An Atheist Explores the Bhagavad Gita Part 15: Plato, Aristotle, and Mindfulness (Yog Through Understanding The Three Modes of Material Nature (Guṇa Traya Vibhāg Yog))
Chapter Fourteen: Yog Through Understanding The Three Modes of Material Nature (Guṇa Traya Vibhāg Yog)
Plato, Aristotle, and Mindfulness.
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the
Bhagavad Gita, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as
literature and mythology.
For the online Bhagavad Gita that I use, see here https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/
“O
mighty-armed Arjun, the material energy consists of three guṇas (modes)—sattva (goodness), rajas (passion),
and tamas (ignorance).
These modes bind the eternal soul to the perishable body.”
So sattva
is the notion of goodness, leading the person toward knowledge and giving their
actions good outcomes, leading them upwards. When a person dies dominated by sattva they go to the “pure abodes”, which I think is the kind
of sub-heaven, a place of goodness (free from rajas and tamas) but also
ultimately prone to dissolution the same as everything else. Because attachment
to sattva nonetheless binds a person
to material things, to happiness and the pursuit of knowledge and good deeds.
Rajas on the
other hand, is the mode of action and passion. It gives a person drive, but
also ties them to a desire for wordly success. When rajas dominates “the symptoms
of greed, exertion for worldly gain, restlessness, and craving develop”,
and a person strong in rajas will be
reborn as a workaholic, basically.
Finally tamas is fashioned “ignorance”,
and is the source of indolence, laziness and greed. It’s almost the opposite to
sattva (whereas rajas is somewhere in the middle), making a person attached to “delusion” and results in rebirth as an
animal.
I think I mentioned before the
similarities to Plato’s trinity of the logical, spirited and appetitive parts
of the soul. Plato, however, errs towards cultivating the logical part of the
soul, akin to the rulers of a city, above the other two portions. Krishna,
however, claims that all three gunas are
traps leading to attachment. Although sattvas
is clearly the most advantageous route to take, it nevertheless still diverts a
person away from Brahman.
The ideal state of mind, according to
Krishna, is the balance, a kind of dispassionate lack of concern for both good
and bad. One should not love the gunas,
but neither should one hate them – one should simply accept them as existing
within oneself and not be beholden to them. “Those who are alike in happiness and distress; who are established in
the self; who look upon a clod, a stone, and a piece of gold as of equal value;
who remain the same amidst pleasant and unpleasant events; who are intelligent;
who accept both blame and praise with equanimity; who remain the same in honour
and dishonour; who treat both friend and foe alike; and who have abandoned all
enterprises – they are said to have risen above the three guṇas”
This,
to me, sounds very much like mindfulness meditation – the idea here is not to
try to suppress thoughts and feelings, but simply to observe them. Trying to
force away an emotion merely suppresses it, but bringing it into focus,
studying it dispassionately, observing, allowing it to be and allowing it to
pass, serves to tame it somehow.
Going
back to the Ancient Greeks as well, it’s notable that while Plato feels that
the nous, the rational part of the soul, should be in charge over the
appetitive and spirited parts, he also leans towards a balance within the
appetitive and spirited. They shouldn’t be removed altogether, but also
shouldn’t be allowed to dominate. Aristotle develops this even further by
seeing all characteristics of having vices of excess and of omission. Courage
is good, but cowardice and rashness are equally as vicious.
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