III: 37

Chapter 3, Verse 37

Krishna says,

"Rajas Guna has two faces,
Lust and rage,
The ravenous, the deadly.
Recognize them well.
They are your enemies."

Sri Aurobindo:

"Within our nature lies our wholeness and each one of us is to strive to actualize that wholeness along the lines of our personalities, our Swadharma, in the midst of life and action. But if we seek this wholeness only in life's externals, we will never find it, for we shall be subject to the pairs of opposites: liking and disliking, pleasure and pain, and especially to Rajas Guna and its snares of worldly longing, grief, and wrath."

Paramahansa Yogananda:

"All of us will have to face circumstances in which we will be sorely tempted. Even Jesus was not free from these great temptations and the Buddha as well. When cravings propel us, when we find ourselves almost helpless before them, the battle is so intense that no victory in the worldly sphere can compare with it. We need to cut through the stifling cocoon of delusion to emerge as the butterfly of omnipresence. Voracious desire and frustration spring from nature's activating quality [Rajas Guna], which spawns illimitable variety and enticement, exciting us into unskillful, habit-forming actions.

The soul, having descended into the senses from a place of unvaried calm, becomes feverishly active. The Self is motionless, unfluctuating joy. But once we get caught up in the activating attributes, there is the tendency to exclusively identify with the ego; and we proceed, sometimes unwillingly, whirling and swirling, blindly awash in a revolving door. The wise learn how to establish and maintain an inner oasis of poise in the midst of activity."

Srila Prabhupada:

"When living entities come into contact with material creation, their eternal love for Krishna is transformed into lust. When lust, in association with the mode of passion, is unsatisfied, it turns into wrath. Lust is the greatest enemy of the living entity, and it is lust which induces us to remain entangled in the material world. When the mode of passion [Rajas Guna] is elevated to the mode of goodness [Sattwa Guna] by prescribed methods, then one can become saved from degradation by spiritual attachment."

[Swami Shivananda used to say to his students, "Detach...Attach...Detach...Attach." The meaning was, "Detach yourselves from the tentacles of unskillful desire, and attach yourselves to God." This is the way to use Sattwa Guna to go beyond the Gunas.]