In the previous episode, we had witnessed the continuation of the important point, wherein Bhagawan Krishna is classifying different items with respect to “Satva Guna”, “Rajo Guna” and “Tamo Guna”. We’ve seen such classifications for the Vedas / Spiritual Practices, water, people and land. Now, let us continue this discussion further and witness how we classify time with respect to the three “Gunas”. We’ve already witnessed the importance of time, classification of time, etc. in the first “Skandha”. Readers can always go back and recollect that discussion whenever possible. But now here, we’re going to classify time with respect to the three “Gunas”. Let us see how we can do that in today’s episode.
When it comes to time, we would have heard about something called as “Brahma-Muhurtham”, which is the early morning time during the day. Now readers should understand that we’re going to classify time with respect to each day. The early morning time of 4 AM to 6 AM is often referred to as the “Brahma Muhurtham” is classified as the “Satva Kaalam”. Similalry, the time after 6 AM, through the afternoon and till around 6 PM in the evening is classified as “Rajat Kaalam” and the night time after 6 PM to 4 AM next day is called “Taamasa Kaalam”. We’ve to understand this extremely carefully here. Whatever constructive activities we’ve to do, all of them should be done in the “Satva Kaalam”. For instance, if we’re learning something, preparing for an examination, “Saadagam” (Music practice), etc. all of it should be performed in the early morning time. The reason why we emphasize this practice is that, during the “brahma-Muhurtham” time, the oxygen content in the air is very fresh, and is extremely good for the activation of our brain cells. If our brain is activated, our learning ability automatically increases. Ultimately, our productivity would increase manifold.
However, in today’s trend, we’re starting to follow a wrong routine – For instance, if we’re preparing for an exam the next day, what do we do? We sit up to do a “combined study” or a “group study” all through the night, till 5 AM! Ultimately we just get 2-3 hours of sleep and with that, we go to the examination hall, only to forget all what we’ve read, due to tiredness and lack of sleep. This is a bizzare routine that we follow today. Instead, if we go to bed early the previous night, wake up at 4 AM and study fresh, our learning capability is going to increase and we’re going to learn things very quickly. Moreover, when we go to the exam hall, things are going to remain fresh in our memory, because we’ve had a sound sleep the previous night. We’re not tired too. This is the secret of success. This is why we often keep emphasizing that we’ve to do productive work during the “Brahma-Muhurtham”.
From the above accord, we should understand the significance of waking up early in the morning and go to bed early. We often hear this old proverb – “Early to bed & early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. This is the real meaning of this proverb. But in due course of time, our so-called “night-life” has started to take center-stage. Apart from studies for exams, we do so many things during the night, isn’t it? Right from partying to celebrating functions, etc. all of us have shifted our sleeping schedule a little bit – Normally we were sleeping from 10 PM to 4 AM, but now it has been shifted from 2 AM to 8 AM. This is what is detrimental for our health, our productivity, etc. This is where we’ve to understand that we’ve to change this routine a bit and come back to normal in the course of time.
In these lines, as we progress during the day, we go to work / school / university, etc. throughout the day till the evening, and we keep running here and there on the pretext of our work schedule, isn’t it? All of these come under the “Rajo Guna”, and this is why we classify this part of the day as the “Raajasa Kaalam”. Similarly, when we come back home from work, we feel tired and thereby go off to bed eventually after dinner. Since this is the resting period for all of us with a sound sleep, this time period is called as “Taamasa Kaalam”. Thus, from this classification we should understand that we should plan our activities such that, we do the right things at the right time periods of the day.
Similarly, there is the next classification of the three Gunas with respect to the “Karma” that we do. This is again going to be an interesting explanation and a very absorbing discussion awaits us in the next episode! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 