Triguna — your mode of nature

The three gunas — the 'modes of nature' at the heart of Samkhya philosophy and the Bhagavad Gita. Indian thought holds that everything in nature, including each person's temperament, is woven from three strands: sattva (clarity, calm and harmony), rajas (drive, passion and restless motion) and tamas (stability, rest and inertia). All three live in everyone, but one tends to lead — colouring how you think, act, eat and feel. Modern psychology has turned this ancient map into validated questionnaires such as the Vedic Personality Inventory and the Mysore Triguna Scale; this asks which mode is strongest in you.

The three gunas (sattva, rajas, tamas) come from Samkhya philosophy and the Bhagavad Gita (chapters 14, 17-18). Modern psychologists have operationalised the model into validated self-report instruments — the Vedic Personality Inventory (Wolf, 1998; reported Cronbach's alpha approx .85-.92) and the Mysore Triguna Scale (Shilpa & Venkatesha Murthy, 2012). This is a reflective self-ID of which mode tends to lead in you, not a clinical or fixed measure: classically all three are present in everyone and shift over time. (The three gunas of Samkhya philosophy and the Bhagavad Gita; operationalised as the Vedic Personality Inventory (Wolf, 1998) and the Mysore Triguna Scale (Shilpa & Venkatesha Murthy, 2012))

Groups

• Sattva (clarity & harmony) — Calm, clear and balanced. When sattva leads you tend to think before you act and seek truth, kindness and harmony — feeling light, lucid and content, drawn to knowledge and peace of mind.
• Rajas (drive & passion) — Active, driven and restless. When rajas leads you are full of energy, ambition and desire — quick to act and to feel, chasing goals and excitement and happiest in motion, though sometimes pulled along by craving and unrest.
• Tamas (stillness & stability) — Steady, grounded and slow to change. When tamas leads you value rest, routine and stability and hold firm under pressure — the mode of sleep, endurance and inertia, which can settle into deep calm or into resistance to change.

References

• Wolf, D. B. (1998). The Vedic Personality Inventory: A study of the Gunas. Journal of Indian Psychology, 16(1), 26-43
• Shilpa, S., & Venkatesha Murthy, C. G. (2012). Development and Standardization of Mysore Triguna Scale. SAGE Open, 2(1)
• Stempel, H. S., Cheston, S. E., Greer, J. M., & Gillespie, C. K. (2006). Further exploration of the Vedic Personality Inventory: Validity, reliability and generalizability. Psychological Reports, 98(1), 261-273

Related topics

• Buddhist tradition
• Hindu tradition
• Other Eastern & Dharmic paths
• Your path of practice
• How you meditate

All topics on ArtaQuest