Shloka 1
Guṇa-viveka, Haṁsa-gītā, and the Yoga that Cuts False Ego
श्रीभगवानुवाच सत्त्वं रजस्तम इति गुणा बुद्धेर्न चात्मन: । सत्त्वेनान्यतमौ हन्यात् सत्त्वं सत्त्वेन चैव हि ॥ १ ॥
śrī-bhagavān uvāca sattvaṁ rajas tama iti guṇā buddher na cātmanaḥ sattvenānyatamau hanyāt sattvaṁ sattvena caiva hi
ဘုရားသခင်က မိန့်တော်မူသည်— စတ္တဝ၊ ရဇ၊ တမ ဟူသော ဂုဏ်သုံးပါးသည် ရုပ်ဝတ္ထုဘုဒ္ဓိနှင့်သာ ဆိုင်ပြီး အာတ္မာနှင့် မဆိုင်။ စတ္တဝကို တိုးပွားစေခြင်းဖြင့် ရဇ-တမကို အနိုင်ယူနိုင်ပြီး၊ ထို့နောက် သုဒ္ဓ-စတ္တဝ (အလွန်လောကီ စတ္တဝ) ကို ပျိုးထောင်ခြင်းဖြင့် ရုပ်ဝတ္ထု စတ္တဝမှပင် လွတ်မြောက်နိုင်သည်။
Goodness in the material world never exists in a pure form. Therefore, it is common knowledge that on the material platform no one is working without personal motivation. In the material world goodness is always mixed with some amount of passion and ignorance, whereas spiritual, or purified, goodness ( viśuddha-sattva ) represents the liberated platform of perfection. Materially, one is proud to be an honest, compassionate man, but unless one is fully Kṛṣṇa conscious one will speak truths that are not ultimately significant, and one will give mercy that is ultimately useless. Because the onward march of material time removes all situations and persons from the material stage, our so-called mercy and truth apply to situations that shortly will not exist. Real truth is eternal, and real mercy means to situate people in eternal truth. Still, for an ordinary person, cultivation of material goodness may be a preliminary stage on the road to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. For example, it is stated in the Tenth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam that one who is addicted to meat-eating cannot understand the pastimes of Lord Kṛṣṇa. By cultivation of the material mode of goodness, however, one may become a vegetarian and perhaps come to appreciate the sublime process of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Since it is clearly stated in Bhagavad-gītā that the material modes of nature constantly rotate, one must take advantage of an elevated position in material goodness to step onto the transcendental platform. Otherwise, as the wheel of time turns one will again go into the darkness of material ignorance.
FAQs
This verse states that sattva, rajas, and tamas belong to the mind/intelligence, not to the ātmā; the soul is beyond material qualities.
Because sattva is still a material mode; it can purify and defeat rajas and tamas, but liberation requires going beyond all three modes to realize the ātmā.
Cultivate sattva through clean habits, truthful speech, regulated life, and devotional remembrance—then deepen spiritual realization so even attachment to ‘being good’ is replaced by steady God-consciousness.