Abhinav Khare deep dives into the fourteenth chapter of the Bhagvad Geeta where Krishna elaborates on the different gunas that rule the cycle of birth and death. Krishna also walks Arjun through the qualities that a person should have to be enlightened.
Krishna asks Arjun to gain the ultimate knowledge through yoga masters. According to Krishna, he is the father who gives the seed and the nature is the womb that nurtures the seed. Every human is thus a combination of the two. The three gunas: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas keep the Self bound to the body. Sattva binds the body by being attached to knowledge and joy, Rajas is by passion and activity and tamas is by being lazy and sleeping. Sattva being related to wisdom is responsible for a person’s enlightenment but the other two are responsible for a person’s fall. Arjun asks Krishna how to identify a person who has gone beyond his gunas. Krishna says that such a person is equal and indifferent to both joys and disgrace.
सर्वस्य चाहं हृदि सन्निविष्टो
मत्त: स्मृतिर्ज्ञानमपोहनं च |
वेदैश्च सर्वैरहमेव वेद्यो
वेदान्तकृद्वेदविदेव चाहम् || - Shlok 15
Krishna says that he is seated in the heart of all beings. It is from him that we get memory, knowledge and forgetfulness. He alone should be known by all the vedas, he is the author and has the true knowledge of the Vedas.
In this Chapter, Krishna reaffirms the qualities that a person should have to be enlightened and to understand the true meaning and nature of the Self. Krishna says that if a person is attached to any one guna, he will be held back to the cycle of death and rebirth. Even if it is the guna Sattva, if held for too long leads to attachment. But, if Sattva is achieved without attachment, it will liberate a person from the cycle of death and rebirth. In fact, Krishna names Sattva as the trait that rules a person who is on the path of enlightenment. There are a number of things that affect a person’s rebirth. The guna which rules at the time of death will be what determines the rebirth of a person. This implies that even if a person has led a good life, if he dies in anger, he will be reborn. So, even if a person is ruled by one guna for most of his life, he can keep moving between different gunas.
About Abhinav Khare:
Abhinav Khare is the CEO of AsiaNetNews Network and also the host of a daily show named Deep Dive with AK. He has a lifetime collection of books and gadgets and has already pinged more than hundred cities around the globe.
He is a tech entrepreneur, who is passionate about policy, technology, economy and philosophy from ancient India. He earned an MS Engineering from the ETH Zurich and an MBA Finance from the London Business School.
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