KARMA YOGA 6

There are three tendencies in man, the sattvic, the rajasic and the tamasic. Sattva, rajas and tamas are 'gunas' or attributes that impel action of peacefulness, restlessness and dullness respectively. Sattvic work is fraught with wisdom. It is harmonic and conducive to world-welfare. It is introspective and spiritual. It leads the individual soul towards spiritual freedom. Rajasic work is fuelled by ambition, egotism and the desire to possess. It is creative in its impulse, full of stir and motion. It binds the individual soul in the meshes of Maya even as it struggles to overcome the forces of Nature. Tamasic work is darkened by dullness of understanding, inertia and abject submission to the blind forces of Nature. It leads the individual soul into the mire of ignorance and material bondage. Karma is a combination of these three gunas in varying proportion. Where sattva predominates, and rajas and tamas are present in traces, the work is sattvic; where there is the preponderance of rajas, and sattva and tamas are in traces, the work is rajasic; and, where tamas is all-pervasive, and sattva and rajas are in traces, the work is tamasic. The same principle applies to men. The sattvic man is the one whose personality is composed principally of the sattva; the rajasic person is the one who has a preponderance of rajas as his element; and, the tamasic individual is the one who is majorly a bundle of tamas. These three gunas again keep changing their proportions in the individual being owing to karmic resolutions and the dynamics of Nature. The whole of Nature is a system of unceasing karmic vibration where sattva, rajas and tamas interplay to produce incessant motion and change causing cosmic evolution. But is there no beginning or end to karma? What started it? And what may stop the wheel of work? Is there a way out? Hold on, we shall soon see.