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 17, Verse 2
Verse 2
The Yoga of the Three Types of Faith
The Supreme Lord said: The faith of embodied beings is of three kinds, born of their own nature — sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic. Hear about this.
Context & Meaning
Krishna's opening answer is elegant in its economy: faith is threefold, and it is svabhāva-jā — born from one's own nature, one's accumulated inner character. This means faith is not simply a choice made in the moment but the expression of who one has become through the accumulated choices of one's life. The sattvic person naturally has sattvic faith — faith oriented toward truth, clarity, and the highest good. The rajasic person has rajasic faith — intense, passionate, ambitious. The tamasic person has tamasic faith — dull, misdirected, attached to inertia. The invitation to "hear about this" (tāṃ śṛṇu) signals that what follows is not merely classification but diagnosis — a mirror in which the serious student can recognise their own inner state.
Scholar Commentaries
1 commentary · Public domainRamanujacharya
VishishtadvaitaSvabhāvajā — born from one's own nature. This is crucial: faith is not externally imposed but organically arising from the character the soul has built through its choices across many lifetimes. The three types of faith are therefore not arbitrary categories but maps of actual inner landscapes. To know one's own type of faith is to know where one stands on the spiritual path — and what work remains.