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Chapter 14
THE GUNAS: DEVELOPING THEM AND GOING BEYOND THEM
78. Cure For Rajas: Living Within The Bounds Of Swadharma
13. Thereafter, we should turn to rajas. Rajas too is a terrible foe. It is the other side of tamas. In fact, ‘rajas’ and ‘tamas’ should be considered interchangeable terms. After resting for long, the body feels like doing something and after too much activity, it seeks rest. Thus rajas follows tamas, and vice versa. Wherever one of them is there, the other is invariably present. Like bread in the oven with the flames below and the embers above, man is caught between rajas and tamas. They toss him towards each other. They together ruin him. His life is spent in getting kicked around by rajas and tamas, like a football. 14. The main characteristic of rajas is the itch and ambition to engage in all sorts of activities. There is an intense desire to do daring deeds. Rajas gives rise to limitless association and attachment to actions. It is essentially greed that binds a man to actions. Then it becomes impossible to withstand the onslaught of desires and passions. Man wants to do something or the other. He feels an urge to move mountains, to fill up lakes and create new ones in the deserts. He wants to dig a Suez canal here and a Panama canal there. He is completely seized with such wild ideas. There is no thought except that of doing this or that thing. A child takes a piece of cloth, cuts it up and tries to make something out of its pieces. Activities impelled by rajas are of the same kind. Man is then never satisfied with what exists and wants to interfere with everything. He sees a bird, wants to fly and make aeroplanes; he sees a fish, wants to live like it in water and makes submarines. Thus, in spite of being a human being, he feels a sense of achievement in being like the birds and the fish. Although residing in a human body, he yearns to enter into the bodies of other beings to have different experiences. Some want to go to Mars. The mind is thus never at rest; it wanders all the time. A multitude of desires possess man like an evil spirit. He wants change, activity, excitement. He is not satisfied in letting things where they are. He feels that if the things remain in their places in spite of him, it is an affront to him! A wrestler cannot contain the energy within him and bangs anything which comes in his way, without rhyme or reason. Rajas is always gushing forth driving man to do this or that. It makes man dig the earth and bring out stones which he calls diamonds; it makes him dive deep into the sea and bring out rubbish which he calls pearls. He then pierces holes through them, and through his own nose and ears as well, so that those could be worn there! Why does a man do all this? All this is under the influence of rajas. |
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