Chapter 14 · Verse 5·Spoken by Arjuna
सत्त्वं रजस्तम इति गुणाः प्रकृतिसंभवाः।निबध्नन्ति महाबाहो देहे देहिनमव्ययम्
sattvaṁ rajas tama iti guṇāḥ prakṛiti-sambhavāḥ nibadhnanti mahā-bāho dehe dehinam avyayam
Goodness, passion, and ignorance: these are the qualities born of Nature. They bind the imperishable embodied self to the body, Arjuna.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
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machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
he verse names the three gunas. 'Guna' means a strand or constituent. The three are sattva (clarity, harmony, goodness), rajas (passion, activity), and tamas (inertia, darkness). They all spring from prakriti, which means Nature, the material ground of all things. Most commentators stress that these three are not 'qualities' in the ordinary sense of a color or property resting in some separate substance, the way blueness rests in a cloth. They are the very stuff of Nature itself; Nature is nothing other than these three. So the verse is naming the basic ingredients out of which every body, mind, and experience is woven.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
Several commentators explain how the three gunas arise from prakriti. In their resting, undisturbed state the three are in perfect balance, and that balance (guna-samya, the equilibrium of the gunas) simply is prakriti, also called the Lord's maya. When the balance is broken and the three stand out unevenly, one rising and another falling, they become 'prakriti-born', distinct and active. They are never other than prakriti; they are prakriti showing itself in motion. From this unevenness springs the entire endless variety of beings, since their differing ratios produce countless distinctions.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas
These gunas bind the 'dehin', the embodied one, the soul that dwells in the body. They bind it 'in the body', the body being itself a product of prakriti. The binding works through identification: the soul settles into the body and takes the body for itself, and through this false identity (tadatmya) it is yoked to the body's experiences. Commentators describe the binding concretely as a tethering to pleasure, pain, and delusion (sukha, duhkha, moha), which are the gunas' own effects. Images recur: a calf roped to a post, a deer caught in a net, a fish hooked on swallowed bait.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
The embodied one is called 'avyaya', the imperishable, the unchanging. This word carries great weight. The soul, in its own true nature, is free of all modification; it can neither be altered nor truly bound. So the binding is not a real change in the Self's own being; it is an appearance, an 'as it were'. The Advaita and Bhakti commentators repeatedly soften the verb 'bind' with this qualifier: the gunas bind the soul only by association and superimposition, coloring by proximity what cannot itself be colored. A favored image is the sun reflected in trembling water: the sun seems to shake, but the real sun in the sky never moves. This also resolves an apparent contradiction with the earlier teaching that the Self abiding in the body 'does not act and is not stained' (13.31): there is no supremely real bondage, only an apparent one.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak · Vedānta Deśika
Several commentators read the placement of this verse as the opening of a fourteen-verse teaching block, and they explain why it begins with bondage. By first showing how the three gunas bind, the Lord awakens in the listener the recognition 'I am bound', which alone gives rise to the desire to learn and undertake the means of release. So this verse is the practical doorway into the whole chapter, named so that the seeker will want to know the way out.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The binding is finally unreal, a product of maya. The gunas are 'of the nature of ignorance' toward the field-knower, and they bind only 'as it were', by taking the knower as their resort. The imperishable Self can never in truth be bound; the apparent binding is the very wonder of maya, likened to seeing an atom as Mount Meru, or a tiny fly as a mountain. The reflected-sun image shows that what trembles is only the appearance, never the changeless Self. One source adds that the address 'mighty-armed' hints that mere strength of arm does not free anyone; only the realization 'I am unchanging' releases the soul from the gunas' grip.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
The gunas are particular natural traits attendant on the form of prakriti, known only by their effects such as light. Unmanifest while prakriti rests, they become manifest in its transformations, beginning with the great principle (mahat) and reaching down to the particular elements. The embodied one is connected to the body of a god, a human, or other being. By its own nature it is unfit for connection with the gunas, yet it is bound through the limiting adjunct of its dwelling in a body. The binding is real to the embodied career while the gunas operate, though it does not touch the kshetrajna's proper nature, which remains unbound.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
The verse is read as a deliberate move to prompt the practice of the means of liberation. By showing the manner of bondage caused by the three gunas, the Lord makes the soul recognize 'I am bound', which alone awakens the desire to know and undertake the means of cutting that bondage. The accent falls on bondage as a genuine condition to be cut, and on the verse's role in motivating spiritual practice; there is no insistence here that the binding is merely apparent.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
This carries the distinctive 'pushti' (grace) reading. The gunas are not native to the soul, yet neither are they alien to the Lord. At root the gunas are the Lord's own being, sat-cit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss); they become binders, faults, only by having descended into inert prakriti. The very word 'guna' is taken in its sense of a binding strand. The soul, an atomic portion of the Lord's consciousness, has come forth through these gunas for the sake of enjoyment and is drawn by rasa (relish), and the binding stands on this rasa-side, not on any inherent stain in the consciousness-portion. So freeing the soul is, in effect, the freeing of the Lord's own bliss from its inert overlay.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
Briefly, the embodied one, in its character as the self, is bound by sattva, rajas, and tamas to an enjoyment 'that runs as far as release'. The binding is framed as an enjoyment-experience whose reach extends all the way to liberation, rather than as a sheer fetter to be escaped.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
The cause of the binding is located precisely in attachment and beginningless ignorance. The soul, the conscious portion (cid-amsa), settles in the body, prakriti's effect, by identifying with it, and is bound because of beginningless ignorance and attachment to the gunas. The binding yokes the soul to the gunas' own properties, pleasure, pain, and delusion, taken up through lack of discrimination. One source describes the three living together in one mind like childhood, youth, and old age in one body, or like pure gold degraded as alloy is mixed in, and pictures the trapping vividly: the soul caught like a deer in a net, or a fish hooked on swallowed bait once it embraces egoism over its bodily functions.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators stress practical recognition and the mechanism of self-binding. One notes the three are present in every human being, never constant, with sattva, rajas, or tamas predominating by turns, and that knowing them is necessary because only such knowledge frees one from their clutches. Another renders 'avyaya' plainly as the unmodifiable (nirvikara) Atman residing in the body. A third explains the binding most fully as self-binding: 'looked at truly, the gunas of themselves bind no one; the purusha himself ties himself to them.' By calling the work of the gunas, money, family, body, circumstances, 'mine', the soul, in himself wholly free (svatantra), is reduced to dependence (paratantrata); the knot is made in two ways, 'I am the body' (ahanta) and 'the body is mine' (mamata). From identifying with a perishable body the soul wishes the body to last forever, and so the fear of death is born; cut that bond and both the wish and the fear fall away.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If my true Self is imperishable and untouchable, then in what sense am I actually bound, and is the bondage real enough that I need to do anything about it?
The bondage is real enough to matter while it lasts, but it is not a change in your true Self. Your Self in its own nature is avyaya, imperishable and free of all modification; it can neither be altered nor truly fettered. The gunas bind it 'as it were', the way a trembling reflection makes the steady sun in the sky seem to shake. So you are bound in your embodied career, not in your essence; the binding colors by association what cannot itself be colored.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Vedānta Deśika
And yet the verse is placed first precisely so that you will recognize 'I am bound' and want a way out. The recognition of bondage is what awakens the desire to learn and undertake the means of release; without it, no one looks for the door. So the apparent bondage is exactly the thing that needs your attention.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
What you need to do, then, is not to repair or alter the Self, but to stop feeding the false identity that lets the gunas bind. The binding works through tadatmya, taking the body for the self, and through ahanta and mamata, 'I am the body' and 'the body is mine'. Loosen that knot, treat the work of the gunas as not finally yours, and the unbound, unchanging Self stands revealed of itself.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
Contemplation
Notice where the rope is actually tied. The gunas, by themselves, bind no one; you tie yourself to them by calling the body, the money, the family, the circumstances 'I' and 'mine'. Watch how this works in your own day: the money you call yours rises and falls and shakes you; the people you call yours are born and die and shake you; the body you call yours grows and wastes and shakes you. That shaking is the binding. The body is leaving you moment by moment of its own accord anyway; the only work you have to do is to stop clutching what is departing. You do not have to manufacture your freedom or modify your Self in any way, because your true nature is avyaya, unchanging, intact through every binding. Loosen the knot of 'I am the body' and 'the body is mine', and the same unbound, guna-transcending Self shines of itself.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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