The guna of passion, rajas attaches the soul to action’s consequences, leading people toward greed and distancing them from wisdom. (The adjective form of rajas is “rajasic.”)
Rajas Quotes in The Bhagavad Gita
The The Bhagavad Gita quotes below are all either spoken by Rajas or refer to Rajas. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Discourse 5
Quotes
This master
creates neither agent
nor action
in this world,
nor the linking
of action with its fruit.
But his own nature
keeps on evolving.
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Rajas Term Timeline in The Bhagavad Gita
The timeline below shows where the term Rajas appears in The Bhagavad Gita. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Discourse 3
Arjuna asks why people can be compelled to do harm, and Krishna blames rajas, the guna of passion. Rajas conceals wisdom like smoke conceals fire or dust conceals a...
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Discourse 7
...and beings’ desire to follow dharma. While Krishna is not in the gunas of sattva, rajas, and tamas, they are all in him, and they confuse those in the world who...
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Discourse 14
The three gunas—sattva, rajas, and tamas—inhere in matter and bind the imperishable self to the body. Sattva brings light,...
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...when one finds light and wisdom in one’s body. Greed, restlessness, and lust emerge when rajas prevails, and darkness, sloth, and confusion come to the fore when tamas dominates a person....
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Discourse 17
...they grow to become / whatever they trust.” The sattvic sacrifice for the gods, the rajasic for the demons, and the tamasic to “the dead / and gangs of ghosts.” Those...
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...sacrifice, heated bodily discipline, and gifts. Sattvic foods are satisfying, pleasant, healthy, flavorful and smooth; rajasic foods are spicy, salty, sour, and rough, leading to disease and pain; tamasic food, including...
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...the giver thinks only of the sacrifice and not of any goal. Those who sacrifice rajasically consider a material goal for their sacrifice at the same time as the sacrifice itself,...
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...These three disciplines are sattvic when performed in trust and without a desire for ends; rajasic when done for the sake of social status or respect; and tamasic when destructive or...
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...of goodwill are sattvic, those given for the sake of some reward or benefit are rajasic, and those given wrongly—disrespectfully, to the wrong person or in the wrong context—are tamasic.
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Discourse 18
...such prescribed actions is actually tamasic; quitting actions because they are difficult or painful is rajasic; but undertaking prescribed action for its own sake, without an attention to its fruit, is...
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...in sattvic action, one sees all beings as eternal and multiplicities as a whole; in rajasic action, one sees separate natures in different beings; and in tamasic action, one clings to...
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...the gunas: sattvic insight understands what is and is not to be done and feared, rajasic action does not discern these distinctions, and tamasic action inverts them, leading people to perform...
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