The three qualities

Again I will declare to you this supreme knowledge, the highest of all knowledges, knowing which all the sages went from here to the highest perfection.

Taking refuge in this knowledge, and having attained to a nature like mine, they are not born again at the time of creation, nor are they shaken at the time of dissolution.

My womb is the great Brahman; in it I place the seed. From that, Bharata, comes the origin of all beings.

Whatever forms are born in any of the wombs, son of Kunti, the great Brahman is their womb, and I am the seed-giving father.

Sattva, rajas, and tamas—these guṇas, born of prakṛti, bind fast in the body, mighty-armed one, the imperishable embodied self.

Of these, sattva, being stainless, is luminous and free of affliction; it binds, sinless one, through attachment to happiness and attachment to knowledge.

Know rajas to have the nature of passion, arising from thirst and attachment; it binds fast the embodied self, son of Kunti, through attachment to action.

But know tamas as born of ignorance, the deluder of all embodied beings; it binds fast, Bharata, through carelessness, laziness, and sleep.

Sattva attaches one to happiness, rajas to action, Bharata; but tamas, covering knowledge, attaches one to carelessness.

Sattva arises, Bharata, by overpowering rajas and tamas; rajas arises by overpowering sattva and tamas; and likewise tamas by overpowering sattva and rajas.

When light—that is, knowledge—shines through all the gates of this body, then it should be known that sattva has grown predominant.

Greed, activity, the undertaking of actions, restlessness, longing—these arise, bull of the Bharatas, when rajas has grown predominant.

Darkness, inertia, carelessness, and delusion—these arise, joy of the Kurus, when tamas has grown predominant.

If the embodied self meets death when sattva has grown predominant, then it reaches the spotless worlds of those who know the highest.

Meeting death in rajas, one is born among those attached to action; and dying in tamas, one is born in the wombs of the deluded.

The fruit of well-done action, they say, is sāttvic and pure; the fruit of rajas is pain; the fruit of tamas is ignorance.

From sattva arises knowledge, and from rajas, greed; carelessness and delusion arise from tamas, and ignorance as well.

Those established in sattva rise upward; those of rajas remain in the middle; and those of tamas, established in the function of the lowest guṇa, sink downward.

When the seer perceives no agent other than the guṇas, and knows that which is beyond the guṇas, he attains to my being.

The embodied self, having gone beyond these three guṇas from which the body arises, is freed from birth, death, old age, and pain, and attains to immortality.

By what marks, Lord, is one known who has gone beyond these three guṇas? What is his conduct, and how does he pass beyond these three guṇas?

He who does not hate light, activity, and delusion, Pāṇḍava, when they arise, nor longs for them when they cease—

He who sits like one indifferent, unmoved by the guṇas, who, knowing that it is only the guṇas at work, stands apart and does not waver—

He who is equal in pleasure and pain, self-abiding, who regards a clod of earth, a stone, and gold as the same, who is the same toward the pleasant and the unpleasant, steady, the same amid blame and praise of himself—

The same in honor and disgrace, the same toward friend and foe, one who has abandoned all undertakings—he is said to have gone beyond the guṇas.

And he who serves me with unwavering bhakti-yoga, having gone beyond these guṇas, is fit to become Brahman.

For I am the foundation of Brahman, the immortal and imperishable, of eternal dharma, and of unconditional bliss.