| Discourses On Gita By Acharya Vinoba Bhave |
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| Discourses On Gita |
| THE GUNAS - BUILDING UP AND BREAKING DOWN |
| The cure for rajas - Living within the limits of svadharma. 13. After dealing with tamas, we should come to grips with rajas. Rajas too is a terrible foe. This is only another aspect of tamas; it would be true to say that both these words stand for the same thing. After long sleep the body is restless, and after much movement it longs to stretch itself on the bed. From tamas proceeds rajas, and from rajas, tamas. Where one is present, you may take it that the other will be found too. Like bread in the oven with the flames below and the embers above, man is caught between rajas and tamas. Rajas says, "Come here, I shall toss you towards tamas" and tamas says, "Come here, I shall throw you to rajas." Thus rajas and tamas help each other to ruin men. Just as the football is destined to be kicked about on all sides, man's life is spent in receiving the kicks of rajas and tamas. 14. The chief mark of rajas is the desire to do all sorts of things, an overweening ambition to do superhuman deeds. Through rajas we conceive a limitless desire for action, a consuming greed. Then we become unable to control the rush of our instincts and passions. We wish to remove the mountain here and fill up the lake there. We are impelled to drain the water from the sea and to submerge the deserts of the Sahara. We think of digging a Suez Canal or a Panama Canal. |
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