Gunas in the Garden

Alex Rau

Here it is June and the growing season is well under way for me at Iswara Garden. This year, however, I have found myself constantly at odds with all around me. The weather stayed cold and wet weeks past the usual time, it seemed. Seeds wouldn’t germinate whether under the grow lights or in the ground. Once the perennials started coming up outside in the flowerbeds, the deer would come by and nibble the tops or, in some cases, pull the entire plant out by the roots, and everywhere leaving deep hoofprints across the soft earth. When the plants which had been started indoors were transplanted out, the moles would come and undermine them, causing them to wither from the exposing of their roots in the moles’ tunnels. Spittle bugs, tarnish beetles, blistering sun burning new transplants’ leaves, late frosts, high winds, and the ever-present grasses threatening to take over and choke everything else out completely - through it all I battled, trowel in hand, grumbling at the many adversities thrown my way. And with each complaint reinforcing the strength of the opposition.

In our last study of  THE BHAGAVAD GITA - PART 3: (KYR - Winter 1999/2000), we talked about how all Nature, that is, the manifested substance of the Divine, exhibits in greater or lesser degree the three qualities, what in Sanskrit are called gunas. These qualities or gunas are: sattva - truth, goodness, potential consciousness; rajas - passion, longing, activity; and tamas - darkness, ignorance, and inertia and passivity. One could say that these qualities are nature itself, asthey are so inextricably interwoven with it as to be synonymous.

Nature cannot arbitrarily decide to act in a particular fashion either ‘with me” or “against me”. It can only act in accordance with the qualities manifest, and those qualities are present in the kind and degree because I have created the atmosphere which drew them or have allowed an existing situation to remain by aligning myself with it.

Realistically, of course, I am not the author of every cataclysmic natural event that comes my way. But by my own nature, I have put myself in the place and the time, the “climate” most hospitable for my present level of karmic development.

This conflict shouldn’t be looked on as punishment for “wrong” action. Part of the great symbology of the Gita is the depiction of Arjuna going to battle against his own kin, that is, his own lower nature. Each of us in our quest for union with the Divine must face and overcome the lower self. Every day we present ourselves with opportunities for growth. But do we nurture seeds of discord or of harmony? Whoa - gotta go. Here come the potato bugs...