FREE online courses on Concepts of Ayurveda - Guna
The nearest equivalents of Guna in English
are ‘quality' ‘property,' ‘attribute,' ‘a mode,' ‘predicament,' ‘natural
divisions of modes of things' etc. By the term ‘thing' is meant Padartha. We
have already tried to grasp the significance of the concept of Padartha as a
thing that can be thought of or conceived and named. To be able to understand
the implications of the term Guna, it is necessary to expand the idea of
Padartha a little more.
An idea can be a thing. Ideas stand for
things such as objects, beings etc. An ideas is the intellectual representation
of a thing. The same is also true of judgements. Judgements represent facts
about things. Ideas and judgements express reality. When we say, the air is
transparent, it is meant to convey the fact behind the idea that transparency is
a physical quality, which in reality belongs to the physical substance air as it
exists in nature independent of the ideas and judgements of our mind. It will
thus be seen that ideas and judgements express thins and facts about things of
Padarthas.
Reverting to the consideration of Gunas, we
saw in the example of air cited above that transparency represents one of the
physical properties of the substance air. In this sense, it can be described in
one of the following ways:
Transparency is the quality of air;
Do the property of air;
Do a mode of air;
Do a predicament of air.
Among the above, numbers three and four
recommend themselves as the nearest approach to the term Guna. The atomic
concept of matter posited by the Vaiseshikas, has in a fundamental sense much in
common with certain aspects of modern physical science. Both the Vaiseshikas and
modern physicists consider that the universe of bodies consists ultimately of
atoms - paramanus, in the view of the former, positively charged, negatively
charged and neutral particles, as well as photons in the view of the latter, are
indivisible, and the diversity of things in the universe originate by a mere
arrangement and configuration of these ultimate particles. Substantial change is
an illusion and a mere abstraction. Whatever happens is the result of mechanical
motion giving rise to nothing more than a shift of local relationships of
quantitative character - among masses, trasarenu, etc. according to the
Vaiseshikas, and molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, etc., according
to modern physicists. The ultimate particles are homogeneous in nature, that is
to say, they are alike in each group in essence, so that they differ only in
size, shape and charges. Hence, everything in the universe can be explained by
means of quantitative structure and spatial motion. Knowledge in this regard
will be complete only when these can be expressed in mathematical formulae of
quantitative measurement. Therefore, there is no place for ‘quality' in such a
materialistic and mechanistic conception of the universe or things contained in
it; matter in motion is the sum-total of all objects and events. Thus, what the
common people terms as quality is reducible to ‘quality.' As such, the term
quality and property, have to be replaced by other terms, which at any rate, are
free from such defects of terminological inexactitudes.
