Bhagavad Gita Analysis

Kevin Lo
Professor Godfrey
Religion 0811
10 September 2015
The Bhagavad-Gita Translation In the Bhagavad-Gita, Vishnu presents three qualities of nature that are bind within a person’s inner self, atman, which are sattva, rajas, and tamas. In the Bhagavad-Gita translated by Barabara Stoler Miller, she translated in the fourteenth teaching, verse five, that sattva, rajas, and tamas were lucidity, passion, and dark inertia respectively. The first quality of nature, sattva, is portrayed as the good and light in humans. However, according to the Merriam-Webster, lucidity means the clearness of thought or style. I believe that the usage of the word lucidity has less impact and focus on the good nature of humans but more on the clearness and one-dimensional thought of being neither good nor evil. The second
quality of nature, rajas, is portrayed as performing and engaging in actions, but for a greedy purpose such as a reward or something of equal value in return. According to the Merriam-Webster, passion is a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something. Therefore, I believe that the word passion has a strong positive connotation that does not emphasize the greed part of rajas. The last quality of nature, tamas, is portrayed as pure ignorance and sloth in humans. According, to Merriam-Webster, inertia is a lack of movement or activity. Therefore, I believe that dark inertia is a fitting translation for tamas because dark inertia embodies the ideas of negligence and not willing to learn. Overall, Barabara Stoler Miller’s translation of the three qualities of nature were not entirely accurate and missed a lot of the qualities meaning. Other translator have tried to convert the definitions of sattva, rajas, and tamas into English words with more success. In my opinion, a translated version by William Quan Judge used two words to describe the three qualities of nature. William Quan Judge used the words light and truth for sattva. I believe Judge’s translation is better because the word truth adds a good connotation than lucidity’s neutral connotation. Rajas is translated to the words passion and desire. I think that Judge’s translation is really accurate because passion creates a positive connotation and desire creates a negative connotation which allows the word rajas to be the middle quality of nature between the good, sattva, and the evil, tamas. Tamas is translated to the words indifference and darkness. I think that Barabara Stoler Miller’s translation was more accurate because dark inertia is more than indifference and darkness and more about the actions of other people’s desire. In my opinion, I believe that William Quan Judge had interpreted the Bhagavad-Gita in a better way than Barabara Stoler Miller due to adding more words to create meaning to the three qualities of nature: sattva, rajas, and tamas. I find it interesting that Vishnu said that in order to become enlighten then a person must transcend the three qualities of nature because I thought that a person should always be good and have only qualities of sattva.
However, in the translation by William Quan Judge, Vishnu says, “The sattva quality attaches the soul through happiness and pleasure, the rajas through action, and tamas quality surrounding the power of judgement with indifference attaches the soul through heedlessness.” In the Barabara Stoler Miller’s translation, Vishnu says, “transcending the three qualities that are body’s source, the self achieves immortality.” Both translation wants the person to essential master and transcend from the qualities to reach enlightenment, but Barabara Stoler Miller’s translation was that to reach enlightenment a person must always have sattva to go upwards as the other qualities would stay in between or go downwards. I believe that William Quan Judge is more accurate because all of the three qualities sattva, rajas, and tamas can be displayed in all people, and in order to reach enlightenment a person must master and apply all three of the qualities of
nature.