Q&A: Is my dog more sattvic than me?
The nature of the gunas, the burden of thought, the evolution of all beings towards sattva
Note: These next few articles will be devoted to answering questions asked by readers. If you have questions, please submit them by clicking the button below.If sattva, tamas and rajas co-exist as their own forces configuring all there is, (assuming I'm understanding that correctly), it then stands out to me that sattva is so clouded, like a dirty window. It feels like a very particular imbalance of forces that all humans are experiencing.
It makes me wonder if this is just the nature of these forces, or if there's something about being human that causes us to experience this particular imbalance.
Like, I wonder if my dog is more sattvic than I.
If the lilies are purely (or mostly purely) sattvic, then why? What is it about being human that causes us to have this experience if other creatures do not share this burden?
Could there be creatures with the goal of increasing their rajas or tamas?
Om Sri Gurubhyo Namah. Salutations to all the teachers.
Thank you for your question 🙏🏽
In the Yogic framework, the entire Universe is nothing but a combination of three gunas - sattva, rajas, and tamas.
The word “guna” literally means “quality”, “property”, “thread” or “string”, as in a string of a musical instrument. These are not mystical forces or energies, but rather the very substance of everything we experience around us.
Sattva is the quality of balance, intelligence, lucidity, calmness, clarity, harmony, illumination, peace, and so on.
Rajas is the quality of motion, passion, desire, activity, individualism, and so on.
Tamas is the quality of heaviness, inertia, dullness, darkness, delusion, apathy, and so on.
Everything in the Universe - from a blade of grass to the most subtle thought - is composed of these three gunas in combination with one another. There is no object in which the three gunas do not appear together. The only thing that differentiates one object from another is the proportion of the gunas.
For example, a rock is different from water only in that a rock has more tamas, less rajas, and less sattva than water.
These gunas also apply to the mind.
A sattvic mind (ie. a mind with a higher proportion of sattva as compared to rajas and tamas) feels clear, calm, peaceful, and highly attentive. A rajasic mind (ie. a mind with a higher proportion of rajas in comparison to sattva and tamas) feels scattered, angry, desirous, irritable, and self-centered. A tamasic mind (ie. a mind with a higher proportion of tamas in comparison with sattva and rajas) feels dull, lethargic, apathetic, tired, anxious, and sad.
For more on the gunas, you can take a look at the article here:
To address the first part of the question, sattva never appears by itself. It always appears in combination with rajas and tamas. In this way, it is naturally “clouded”, and so the phrase “clouded” is only a manner of speaking, referring to a higher degree of rajas and tamas. That is, a mind where sattva is “clouded” by rajas and tamas is a mind where it is possible for rajas and tamas to be further reduced.
The use of the word “imbalance” seems to be indicative of an impression that rajas and tamas must be reduced to create a sense of balance.
In Yoga (unlike perhaps in Ayurveda, with relation to the three doshas) there is no imbalance.
The proportions are just what they are - always in perfect balance, like a perfectly coordinated dance. There is no need to “fix” anything - everything is already perfect, just as it is.
To drive this point home, here is an excerpt from the article linked above - a summary of a creation story from the Vishnu Purana:
In the beginning, Brahma (the creator deity, not to be confused with Brahman, the Absolute Reality) decided to create a world. From pure sattva, he created 9 men and 9 women to inhabit the world. Due to the predominance of sattva, they all saw beyond the lure of desire, took to asceticism, and the society did not continue beyond the first generation.
Learning from his mistake, he decided to use rajas. Here, the people quickly annihilated each other from the intensity of their activity and selfishness.
Then, he tried to use tamas. Again, the society did not continue beyond the first generation, but this time due to sloth and apathy.
Finally, he decided to combine the three gunas and push them just slightly out of equilibrium. Thus, we have the world which we now inhabit.
P: Ok, so all the gunas are necessary, and cannot exist without each other. But then what is Yoga all about?
Yoga provides us with a set of methods to increase the proportion of sattva and reduce the proportions of rajas and tamas, but this is not to achieve any sort of “balance.” Rather, it is to achieve a specific outcome - a clear reflection of the Purusha so that we can clearly distinguish between the Purusha and Prakriti, ie. Self and non-self.
Sattva has the property of reflecting Awareness, and so maximizing the amount of sattva increases the likelihood of the Purusha reflecting clearly enough in the mind that the Yogi can notice where the Purusha stops (in a manner of speaking) and Prakriti begins. Then, the Yogi can let go of all the three gunas - including sattva.
P: Ok, I get that there is no “imbalance” or “balance”, just a shifting proportion. Is our current proportion of the three gunas something that all humans are experiencing?
The proportion of the gunas varies from mind to mind. Even within a given mind, it shifts from day to day.
For example, you may feel more tamasic before bed, and more rajasic just after a cup of coffee. You may feel more tamasic after eating a heavy meal, but more sattvic after you have read an elevating book or spent some time in meditation.
Even within the techniques of Yoga, kapaalabhati will increase rajas, while anulom vilom will increase sattva.
As an aside, for more breathing techniques and other Praanaayaam, take a look at the summary article here:
However, each mind has a different “ground”, or bhumi. This is the default state to which the mind returns in a given period within one’s life.
You can read more about this here:
There are 5 bhumis, defined by the different proportions of the gunas.
Said another way, even within humans, not all humans have the same “base” proportion of gunas. None of these people are imbalanced. However, if they want to increase their sattva, they can use the techniques of Yoga to do so.
P: Is the current proportion of the gunas due to the nature of the gunas themselves, or is it unique to humans? Is my dog more sattvic than I am?
The current proportion of gunas in your mind is unique to your own conditioning. If your mental tendencies are tamasic, you have a higher proportion of tamas. However, it is not because your tendencies are tamasic that you have a higher degree of tamas. Rather, it is the other way around - your tendencies stem from the proportion of gunas.
However, we cannot directly affect the gunas, since they only manifest in their vishesha (specific) forms. They are alinga - without “sign” or “identifying characteristic.” That is, we can only infer the existence of the gunas from their evolutes, such as mind, tendencies, objects, and so on.
You can read more about linga and alinga here.
This is why the focus of Yoga is on using our minds to change our mental tendencies, or samskaaras.
This particular range of proportion of the gunas is unique to humans. That is, the human mind, generally speaking, has more sattva than the mind of an insect, a bat, a bird, and so on. We know this due to the higher and finer degree of intelligence that we exhibit. Specifically, we can infer a higher degree of sattva through the behaviours exhibited. The mind of a crocodile or a tiger has more rajas - we can infer this from the nature of these animals to be violent. In the same way, the mind of a snail or a slug has more tamas.
Evolution can, in broad strokes, be seen as a movement from tamas to rajas to sattva.
We began as microscopic creatures, highly tamasic. Eventually, we evolved, through rajas - desire - into larger creatures. Rajas ruled this planet for a long time with the dinosaurs and other massive, active, violent beings. Finally, evolution, through various twists and turns, has (thus far) culminated in an increased proportion of sattva, as reflected in refined thought, language, art, music, and sense enjoyment.
However, this doesn’t mean that tamas and rajas disappeared. These gunas are active within our minds even today. Without them, we would not exist - tamas is required for a body to exist at all, and rajas is critical for us to be able to live and move.
As to the question of whether your dog is more sattvic than you, let us consider the characteristics - linga - by which we can infer the proportion of the gunas.
We can begin with the karmendriyas - excretion, procreation, locomotion, grasping, and speech - in increasing order of sattva. In each of these, we can see a higher degree of refinement in the human than in the dog, which becomes increasingly clear as we move further up the list.
That is, the distinction between the sattvic nature of your ability to speak and your dog’s ability to speak, or your ability to grasp (e.g. writing, playing musical instruments, typing, etc.), and your dog’s ability to grasp (much lower degree of control) is much clearer than the distinction within the ability to excrete.
This also holds true for the buddhendriyas (aka jnanednriyas, or organs of knowledge). Your appreciation of sense pleasures, and your ability to discriminate between the subtleties of different sense objects is greater than that of your dog.
P: Wait a second, I think my dog can distinguish between smells better than me. Does that mean that my dog has a higher degree of sattva in the realm of smell?
This is an interesting question, and a subject of scientific investigation. Some scientific reviews, such as this one published in Science, suggest that the idea of poor human smell is a myth, and that our noses are capable of detecting over a trillion individual smells! Others, such as this one, indicate that humans have the capability to track scent in the same way as dogs - just that we don’t practice it.
The principle is that if there is a higher degree of intelligence - an ability do discriminate between different variations of the class of sense perception (e.g. between two different wines) - as well as an ability to recall, identify, and enjoy, it is safe to say that there is a higher degree of sattva. Finally, this degree of sattva will vary from dog to dog, and from human to human.
P: What about hearing? Isn’t it true that my dog is much more sensitive to loud sounds than I am? Does this mean that my dog has a higher degree of sattva in the realm of hearing?
Let us use the same principle as above. Dogs are able to hear sounds in a slightly broader range of frequencies (40 Hz to 60 kHz, or 10.5 octaves) than humans (20 Hz to 20 kHz, 10 octaves). In Yogic terms, this is a higher degree of rajas - that is, in a sense, their sense of hearing can has more “movement.”
In terms of sattva, on the other hand, studies such as this one show that humans are able to distinguish between pitches that are closer to each other - one twelfth of an octave, as opposed to dogs who can distinguish a quarter of an octave. Additionally, studies like these (on humans; p. 519 on dogs) show that humans are able to more accurately localize sound than dogs - humans can localize sound within a single degree, while dogs can only localize within four degrees. Finally, humans are able to distinguish the fine sounds of speech, whereas dogs are unable to do so.
In this way we can see that human hearing - generally speaking - seems to be more sattvic than dog hearing, while dog hearing may be more rajasic in nature.
Of course, this is the subject of scientific investigation, and as more studies are done on the subject we may learn more. There is no rule, nor any Yogic basis to claim that human senses must necessarily be more sattvic than that of other species1. It is simply a matter of observation and inference.
P: What about the mind then?
The mind in Yoga is comprised of three components - manas, ahamkaar, and buddhi.
Your manas is your attention. Dogs are generally not able to exercise the same degree of fine control over attention as humans, and so one can see that sattva is higher in the human.
Ahamkaar is the sense of identity. Dogs certainly display a sense of personality and individuality. However, there is a higher degree of depth and subtlety at the level of the human, and so we can see that sattva is higher here as well.
Finally, the buddhi - the seat of decisions, discernment, control, and understanding. The buddhi manifests in a more refined way in humans - we are able to make complex and subtle decisions about abstract ideas, controlling our decisions over long periods of time, whereas dogs do not display this ability. Given this, we can see that more sattva is manifest in the buddhi in a human incarnation than in a dog.
P: Wait a second, what do you mean by “manifest”, and why are you saying the word “incarnation”?
Good catch.
In Yoga, as well as in Vedanta, the idea is that all beings - from Brahma down to a blade of grass - have three components - a physical body, a subtle body, and a causal body. As a matter of fact, these three are represented by ॐ (A for the physical body, U represents the subtle body, M represents the causal body, and the silence after ॐ represents Pure Consciousness - the Purusha, in Yogic terms - in which these three appear and disappear).
The physical body distinguishes a dog from a human from an ant. However, the subtle bodies and causal bodies are of the same class.
When a being is born into a physical body, the subtle body simply manifests the characteristics that are appropriate to that particular set of physical organs (e.g. ears, eyes, brain, etc.). The physical body is a sort of limiting factor for the subtle body - like water becomes limited by the shape of the pot into which it is poured.
The subtle body is not some abstract thing.
You are experiencing it right now in your mind - the thoughts, sights, sounds, and so on all appear in your subtle body. Your manas, ahamkaar, and buddhi are all within the subtle body. It is all those things which you can experience from your first-person perspective, which cannot be experienced by another. Said another way, it is the sum total of “qualia” within your experience.
In this way, you and your dog are both of the same class. However, since your subtle body is currently manifesting in the form of a human, a higher degree of sattva is able to manifest in your mind, while a higher degree of sattva is able to manifest in your dog’s sense of hearing or smell.
P: Ok, I understand. But are the lilies are mostly (or purely) sattvic?
I believe that this question is in reference to the article below:
In this article, the lilies are used as an analogy. Lilies, in actuality, are tamasic in comparison to humans.
P: How do you know?
As above, we can roughly infer the proportion of the gunas from the characteristics - the linga - displayed. For example, lilies do not display speech, grasping, or locomotion with the same degree of control or finesse as humans or dogs.
P: So then what is the analogy?
From our perspective, lilies do not spin around worrying about where they will next get their food, their shelter, or their clothing. They are provided with the food, water, and sunlight that they need through nothing but the workings of nature, without any special effort.
Additionally, from our perspective, they are perfect as they are. We don’t look at a bed of wild lilies and complain about how the third one from the left is a bad lily because it was jealous of the one next to it, and that’s why it deserved to get less sunlight. We simply look at them and appreciate them as they are.
This is similar to how we don’t try to explain or complain about the shapes of clouds or the patterns in water. We are able to observe and appreciate them without judgment.
However, when it comes to humans - especially when it comes to ourselves - our judgement, classification, and characterization knows no bounds.
We spend significant amounts of mental energy worrying about what will happen tomorrow, or ruminating about what happened yesterday. We judge ourselves and others for acting one way and not another, or for displaying certain characteristics and not others.
Little do we see, however, that we, just like the lilies, or the clouds, are nothing but nature dancing around in an interesting and beautiful pattern. Our thoughts themselves are just parts of the same dance, just like the fragrance of a flower or the smell of the rain on dry ground.
Instead, we treat ourselves and our thoughts as though they were somehow of a different class.
If, however, we could see ourselves through the same lens through which we see the lilies in the field, or the patterns of clouds in the sky, we will see that we are just as perfect as they are - a unique movement of nature’s dance, that can be appreciated just as it is, without a need to change anything.
This is the meaning.
P: Could there be other creatures with the goal of increasing their rajas or tamas?
Since there is no imbalance, there is no universal goal of balance. The goal is what you want it to be. If you want to increase sattva, you may do so, but there is no inherent goal of increasing sattva in this way.
However, there is an inherent movement towards freedom from dukkha.
We see this in all creatures. Every living being does everything that they do for only this purpose. Every small movement to every big decision, by all creatures everywhere, are only for the purpose of relieving themselves from dukkha in the best way they know how.
The more dukkha we experience from a particular pathway, the more we move away from it. This much is innate. However, sometimes, it takes us some time to notice that a certain pathway is increasing dukkha.
For example, when we gossip with our friends, we may feel as though it is bringing us closer, providing a sense of happiness. It is only when we are caught that we regret it, and suffer. We may still repeat the action, and suffer once again. However, after a few times of this - the number of times depending on the strength of the person’s tendencies - we eventually realize the causal connection between the action and the negative consequence. When we realize this, we start the path to changing our patterns of behaviour, and eventually, like children stumbling until they can walk, we are are able to break free.
This move away from dukkha is universal to all creatures, and is accompanied by an increase in sattva, eventually - through Yoga - breaking free from sattva itself.
In this sense, although there is no universal “goal”, all beings - whether they know it or not - are constantly moving in the direction of an increased proportion of sattva, and eventually a freedom from all the gunas, including sattva itself.
P: Ok, I understand. But why do we as humans have this experience? Why do other creatures not share this burden?
The experience of being a human is unique to humans, just as the experience of being a bat is unique to bats.
Let us consider the question of “why”.
A satisfactory answer to a question of “when” must involve words about time. A satisfactory answer to the question of “where” must involve words about space. In the same way, a satisfactory answer to the question of “why” must involve words about cause.
Humans have this particular experience because of our unique range of proportions of the three gunas. In particular, the higher degree of sattva allows for a more refined degree of intelligence, clarity, creativity, pleasure, and so on, but this also comes with a more refined degree of pain and suffering.
For example, we suffer terribly from something like jealousy or shame, whereas for a dog, something like jealousy or shame is too abstract to understand, let alone suffer from.
For this reason - the higher degree of sattva in our minds - humans experience unique types of suffering.
Some types of suffering require a higher degree of sattva, whereas others do not require it. For example, something less abstract like physical pain is experienced by dogs and humans alike. Even trauma from past physical pain affects dogs in much the same way it affects humans. However, humans appear to experience a wider and more subtle range of mental trauma than dogs can.
The term “burden” is an interesting one. It seems to indicate that there is a weight that we carry by virtue of being human.
This is certainly true.
When we take our thoughts seriously, rather than seeing them as we see the colours of flowers or patterns of clouds, they feel heavy. We feel as though we must solve all problems, holding on tightly to our desired outcomes and pushing away our fears and aversions.
When we live this way, we expend a lot of energy trying to push away the things we don’t want and move towards the things we want. However, we are quick to forget why we act this way in the first place. After all, our ultimate goal is simply the avoidance of dukkha.
This method - running from aversions and running towards attractions - takes a lot of mental energy. If, instead, we address the attractions and aversions themselves, rather than running after or away from objects, we can achieve the same outcome in a far more energy-efficient way. As a result, we feel lighter - as though the burdens of the world have been lifted off us.
There are many methods to address this, and Raja Yoga is only one of them.
Karma Yoga is often the best place to begin - letting go of the fruits of your actions, and focusing on the action itself, without desire or aversion for the result.
If you are theistically inclined, Bhakti Yoga is an excellent method as well, although it is not for everyone. If you are philosophically inclined, then first spend some time understanding and absorbing the meaning of Ishvara from a logical standpoint, and then practice Ishvarpranidhaan.
For more on this topic, take a look at the article here:
Said another way, through practice, you can make it safe for your mind to release its burden by seeing the vast interdependent network of cause and effect, spanning in depth to the beginning of time, and in breadth to the entire Universe. In doing so, we can directly see that all our worrying is of the same order of purpose as a person trying to grab hold of the water in order to stay afloat.
Simply let go, and let the current carry you.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
- Matthew, 11:28-30
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