Vyasa · a new plain-English translation from the Sanskrit
14.1 The Blessed Lord said: I will further declare the supreme knowledge, the highest of all knowledges, knowing which all the sages have gone from here to the highest perfection.
14.2 Taking refuge in this knowledge, they have attained a nature like mine; they are not born even at creation, nor do they tremble at dissolution.
14.3 My womb is the great Brahman; in it I place the seed. From this, Bharata, comes the origin of all beings.
14.4 Whatever forms arise in all wombs, son of Kunti, the great Brahman is their womb, and I am the seed-giving father.
14.5 Sattva, rajas, and tamas — these qualities, born of primal nature, bind the imperishable embodied self in the body, mighty-armed one.
14.6 Among these, sattva, being untainted, is illuminating and free from affliction; it binds through attachment to happiness and through attachment to knowledge, blameless one.
14.7 Know rajas to be of the nature of passion, arising from craving and attachment; it binds the embodied self, son of Kunti, through attachment to action.
14.8 Know tamas, born of ignorance, to be the deluder of all embodied beings; it binds through negligence, laziness, and sleep, Bharata.
14.9 Sattva attaches one to happiness, rajas to action, Bharata; but tamas, covering knowledge, attaches one instead to negligence.
14.10 Sattva arises overpowering rajas and tamas, Bharata; rajas arises overpowering sattva and tamas, and so does tamas overpowering sattva and rajas.
14.11 When light arises in this body at all its gates, together with knowledge, then it should be known that sattva has increased.
14.12 Greed, activity, the undertaking of actions, restlessness, longing — these arise, bull of the Bharatas, when rajas has increased.
14.13 Absence of light, absence of activity, negligence, and delusion — these arise, joy of the Kurus, when tamas has increased.
14.14 If the embodied self meets dissolution when sattva has increased, then it attains the pure worlds of those who know the highest.
14.15 Meeting dissolution in rajas, one is born among those attached to action; dissolved likewise in tamas, one is born in the wombs of the deluded.
14.16 The fruit of a good action, they say, is untainted and belongs to sattva; the fruit of rajas is pain, and the fruit of tamas is ignorance.
14.17 From sattva knowledge is born, and from rajas, greed alone; negligence and delusion arise from tamas, and ignorance as well.
14.18 Those established in sattva go upward; those of rajas remain in the middle; those of tamas, dwelling in the lowest condition of the qualities, go downward.
14.19 When the seer perceives no doer other than the qualities, and knows that which is beyond the qualities, he attains my state of being.
14.20 The embodied self, having transcended these three qualities that arise from the body, is freed from birth, death, old age, and pain, and attains the deathless.
14.21 Arjuna said: By what marks, Lord, is one known who has transcended these three qualities? What is his conduct, and how does he go beyond these three qualities?
14.22 The Blessed Lord said: He does not hate light, activity, or delusion, son of Pandu, when they arise, nor does he long for them when they cease.
14.23 He who sits apart like one indifferent, unmoved by the qualities, who stands firm knowing only that the qualities are acting, does not waver.
14.24 The same in pain and pleasure, resting in himself, regarding a clod, a stone, and gold alike; the same toward the dear and the unwanted, steady, the same in blame and in praise of himself;
14.25 the same in honor and dishonor, the same toward friend and foe alike, having abandoned all undertakings — such a one is said to have transcended the qualities.
14.26 And he who serves me with unwavering devotion through the discipline of devotion, having transcended these qualities, becomes fit for oneness with Brahman.
14.27 For I am the foundation of Brahman, of the deathless and the imperishable, of the eternal law, and of unending happiness.