Sharon Maas's Blog, page 5

Beliefnet, Protest, and Travel Fever

 Warning: Identical post to today's Sadhana Day by Day!

I haven't posted for a long time.
I do have a new post in mind; a continuation of the last one.
In a few days I'll get down to it, but in the meantime, you can read a gallery feature I wrote for Beliefnet:
The Russian Doll of Hinduism in Ten Sanskrit Terms 

And while you're on the Beliefnet website, please read the following article entitled

Microsoft's Encarta: Biased Against Hinduism? A point-by-point examination of the popular encyclopedia's treatment of Hindu beliefs.

It's excellent, and echoes a syndrome I've long been aware of: the denigrating way Hinduism is often portayed in the West. I did try to correct some of that portrayal in my own Russian Doll article, simply by showing "the other side" of Hinduism; but the Beliefnet article above takes the bull by the horns and address the subject point by point. I've commented on the article on its page, so do take a look.

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And by the way:



I'm also very busy preparing for my visit to Guyana next week, and have started a blog which will function as a journal while I'm there.
I think what you read there has quite a lot to do with Sadhana Day by Day.

Here's the blog:
Land of Many Waters

The Gita Series: Arjuna's Despair

The Gita really begins with Arjuna's despair as he sees the great army of the Kauravas before him on the battlefireld of Kurukshetra.

Krishna, seeing all these kinsmen arrayed here to fight, my mind reels; I can hardly stand, for my limbs grow limp. My mouth is as parched dry as desert sand; my body quivers. The mighty Gandiva bow slips from my fingers wet with sweat; my skin is on fire. What greater crime is there than killing one's own friends and relatives? What gain is victory, what use sovereignty, what joy in wealth and pleasures, what value life itself, if gained by killing one's loved ones? It  is a great sin, Krishna. I cannot do it. How can we ever live happily hereafter, if we kill our own people? I cannot do it, Krishna. I prefer to be poor, and live as a beggar, or a pauper. Krishna, I cannot fight.

He casts away his bow and arrows and sinks down in his chariot in utter dejection.
And who cannot sympathise with him? After all the tribulations of the years and decades leading up to this date; after all the negotiations ofr peace and preparations for war, Arjuna is finally face to face with what the war will actually mean. On the enemy side are men beloved to him: his teacher, Drona; his uncle, Salya. Most of all, the dear Grandsire of the entire clan, Bhishma. The Kauravas themselves are first cousins of the Pandavas. The enormity of what he is about to do stands before him stark and horrifying, and to refuse to fight at first glance seems the noble response.

 But Krishna will have none of it:

You grieve in vain, Arjuna; the wise grieve neither for the dead nor for the living. For there is no time that I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these warriors: and there is no time we shall not exist hereafter. The body dies, but not the living spirit within it. Know this, and do your duty; without grief.

The embodied soul attains the stages of childhood, youth, maturity and old age: leaving the body, it goes on to another. The body is born only to perish again: but That which pervades body and soul cannot die or be killed.

Bodies slay and are slain on the vast tapestry of Time and Space: but the eternal Self is imperishable, immeasurable; an immutable principle, indestructible. It is not born, it does not die. It is constantly eternal: the same yesterday, today and for evermore; pure unchanging consciousness. Weapons cannot kill that Self, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, wind cannot dry it. It is eternal, all-pervading, stable, immovable, primordial.

With these words Krishna summarises the entire Gita, and gets to the very core of Hinduism: we are not the body. The body goes through many changes: it is born, grows, moves through the stages of childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age; and then it dies.  There is no constancy in the body, no permanence. What is permanent is the sense of being which every one of us experiences:  the child, the adult, the old woman. That knowledge of "I Am" is like a silved thread that accompanies us all through our lives. Though our minds may change, our attitudes, our likes and dislikes, our hobbies, indeed, even our sex, there is SOMETHING there beyond all these, a constant sense of one's own existence: that is the life within us upon which all these changes move and flicker like the pictures on a screen.

That, says Krishna, cannot be killed. It is not the agent throughout all the changes; it is merely the observer, the silent witness, the true Self of all. It occupies the body, it occupies the mind, but it is neither of these. It is the mystery beyond all the appearances that distract us day and night. It is the true reality.

That is the teaching of Hinduism, of the Vedas and Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita in a nutshell.

The Gita Series: Part One

As promised, I've published Chapter 58: The Song of God as a blog page above.

To understand what is happening here one really needs to have read the Mahabharata, but the Gita is important  that it has taken on a life as its own: 18 chapters of sublime wisdom, known  as a major world scripture in its own right. For Hindus it's the equivalent of the Bible.

There are many translations, of course, and I certainly have not read them all in order to make a choice as to which is the best. The version I own is a translation by W. J. Johnson published by the Oxford University Press.

The chapter 58 of Sons of Gods is a much condensed version of the Gita, and not a translation of a selection of verses: it's what I believe to be the essence of Krishna's message to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Much as I would have loved to include the entire Gita, doing so would have broken the word limit I had set for myself and held back the story. I do encourage everyone to get their own copy of the entire Gita and read it whenever they can; of course, online versions are available for free, but there's nothing like holding this book in your hands, packing it into hour luggage when you go on a trip, slipping it under your pillow when you go to sleep. It just doesn't do to have it on your Kindle along with a thousand other books.

For those who have not yet read Sons of Gods, or any Mahabharata at all, here's the context of the Gita:
Krishna, who is the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, gave his friend Arjuna the choice when it became clear that the Pandavas--Arjuna and his five brothers, who live in Righteousness--must go to war with their cousins, Kauravas--Duryodhana and his 99 brothers, who have taken the kingdom from them by unrighteous means.

Krishna is also a cousin of the Pandavas, and he commands an army that is known to be invincible: the Vrishnis. According to the rules, Arjuna and Duryodhana both approach Krishna to ask him to be their ally in the great battle, and according to the rules, Krishna is duty bound to ally himself to whomever asks first.
Duryodhana enters his chamber first, finds Krishna asleep, and so sits beside his head to wait till he awakes.
Arjuna enters after Duryodhana, and sits at Krishna's feet, where he sinks into meditation. Krishna wakes up, opens his eyes, and sees Arjuna first.

Duryodhana, however, insists that chivalry demands that Krishna side with him, as he was there first. Krishna only smiles, and says, "but I saw Arjuna first." What a conundrum! To solve the  problem, Krishna gives the cousins a choice: on the one side his mighty army, the Vrishnus, who cannot be defeated. On the other side he alone, as a charioteer. He will not fight: he will only drive the chariot.

To Duryodhana's fury, Krishna gives Arjuna the first choice: what will he have, the entire army, or he himself, weaponless, as a charioteer?

Arjuna does not think twice. He folds his hands in prayer, sinks to his knees, and says: "I want You my Lord; I only want You."

For me, that is one of the most poignant, the most moving, the most important scenes in the entire Mahabharta. To me, Arjuna's answer contains the whole Gita in itself.

In the coming days I'll be going through the Gita -- the condensed version as posted on this page -- but I'll start with that sentence: I want You, my Lord. I only want You.

The Gita Series: Introduction

A few posts ago I said I’d be going through the Bhagavad Gita chapter by chapter, and the time has come to do so.
As it is for many people, the Gita was my first real introduction to the Hindu faith and philosophy,. Yesterday I wrote on my other blog, Sadhana Day by Day, about the experience that turned my life around forty years ago, and set me on the uphill path I am still walking to this day. The aftermath of that experience was that I returned home and turned over a new leaf completely; and the lifeline that straightened out my oh so crooked life was this little book: the Bhagavad Gita.
In retrospect it seems that that path was already predetermined, and that everything was all planned out in advance that I should end up devouring the Gita as if I were starving and it was living water. Before my trip through South America I had already discovered the miracle of Hatha Yoga, and diligent practice  had sorted out many of my more pressing, physical problems: drinking, smoking and an eating disorder that had made me so fat I’d fallen into a slump of inferiority  and self-loathing. The Gita was the next step; for that inferiority and self-loathing still lived on in me, but in a more subtle, mental form.
The Gita pulled me out. The Gita showed me the way. The Gita opened doors for me and I walked through into a wonderful new world where inferiority and self-loathing could be shed like an old used skin and I gradually woke up to another me hidden beneath all the layers of self that had seemed so real, and were  so suffocating.
The Gita is, of course, the central teaching at the heart of the Mahabharata. Everything else, the huge cast of characters, the discourses, the sub-plots and plots-within-plots, the war, the entire vast story itself, are all merely spokes in a wheel of which the Gita is the hub. I’m always astonished when I read some short versions of the Gita, which omit the Gita as if it were a mere distraction from the story. It’s actually the other way around: the story is a distraction from the Gita, and that’s why the Gita has found a life of its own beyond the Mahabharata. Millions of people, in the West as well as in the East, have read and loved and revered the Gita who have never come near to the Mahabharata; it can exist on its own, whereas the Mahabharata on  its own—well, it’s still a great story, but a story without a spine: just another book in the fantasy genre.
The Gita, of course, is pretty long in itself, and there was no way I could include the whole of it in Sons of Gods. I did, however, try to prise out its essence, find new words for the jewel Krishna handed to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra; and so Chapter 58 of Sons of Gods, the Song of God, is a condensed version of the Gita. The day after tomorrow I’m going to post that entire Chapter as a page in this blog, and that’s the Gita that will be discussed here.

Women in the Mahabharata

A few days ago, Hindu Blog posted an interview with me on Sons of Gods. A couple of the questions concerned a subject I was planning to write about in the near future, so let's see  what I said there:

Who do you think is the most tragic woman character in the Mahabharata? 
The Mahabharata is a book about men, yet the few female characters are powerful indeed: the goddess Ganga, the Pandava's mother Kunti, the Princess Amba, and of course the Pandavas common wife, Draupadi. Of them all, I find Amba the most tragic, as well as the most interesting, and I tend to identify with her.
As a woman, how do you see the treatment of women in Mahabharat? Does your view reflect in the book?
When we consider the women in the Mahabharata and their treatment,  it's important not to see them through the prism of Western feminism. This is a story set in an age and a place far removed from our own world. Different standards were valid in that age, and it wouldn't be fair to speak of "repression" and "subservience" in that context. Yes, the Mahabharata is a story dominated by men. Yes, all the great heroes are male. And yes, there are only a few women, whose roles are mainly that of wife and mother. Yet, how powerful they are in those roles!
There's the goddess Ganga, who dictates the terms of her marriage to King Santanu; there's Gandhari, the mother of Duryodhana and his 99 brothers, who, after all the leading statesmen and wise councillors have pled in vain for peace, is summoned to the court to give the final word: as mother of the Kauravas, her wish is—or should be—final, and obeyed. Kunti is revered by her five sons, the Pandavas, to the extent that a word of hers spoken in jest is taken as an absolute command. And Draupadi: it's for her sake, to restore honour to her, that the entire war is fought.
There remains only Amba, who is cruelly wronged by Bhishma near the beginning of the story; but I love the way how, after she is experiences the most bitter shame and dishonour, she rallies her forces, decides on revenge, and focuses all her energy and her will on executing justice on Bhishma—even if she must die and be reborn again and become a man in order to do so. Amba is without doubt the very first transgendered character in literature; but even in a man's body, she remains a woman, and it is as a woman she engages in battle against Bhishma. In Sons of Gods I've tried in a small way to honour Amba; yes, she makes mistakes, but in the end truth wins out.
As for Draupadi: she's the most assertive of all the women; something of a diva, in the way she orders her husbands about! She's not a female character I particularly like; she's proud and vengeful and very bossy, and that's how I've portrayed her. Thank goodness, another author, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, managed to portray a different side to Draupadi in her book Palace of Illusions, so that I ended up understanding and even liking her!
We must remember that in Hinduism, the so-called female attributes of selflessness, forbearance and gentleness are seen as positive, whereas the so-called male characteristics of assertiveness, domination and control are considered negative, being traits of the ego that must, eventually, be surrendered to God.
Siva and Shakti, male and female energy, are seen as two halves of a whole, each valuable in its own right, each needing the other as a complement. God can be mother as well as father, and the Mother is, finally, divine. Ideally, women are seen as the invisible backbone of society; it is that backbone that holds society upright, and when it falls, so too, according to Hindu thought, does society. Of course this ideal, humans being as flawed as they are, is seldom realised, and women all too often trodden underfoot in India as everywhere in the world. But it is there, a goal to be aspired to.
  In Sons of Gods I've tried to get under the skin of the few women, so that the reader understands their inherent, though perhaps quieter, strength.

The trouble with "getting under the skin" of the female characters, of course, is that such to do so with every one of the women, and do so thoroughly, would have extended the whole book by a couple of hundred pages, which would defeat the whole purpose of a condensation. And so I was reduced to giving just a glimpse here and there into the inner life of the women: Kunti, when she summons the Sun God in the prologue. Amba, when she is disgraced by Bhishma and seeks revenge. Again and again, Kunti's feelings for Karna: just a sentence or two that reveal the depth of her love for him.

And then Draupadi. I have to admit that the only time in the entire book that I felt any liking for her was in the famous Assembly Hall scene, where she is dragged by her hair and the Duhsasana tries to strip her naked. I won't drop a spoiler here, but those who familiar with the Mahabharata know what she does; and that is the moment I love Draupadi.

It was only when I read the book mentioned above, the Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruna, that I finally saw a different side to Draupadi.  Unfortunately, I first heard of, bought and read this book the very week after Sons of Gods was published; but in a way that's a good thing, because I might have been tempted to go back and make some changes to the manuscript! As it was, I was astonished and delighted to see how well the two books complement each other. Divakaruni wrote the entire Mahabharata from the point of view of a single character, which of course means firstly, that the point of view of that character is biased, and secondly, that the reader only gets to see those scenes in which that character is present; everything else is by definition only hearsay, reported by the narrator or by the other characters, and by necessity much condensed. I often wondered, while reading Palace of Illusions, how well a reader unfamiliar with the Mahabharata story would really understand what is going on. But for a reader who does know the story, Palace of Illusions is wonderful; I have to thank Divakaruni for opening up the character of Draupadi and making her now only a living, breathing character, but one I could actually sympathise with and even love.

Most of all, though, I was delighted with the treatment of Karna in this book.  I've said it before in various places in this blog, and in the Hindu Blog interview:

Karna is my favourite character. In many shorter versions of the Mahabharata his role is skimmed over; he is merely one of the antagonists, Duryodhana's right-hand man, Arjuna's arch-enemy, a villain. And in the longer versions the reader tends to lose sight of him; he is lost amid the sheer vastness of the epic. But I've always been on the side of the underdog, and I love the fact that Karna in the role of the underdog actually possesses a secret power, a power he is unaware of. His position is pivotal to the entire story, and I was determined to make this clear. That's why I brought forward the scene of his conception and began the story with that, as a sort of prologue. It's to say: watch this guy. He's important. Don't forget him. He's a great character. Flawed, but honourable to his fingertips.

Divakaruni obviously sees Karna in the very light that I did, because, wonder of wonders, in her book Karna is a main character! It's not a spoiler to say that Palace of Illusions is about Draupadi's secret love for Karna, because that is the hook of the entire story: and what a Karna we have here! He is just as I imagined him: a truly noble hero, the greatest of them all, whose only flaw is a result of the tragic circumstances of his birth.
And so it is Karna in particular who links these two books: Sons of Gods, that tells the whole story of his life and death, and Palace of Illusions, that tells the story of the woman who loved him most.
Thank you, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, thank you a thousand times!

The Palace of Illusions is available through Amazon and at all good booksellers.

More Interviews, and what's coming up

There's an interview with me today on Hindu Blog about the Mahabharata.

 And last week this interview was published on Paula Dooley's writers' blog: Interview and Giveaway with Aruna Sharan.

 My thanks to those blog owners.

 Meanwhile, on my new blog Sadhana Day by Day the ideas for future posts are simply overflowing -- I'm very excited about putting all of this to paper!

 And right here on Sons of Gods I'll be keeping my promise to highlight the Bhagavad Gita over the next few days.

Announcement!

I've started a new blog! Yes, that's why I've been silent these last few days.

It's  called Sadhana Day by Day, and it's to be found here.

The thing is, this Sons  of Gods blog needs to stay on track, but it's been continually derailed by
posts about spiritual practice.

Not everyone who wants to read about the Mahabharata is interested in spiritual practice.
And not  everyone who wants to read about spiritual practice is interested in the Mahabharata.
So, I created a space entirely for the discussion of all things to with sadhana: spiritual practice along the lines of Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, and in particular my own practice, Advaita Vedanta, or Non-Duality.
If that's your interest, please follow me there!

I've ported all the posts on the Gunas over there, and added Part Four, which is about Sattvic Diet.

See you there!

There'll be more posts on the Mahabharata coming up.

Giveaway Today!

Today there is a giveaway of Sons of Gods at www.amazon.com!

The giveaway starts at 12:00 AM Pacific Standard Time on 1st February, and ends at 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time on 2nd February.
Click on the book's image on the right of the screen to be taken directly to the Amazon page.

Get your free book now! And spread the word: Facebook, Blog and Tweet this as much as you like.

In other news: I will soon be starting a new blog, dedicated entirely to the nuts and bolts of Vedantic spiritual practice. The sonsofgods blog will continue to be about the Mahabharata and related topics, but it seems that I'm venturing out beyond the book, and I'd like to keep the topics separate.

The Three Gunas, Part Three: Sattva

Part One  of this four part series is here.
Part Two of the series is here.


At first we seek out sattva in order to restore exhaustedresources. After a while of cultivating sattvaa subtle change takes place:  we begin toseek sattva for its own sake. Putquite simply: sattva feels good. Toconsciously bring our minds to sattvais to come close to a most natural state of being: to be what we were meant to be. The sattvic mind feels nourished and whole. It feels rounded, andbeautiful. It is happiness without an object of pleasure, for all too oftenwhat we call happiness is dependent on some exterior circumstance: we needprops to maintain a sense of pleasure. The sattvicmind is happy within itself, a happiness that is self-maintained, for it isderived from an inner source, a natural, inherent source, not from outercircumstances. In a sattvic state themind is free, independent of props. It feels at home. Furthermore, sattva provides the strength to weather difficult times with fortitude; it is an anchor in all the storms of life,  a source of courage and calm. A person well-grounded in sattva is solid as a rock, no matter what life may throw at him or her.But to arrive atsuch independence and freedom we first need to consciously foster sattva, and that means, at first,seeking out the circumstances that cultivate its growth. For in the beginning sattva is vulnerable, easily destroyedby outer influences, easily sucked back into rajas and tamas. Think ofsattva as a tiny plant within us thatneeds careful nurturing in order to grow. It needs the right soil and water inorder to put down roots, and fertiliser in order to grow shoots; it needs afence around it to keep the goats from eating it, the dogs from digging it up,the cows from trampling it. It needs love and attention. But carefully tendedone day sattva can grow into a treeto which you can tether that very same cow.For the beginner itmight seem like an effort, and even a sacrifice, to deliberately turn to sattva, but in time sattva becomes self-propagating. The objects of desire that onceseemed so attractive lose their pull; the mind wants to go home. And it seeks out activities and places and peoplethat make it feel at home. For me, one of the first effects of Hatha Yogawas that I stopped drinking and smoking, two of the props I used in order to derivea sense of pleasure. I stopped in a snap, without effort. The effort I had tomake was to join the Yoga class and participate fully in the practice, dayafter day. The result of that effort was that I felt so whole and good that myunhealthy cravings simply dropped by the wayside. They were no longer needed;they were merely compensation for a deeper need that had gone unfulfilled foryears. They were ersatz-satisfaction.Once I had the real thing the very need for ersatzfell off like an old skin.What are the conditionsthat foster sattva? For a start,nature. Nature is pure sattva. Anight sky filled with stars. A flower garden filled with colour and scent; asingle rose in full bloom. An empty beach, the sea ebbing and flowing. A highmountain, etched against the sky. The ecstatic rush of a waterfall. The simpleact of gazing at nature's phenomena brings about a sense of awe; we feel smalland humble, overwhelmed by the beauty of it all, swept away. That feeling is sattva. Then there ismusic. Some music is patently, deliberately rajasic:think of the pulsing beat of a discothèque, or aggressive rap. Some music ispure sattva: Beethoven's PastoraleSymphony. Gregorian chorals. A sitar raga,or devotional Hindu songs. Switch on any of these, close your eyes, and listen;listen not with your ears but with your heart. Let yourself be absorbed by themusic. Let it being tears to your eyes. That feeling is sattva.Some activities andhobbies, even places, are sattvic, just as some are tamasic and rajasic.Football is rajasic; sailing is sattvic. Boxing is rajasic, a walk in the woods sattvic.Lust is rajasic; love is sattvic. A run-down ghetto street is tamasic; the New York Stock Exchangejust before closing is rajasic; achurch service is sattvic. The qualities inherentin rajas and sattva must be experienced sequentially by everyone who wants toprogress spiritually; an evolving person has to ascend the gunas step by step. It's not possible, for instance, for the tamasic person to bypass rajas, for it is through rajas that we master the qualities ofenergy, self-discipline and power and learn to act adequately in the world.  Similarly it's not possible for the rajasic person to bypass sattva in order to reach the final goalof spirituality, Self-Realisation; the qualities of sattva must first be deliberately cultivated and gradually becomeour nature.  Some ofall this is self-evident. Everyone knows that the slothful, lazy person needsto get up and moving, working, participating in sport, anything to get off hisbackside. But it's not so easy to discern between tamas and sattva, and atfirst glance it might seem that both are simply ways of relaxation. Not so.Getting wasted on alcohol or smoking a joint or two might seem like a cool wayto chill out after a hard day's work but after a few years that kind ofrelaxation will take its toll: alcohol and drugs dull the mind, pulling it downinto a tamasic state. The damage canbe permanent. One rule of thumb is this: the easy options are usually tamasic.Spiritual growthimplies effort: the effort of turning away from those easy options—the downwardpull of tamas—and consciously liftingthe mind by engaging it in sattvicpursuits. The best antidote to tamas,of course, is conscious spiritual effort. For beginners, body-work is usuallyenough; body and mind work in close conjunction, and Eastern disciplines suchas Hatha Yoga and Tai Chi work wonders at lifting the mind into sattva through the body. Just the other daymy son was with some young people engaged in an aggressive shouting match. Hetold them to chill out. How? Askedone of the girls, one who was shouting the loudest. Her question seemedserious, so he gave her a simple breathing exercise: Watch your breath, he said. That was all. Half an hour later heragitation and anger had completely disappeared. She couldn't stop gushing abouthow calm and peaceful her mind had become, and how simply good she felt! This was a girl with no previous interest in orknowledge of Tai Chi, Yoga or breathing; she simply followed instructions, andit worked. Awareness of the gunas means taking responsibility forour state of mind. We are not helpless victims, at the mercy of whatever moodsweeps through us. I AM not my mind; I HAVE a mind, and I am responsible forits quality and its content. The mind may be weak, given to negativetendencies, but I am strong, and can cultivate it to make sure that only those qualities I choose flourish there. Thatis true empowerment, a good investment for the future. We look after our bodieswith such care and dedication, make such effort to keep fit, lose weight, lookgood; why not our minds? A beautiful body, after all, inevitably fades andwithers as it grows older; cosmetics, Botox and plastic surgery only mask or delay theprocess.  But a mind properly tendedgrows beautiful with age, immune against despair, chronic anxiety, and the fearof old age.Andwhat has all this got to do with meat eating? Find out tomorrow!

The Three Gunas, Part Two: their interplay

Ii wrote the first part of this series on the gunas yesterday, in Part One.

We have all experienced all three gunas at different times in our lives.If you've ever been in a drunken stupor, incapable of speech or one sensiblethought, that was tamas. If you'veever felt sexual passion, or the overwhelming drive to accomplish a career goal, or put all your energy into a sport you love, rajas was the driving force. If you've ever gazed up at a star-scattered night sky andfelt yourself flooded by utter, overwhelming peace: that was sattva. Nevertheless, in most people oneparticular guna will be predominantas their everyday frame of mind, and the very first steps of a fruitfulspiritual path will be this: to become aware of, and then to work with, the gunas, with the object of cultivating abalanced state of mind in order to grow and flourish according to our life'spurpose and goal. In Yoga, that life purpose and goal is freedom from theboundaries imposed by mental attitude: in other words, freedom from the influenceof the gunas. The predominantly tamasic person needs a shot of mental adrenalin to get him going: aself-administered kick in the metaphorical backside. The primarily rajasic person needs to take a deepbreath,  relax, calm down, chill out. Andeven the sattvic person is notfinished, for sattva is not the goalbut only a by-product along the way; but we'll get to that later.In becoming aware of the interplay of the gunas we are not judgmental, neithertowards ourselves nor towards others. Endemic to the Western mindset is thepredilection to assign blame, and to feel guilt or shame when we have "donewrong", derived from the concept of sin and punishment.  It would be very wrong to apply thoseconcepts here. But it's hard to free oneself of the mentality of judging, andthe guilt that goes along with it. In Yoga there is nosin; there are only, on the one hand, behaviours and thoughts that bring us backto a state of supreme balance, and eventually to Liberation, or,  on the other hand those that take us furtheraway. Yoga means cultivating the former and  voluntarily abandoning the latter, withinreason and within the parameters of our personalities, our life duties and our goals. In becoming aware of the interplay of the gunas there is no pointing of fingers,no guilt, no shame, no beating up of oneself. No punishment. There is simplythis: self-awareness. Neutral observation. With self-awarenesssomething very radical occurs. At the very moment of becoming aware there's a separation between theobserver—myself—and the thing I am observing: the tamasic or rajasic stateI am in. And so at the very moment I am out of it, and can begin to understand,and to change: OK, so I'm caught up intamas. I've been lolling around all day in my pyjamas. I'm wrapped in sloth.What can I do? The answer might be very simple: go take a shower! The same with rajas. Rajasic energy isnot wrong. Unless you're a hermit orliving in a monastery or convent you need rajasenergy – it's what keeps the motor of society running.  It's the fuel that urges us to work for ourliving, , to be successful in life, to achieve our goals, and even to propagatethe species. It is not in any way evil or harmful or obstructive to spiritualgrowth. But unalleviated rajas, rajas let loose to run wherever it will,is not healthy. It drains the mind, and all our energy resources. It'simportant to replenish one's resources with sattva,not just once a year on vacation but every day, whenever it is needed. Sattva supplies balance. Without it ourbatteries run dry. To be in a constant state of drive, drive, drive might seem crucial to career success but anyonewho lives like that will, eventually, crash and burn. It's lack of sattva in our lives that leads tostress, burn-out, and a host of physical diseases. In fact, we cannot live like that; even people whothrive on rajas seek reprieve, butusually they do it through tamas: theyshut off the mind, either in exhaustedsleep or in drink and drugs, neither of which bring the true refreshment neededfor the next bout of rajasic energy. To lurch continually between rajas and tamas is to eventually deplete oneself of every last fibre of life.We may achieve our goals in life but we are somehow empty, exhausted, unable tobe happy because we have wasted all our vital force to achieve that end, andnever once refuelled. And we haven't refuelled because we didn't know how to. We made the mistake of trying to relax and refuel with tamas instead of with sattva.