Sattva is equilibrium. When Sattva prevails, there is peace or tranquillity. Rajas is activity which is expressed as Raga-Dvesha, likes or dislikes, love or hatred, attraction or repulsion. Tamas is that binding force with a tendency to lethargy, sloth and foolish actions. It causes delusion or non-discrimination.
This sort of idea seems to put a finishing touch on the understanding I've been working on. Essentially, a fairly thorough understanding of the goonies describes and prescribes balance as one moves through the stages of actualization. Because our attentional abilities become more complex as we develop (adding more advanced abilities and perhaps improving lower abilities while also tracing an increasingly unique life-path) as well as potentially more subtle, "balance" will have a different look and feel at different times throughout any given life. Or we could say that an Olympic weightlifter will adjust his/her balance differently than a basketball player or a ballerina. But balance is still balance whether our bodies or our consciousness is relatively "heavy" (obvious or gross or undeveloped) or relatively subtle. Balance is important to all of them/us.
I've been talking about intentional deployment of attention or attention as an economy. A working understanding of both balance and stages of actualization provides a rubric for how to deploy attention so that one profits from this type of investment or deployment. Smart or wise investment involves a good proportional mix of the gunas depending on one's situations, temperament, and abilities. It also involves recognizing that there may be a progressive development and how much energy to put into development as opposed to balance.
It is very important to understand that I am speaking of general, orienting heuristics rather than precise instructions. While we can improve our knowledge of various fields by following instructions, we develop resilience and wisdom in those fields by applying our own strength, flexibility, balance, and concentration. As opposed to very precise instructions, this is like taking off the training wheels.
By utilizing the gunas for a rough description of balance/proportion, we can distinguish psychological balance from wisdom without needing very subtle descriptions or experience. We can think of balance as involving not too much tamas or rajas and not too much or too little progress. Wisdom, then, is the understanding and application that comes from such a perspective--a perspective centered within one's ability to notice and remain engaged in a balanced manner. We can see, then, that wisdom is much more about knowing what I know rather than being intelligent, experienced, or subtle.
While I have discussed much of this in terms of the individual, since we include speech, emotions, and relationships, it is not possible to work on this stuff without including others. Actualization, then, can be described as balanced continuation of wellbeing in body, speech, and mind. And because we are human, that continuation means a homeodynamic progress rather than more of just a homeostatic maintenance.
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