Lord Krishna
Divine TeacherThe Supreme Lord, the charioteer and divine guide of Arjuna. Krishna delivers the eternal wisdom of the Gita, revealing the nature of the soul, duty, and the path to liberation.
Speaking: Chapter 14, Verse 8
Verse 8
The Yoga of the Three Gunas
Know that tamas, born of ignorance, deludes all embodied beings. It binds through negligence, laziness, and sleep, O Bharata.
Context & Meaning
Tamas is the densest of the three guṇas: born of ignorance (ajñāna-jam), it produces delusion (mohanam) in all who are subject to it. Where sattva illuminates and rajas agitates, tamas obscures and stupefies. It binds through pramāda (negligence, heedlessness), ālasya (laziness, inertia), and nidrā (excessive sleep or unconsciousness). The tāmasic state is one of forgetting — forgetting one's duties, forgetting one's higher nature, forgetting the very existence of a spiritual dimension to life. It is not rest but oblivion.
Scholar Commentaries
1 commentary · Public domainAdi Shankaracharya
AdvaitaTamas is described as ajñāna-jam — born of ignorance — because it is both the product and the perpetuator of ignorance. Ignorance produces the darkening of consciousness, and that darkening in turn prevents the very inquiry that would dispel ignorance. It is a self-reinforcing cycle. Breaking free from tamas requires the initial intervention of sattva — clarity, inquiry, the willingness to look honestly at one's own condition.