Hari om everyone,
We have learnt up to verse 18th in the 2nd chapter of the geeta. Attached is the script for the bhagavadgeeta chapter 2 for those of you who have not picked up the handbook from the ashram. Please take a print out of the script and keep it ready. We will not be sharing the script on the screen from the next class as you all have it now in this pdf!
Today we started learning about the 14th chapter. It talks about guna-s which translates to 'our nature' or 'tendencies'. This topic has come in previous years and so the class knew there were three gunas – tamas, rajas and sattvic. Each person is a combination of these three natures. If the supreme consciousness is like a river, each human is water drawn from the said river contained in a glass bottle. Depending on where the bottle was immersed in the river, the composition of the water will be different. The other concept discussed in class was that of maayaa – it is born out of ignorance (avidya) and delusion which clouds the nature of reality from the individual. The gunas of an individual enmesh them in a world of material desires and vanities shaped by their desires – a person may assume superiority over others due to a special skill they got by birth or circumstances and this arrogance might blind them to the triviality of their beliefs and prevent them from achieving liberation.
What are the three gunas then? The first is sattva guna which enmeshes an individual in pursuit of knowledge and other noble ends (such as an artist engaging in creative endeavors). The second is rajoguna which is a tendency towards ambition and enterprise and the third is tamo guna which is inertia. Tamo guna is associated with tendencies such as laziness and delusion which prevents an individual from achieving their true potential or engaging in noble pursuits. But each one of us is a combination of all 3 of these gunas. We are not to label them as good or bad, but work towards being predominantly saatvic as any kind of learning happens only when we are in a saatvic state of mind! If we are industrious (rajas) or lethargic (tamas), learning can never happen. So, in a quest for the ultimate knowledge we are talking about, we need more sattva. So, we must nurture our sattvic tendencies and accumulate knowledge and then we have to transcend gunas entirely. That will be the topic of discussion in the upcoming weeks.
Hope you are all enjoying the beautiful snow day! Stay safe and have fun :)
Regards,
Raghav and Rashmi.
