safe. Kill them, they may not die; smash the safe, and they will.

Nasruddin was passing through a dark lane. A man pressed a pistol to his chest: “Nasruddin, your money or your life?” Nasruddin said, “Give me a moment to think.” After thinking he said, “My life.” The man asked, “What do you mean?” Nasruddin said, “I have saved my money for old age. You can take my life. If I give you my money, what will I do then? How will I manage?”

Old children’s tales tell of a king whose life is hidden in a parrot. Kill the king, he does not die; kill the parrot, and he dies. First find where his life is imprisoned. These stories are meaningful—they are our stories. There is no point in killing you; one must first find in which parrot your life is caged. Strike there—and you are gone.

An attached person’s life is not in himself; it is elsewhere. Such a person falls into deep slavery—his very life not his own! That is a total prison.

Rajas grows from such attachment. And a rajasic person is always bound to fruits: “What will I get in the end?” He looks only at the fruit. He has no taste for the act itself; the taste is in the fruit, which is always in the future.

Gradually such a person acquires the habit of not seeing the present. When the fruit comes, he cannot see it either, because by then it is present, and his eyes have already moved on to the future. He uses one path only to reach the next path, the second to reach the third. He walks the roads his whole life; the destination never comes—and will not come. He always uses the means to reach yet another means; the end is never in question.

There are great difficulties here. Even if he attains the end (which is nearly impossible), his habit of looking ahead will not let him enjoy it. And attaining the fruit is not easy; it is not in your hand. It depends on clusters of thousands of causes. No one is so powerful as to organize all the causes in the world.

You are earning wealth. Whether you will succeed does not depend only on you. It is multi-causal. A revolution may happen; wealth may become common property, redistributed. By the time you manage to earn, inflation may rise so high that money loses value.

In the last world war, China saw such inflation that to buy a box of matches you needed a bag full of notes. That can happen here any time.

A famous incident occurred in China in that war. Two brothers inherited equal shares when their father died—several lakhs each. One invested in business; the other drank away his lakhs. But he had a hobby: collecting empty liquor bottles. He amassed thousands of bottles. Then inflation rose to the point where he sold the bottles and earned many times what he had spent on liquor. The brother in business died ruined; people had no money to buy his goods—things existed, but buyers had no purchasing power.

Life is very complex. You are not alone; billions are here. Billions of causes are at work. You may do everything and some Mao or Nixon may go mad and drop an atom bomb. You had arranged everything, were just going to withdraw your bank balance—finished.

When the atom fell on Hiroshima, 120,000 people died. In five minutes everything ended. They were people like you, with grand plans.

The fruit-obsessed person is in great difficulty. First, it is nearly impossible to get the fruits exactly as desired. Second, even if he gets them, he cannot enjoy them. The fruit is not in your hands. When you decide to obtain something, so many causes go to work that you cannot command them.

If we understand this well, this is what Krishna means when he says the fruit is in God’s hands. These countless causes—the infinite totality—we simply call God or fate. God is not some person sitting above with things in his hand. If there were such a person, we would find a way to influence him—praise him, flatter him. If that didn’t work, we would influence his wife; or his children; some connection would be found. If God were a person, he could not escape us; we could arrange our fruits through him.

But God is not that. “God” means the infinite expanse of this world as the sum of infinite causes—call that sum destiny or God, as you wish. When we say the fruit is in the hands of fate, we only mean: I am not alone; billions of causes are at work.

You leave home with great plans. Another man, drunk, speeds toward you in his car. You have no idea. He can crash into you and shatter your plans. You did him no harm; you did not pour his drink. Yet he can change the map of your life.

Every moment thousands of processes surround you. You are helpless. What can you do? But the man attached to fruits gets dejected when things do not fulfill. Krishna says: this clinging to results is the nature of rajas.

And, O Arjuna, know the tamas—which deludes all who are identified with the body—to be born of ignorance. It binds this embodied soul by negligence, laziness, and sleep.

Sattva binds by knowledge and happiness; rajas by attachment and the longing for fruits; tamas by ignorance, stupor, negligence, and sloth.

Understand “negligence” (pramāda) well; the whole flavor of tamas is hidden in it. Pramāda means a kind of stupor, unawareness: you go on doing, moving, but with no alertness. Whatever you do, you do as if in sleep. Why you are doing it, you do not really know. Whether to do it or not—no awareness. While acting, your consciousness is not flowing into the act.

You are eating. The hands go on eating mechanically, out of habit. The mind has run away—God knows to what worlds, what occupations! You are not here; you are here unconscious.

Buddha says there is only one practice: wherever you are, let your consciousness be there. Your foot rises on the path—let your awareness rise with it. Become conscious. You drink water—let it not be mechanical; let your full awareness go in with the water.

Buddha said: as your breath goes out, be aware; as your breath comes in, be aware. His whole methodology of anapanasati rests on this.

It is a very unique, very simple experiment: keep awareness on the breath. As the in-breath touches the nostrils, know that it has touched them; then feel its touch along the inner passages; feel the lungs fill, the belly rise; then feel the breath turning and returning. Be aware of both the path in and the path out.

In Burma they call this vipassana—seeing, seeing attentively.

Attentive seeing of even one act can result in supreme awakening. If one watches all the acts of the day, negligence breaks. When negligence breaks, the bond of tamas falls.

But we all live unconscious. Whatever we do, we do as if hypnotized—no awareness, moving mechanically.

This mechanicalness, laziness, negligence, sleep—these are the cornerstones of tamas. Hence Krishna says in the Gita: the yogi, even when he sleeps, does not sleep.

As you are, even when you are awake, you sleep. Your waking is only in name. Try yourself; many times in the day you will catch yourself asleep. Give yourself a shock.

Gurdjieff used to say: give yourself a sudden jolt—stand up somewhere abruptly—and you will find you had been asleep. For a moment a little glimpse will come, as if someone shook you in sleep. Then sleep will take hold again.

When Krishna says the yogi sleeps and yet does not sleep, he means the bond of tamas has broken. There is no negligence. He takes rest, but within him someone remains awake—some flame burns. A watchman is always there; it never happens that the house is empty and the guard asleep. Someone is always at the gate.

The saints—Kabir, Dadu, Nanak—have called this inner watch “surati,” from smriti: a remembrance that remains awake. Buddha’s word is smriti; in the people’s tongue it became surati.

Kabir says: like a village bride who returns from the well with three pots on her head—she does not hold them with her hands; she chats with her friends, jokes, sings, walks the path—yet her surati stays on the pots above so they do not fall. She has not touched them, but with surati alone she manages them. Let a pot begin to slip—instantly her hand will go up. The thread of remembrance stays tied behind.

When your actions are done attentively, non-negligence (apramāda) flowers. When actions are done inattentively, negligence (pramāda) prevails.

O Arjuna, know the tamas, which deludes all body-identified ones, to be born of ignorance.

And here ignorance does not mean lack of information; it means self-ignorance—not knowing oneself. One who does not know himself—how will he be awake? Whom will he awaken? And one who is not awake—how will he ever know himself? The two depend on each other. The more one awakens, the more one recognizes oneself; the more one recognizes oneself, the more one awakens. Supreme awakening becomes self-knowledge.

Tamas is ignorance. Rajas is attachment. Sattva is subtle pride, refined ego. These are the three bondages.

Because, O Arjuna, sattva attaches you to happiness; rajas to action; and tamas, by covering knowledge, sinks you into negligence.

There are only three kinds of persons in the world. All three gunas are present in everyone, but not in equal measure. In one person sattva predominates; then his rajas and tamas get enlisted in the same quest.

Understand this well. In one for whom sattva is chief—who seeks peace, happiness, knowledge—his rajas (energy, capacity for work) is poured into the pursuit of knowledge, into the search for happiness; even his tamas (his need for rest, his sloth) is used as and when rest is required for that quest.

If tamas predominates in someone, and he has a little intelligence, he uses even his understanding to justify his laziness—to rationalize it, to make it seem clever. He says, “What is the point of doing anything? What will you gain by doing?” Whatever rajas he has, he uses it in such a way that it does not become true action. He acts, but in ways that carry him deeper into laziness. He will walk—but to the tavern. If he needs to buy liquor, he will work by day—but will spend his earnings on drink.

If rajas predominates, he throws all his consciousness and power into running and doing. Doing becomes the goal: “I must do something.” He may sacrifice happiness and rest for it—but something must be done, something must be shown. History is made by such people; the politician is rajasic. He must leave a name, be written on the pages of history.

Remember, Toynbee, a great historian, said something very sweet: it is easier to make history than to write history—because even donkeys can make it. What does it take to make history? How difficult is it to become a Godse? A pistol, a dagger, a grenade—some mischief can always be done. History begins to be made. As long as Gandhi is remembered, Godse cannot be forgotten. What did Godse do? Not much by way of true doing—he created an uproar.

Those heavy with rajas are engaged in some kind of mischief. If they go bad, they become bandits; if, by luck, they receive proper training, they become politicians. Give a bandit a little cunning, he becomes a politician; take a little cunning away from a politician, he becomes a bandit. The change is easy; they are close cousins.

A petty killer remains a murderer; a great killer joins Tamerlane, Genghis, Hitler. A man who seizes someone’s small property is a thief; one who seizes vast empires is an emperor—and saints sing his praise and write eulogies.

The rajasic pours all his power, understanding, even his rest, into one thing—doing. Where it will lead, what it will mean, whether results will be auspicious or inauspicious—that is of little concern.

Psychologists say Hitler wanted to be a painter as a child, used to make big drawings. He went to many academies; all rejected him. He could not be a good painter. Psychologists say, if only some academy had admitted him, he would have spent time coloring paper and the world’s trouble would have been less. He might have dyed sheets red, but he would not have dyed the earth with so much blood. He did not become a painter; an unrest remained—he had to do something great. That restlessness turned toward politics, and he proved dangerous. Though he never lost his love for painting—his room had beautiful pictures; he was a connoisseur of art; he loved classical music. He could have been a painter; but the whole force of his rajas, turned away from the door of painting, was deployed in politics.

England today is the one country where student unrest is relatively little. The reason: students still have to spend two or three hours on the sports field. Rajas gets channelled. A boy who has played three hours—tell him to throw stones and break windows—he will say, “Let me go home.” A boy made to sit six hours on a chair without moving—told by the teacher to sit like Buddha—he will want to throw and break something. Football or volleyball are only organized ways of throwing, smashing—nothing else. If you won’t let a boy strike with a hockey stick on the field, he will strike someone’s head outside. The ball is taking the head’s place; his rajas is being released.

Universities are being burned; schools broken. This will go on until youth’s rajas is channelled. Earlier it was channelled. In our country we had child marriage. Rajas had no chance to go and smash glass, set fires, burn buses. Before they could gather their wits, we tied them to a wife—that’s the heaviest weight; carry that! All the rajas got absorbed. Before any sprouts of intelligence came, children were born. Then there was nowhere to fight; they seemed saints.

In India, such people were in great numbers not because they were religious but because rajas had no avenue. Before they could cause mischief, their energy got engaged.

Now, across the world, children grow up; they are not married; they have no responsibilities. Parents are prosperous; boys can loaf till twenty-five or thirty. This is dangerous. Scientists say sexual energy peaks at eighteen—never again that strong. At eighteen, with energy in full storm, there is no channel. The kettle’s fire is blazing and the lid is shut. The outlet we recommend—“Read your books at the university”—is no outlet. Books cannot drink that energy. For the sattvic few, fine. What of the rest? In the old days only the sattvic reached university; the rest entered life. Now everyone can go. Out of a hundred, five may be sattvic; the remaining ninety-five are risky. About half of them are rajasic; their energy has no use. Books and exams cannot absorb it; they will create trouble through books and exams too. At every exam time, trouble.

Those causing the upheaval are rajasic. The rest, the tamasic, are lazy—they will do nothing. If the university is on fire, they will not put it out; they will stand and watch. They will neither stop the arsonist nor the fire.

Today there are three groups in the university. A small group is afflicted—the sattvic; they suffer most because they want to work, to study, to research—and no one lets them. But they are weak; they are not rajasic enough to fight and create upheaval. Before they can fight, spectacles appear on their eyes, their backs bend; they are immersed in their books.

A large group wants to agitate—because they have energy and need a channel.

A third group is lazy—mere onlookers. They take no side; whatever happens, they watch.

Whatever element predominates in a person, the other two fall in behind it.

Sattva binds to happiness; rajas to action; tamas drowns you in negligence.

Freedom is needed from all three. How to be free of them—we shall enter the methods ahead. Whenever someone goes beyond the three, we call it the state of being beyond the gunas—gunatita. That is the supreme attainment. Hence Krishna says at the outset: O Arjuna, that supreme knowledge by which perfection is attained and the final goal reached—I shall tell you again.

Enough for today.