Key idea of the Yoga Sūtras
guṇa · strands of nature
Sattva, rajas and tamas: lightness, activity and inertia, the stuff of everything seen.
Guṇa means a strand, or a quality. Patañjali assumes the Sāṃkhya teaching that everything in nature is woven of three: sattva, rajas and tamas, lightness (or clarity), activity and inertia. The seen has the nature of light, activity and stability (2.18). The guṇas pass through four stages, from the specific to the unmarked (2.19), and the qualities of things, manifest or subtle, are made of them (4.13). They matter for practice in three ways. First, the mind is also made of them, so it is always changing, and the movements of the guṇas conflict; to one who discerns, this makes everything suffering (2.15). Second, practice purifies the mind, its bright sattva, until it is as pure as the self (2.41, 3.55). Third, the highest non-attachment is freedom from thirst for the guṇas themselves (1.16). At the end the guṇas, their purpose fulfilled, complete their sequence and return to their source (4.32, 4.34).
Vyāsa
“The aspects (guṇa) of the thinking-substance in the form of brightness and of activity and of inertia, having become interdependent by aid given each to the other, give rise to a presented-idea either tranquil or cruel or infatuated”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya in J. H. Woods' translation (1914), p. 134.
How it has been read
The guṇas are read sometimes as physical stuff, sometimes as psychological qualities. In the text they are both: they make up the mind (2.15) and the elements and senses (2.18), so they are more than moods.
A common misreading
Popular yoga often sorts foods, people or moods into sattvic, rajasic and tamasic, with sattva good and the rest bad. In the text all three belong to the seen, and the highest non-attachment lets go of the guṇas altogether (1.16).
Where the text defines it
- 1.16 The highest non-attachment comes from knowing the self: it is freedom from thirst for the guṇas themselves.
- 2.15 To one who discerns, everything is nothing but suffering: through the sufferings of change, anguish and conditioning, and because the movements of the guṇas conflict.
- 2.18 The seen has the nature of light, activity and stability; it is made of the elements and the senses, and exists for experience and for freedom.
- 2.19 The stages of the guṇas are the specific, the non-specific, the merely marked and the unmarked.
- 4.13 They are manifest or subtle, and made of the guṇas.
- 4.34 Liberation is the return of the guṇas to their source, now that they have no purpose left for the self; or it is the power of awareness established in its own nature. Thus it ends.