टीका

Commentary

Having established the structural framework of action in the previous verse, Krishna now announces that each of the three key components — knowledge, action, and the doer — exists in three varieties corresponding to the three modes of material nature: sattva (goodness), rajas (passion), and tamas (ignorance).

The fourteenth chapter of the Gita gave an extensive description of the three gunas. There it was explained that sattva is illuminating, rajas is passion-driven, and tamas is characterized by ignorance and inertia. All the qualities of material nature bind the living entity, though in different ways. Even sattva, which illuminates, creates attachment to knowledge and happiness.

The seventeenth chapter described how worship, food, sacrifice, austerity, and charity each take on the character of the dominant guna. Now in the eighteenth chapter, Krishna extends this classification to the most fundamental categories: knowledge itself, action itself, and the doer.

This systematic approach is characteristic of the Gita’s methodology. Rather than simply prescribing rules, Krishna helps Arjuna (and every reader) develop the discriminative intelligence to recognize which mode of nature is operating in any given situation. The next several verses will describe sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic knowledge in detail, followed by the three types of action and the three types of doers.