Mind and the Gunas

When satwa increases, awareness, knowledge, wisdom, happiness, joy, evenness, calmness increase. When rajas increases, restlessness, desires, and craving begin.
 It brings a little bit of sadness too. And when tamoguna reigns, dullness, sleep, lethargy and dejection surface.

These three gunas rotate in life. In the same day sometimes you will feel satoguna rise or tamoguna rise at a particular hour and at a particular time rajoguna rises. Have you noticed this? Even when you are sitting in meditation a few moments of satoguna will come up and you feel very good. And a little later, rajoguna starts followed by tamoguna and you feel a shift in your energy. The reverse also happens.

So when such things happen in life, the wise person does not get shaken. When tamoguna or satoguna comes he stays calm. He just let things be as they are and sees that he is beyond them. By just knowing this, he can peacefully witness the rising and falling of the satoguna, rajoguna, or tamoguna. He also knows that the presence of any one of these gunas will affect his state of mind, and therefore he must ‘bathe’ his mind.
To cultivate existential understanding within ourselves it is essential to ‘bathe’ our mind.
You bathe and apply scent all over your body. How long will the scent stay? It will stay for the little while. Then you again have to take bath the next day. You have to bathe again to maintain your cleanliness. Our mind is also similar to this. As you bathe your body, you have to bathe your mind also.

Assume that your hand becomes muddy, and tar is stuck to it. Do you sit crying? No. You immediately go and wash your hand by applying soap. If the dirt is too stubborn and does not go away easily, you continue to scrub and scrub and wash it. You come away satisfied that your hands are clean. Suppose your hands are stained with the deep colors or charcoal and it takes at least two days for the color to go away but still you continue your efforts without calling it quits, and without spoiling the peace of your mind.
Similarly, the mind constitute in the same way. There is always happiness and sadness following through the mind, appearing and disappearing. We need to regularly clean the mind of its impurities. Meditation helps here. It helps clean your mind. Meditation diminishes rajas and tamas from one’s system and helps in raising satoguna. It lets go of all the anger from the past and events of the past. Meditation is accepting this moment and living every moment totally with depth. Sit down and meditate for a while, do pranayam, bhajans and prayer. Watch the mind, you will see that it gets washed and becomes clean once again.