GREED, ACTIVITY, ENTERPRISE, (UNDERTAKING-OF-ACTIONS) UNREST (RESTLESS-NESS), LONGING — Enumerating the type of thoughts and motives that rise up in a mind in which Rajas predominates, Lord Krishna lists the following as the most important. GREED is the inexhaustible desire to appropriate the property of another, an appetite which has the tendency of growing more in volume as we satisfy it. By “ACTIVITY” is meant here, officially engaging oneself in matters which are not one’s own. The term ENTERPRISE is here used to indicate all activities motivated by extreme egoism, undertaken with the intention to fulfil and satisfy the ego-centric, and therefore, the selfish desires. RESTLESSNESS is another type of experience that is lived through by a Rajasic personality. Because of restlessness, the individual fails to enjoy quietude. The term UNREST is oscillation of the mind which is defined as by Shri Shankaracharya “Giving vent to joy, attachment, etc.”

To a large extent these three are inter-connected, and each successive one can be seen to have risen from the previous tendency. Greed must make the greedy very active indeed, and, when an activity motivated by greed is undertaken, it expresses in selfish enterprises, and once a man enters such a field of selfish activities — in his anxiety for the results, in his mental agitations — he creates a set of unhealthy circumstances around him and gets dragged towards their centre, where he is led to perpetrate more and more bitter cruelties, base immoralities and bloody crimes; and his inward quietude gets completely shattered. He experiences extreme unrest. Naturally, one who is in this condition of mind, sweating and labouring in the outer fields, with a heart poisoned by Rajas, must come under the sway of endless longings — for things not-yet-accomplished, for objects not-yet-acquired, for profits not-yet-gained.

In short, under the contagion of Rajas, the psychological being in us gets extremely persecuted by its own restlessness which gets expressed in its endless plans, exhausting actions, agonising desires, painful longings, maddening greed and oppressive restlessness. When such an individual works in society, his sorrows do not rest with himself — they spread, like contagion, to many thousands around him.

SIMILARLY, WHEN ‘TAMAS’ PRE-DOMINATES, WHAT EXACTLY ARE THE SYMPTOMS? LISTEN:

O best of the Bharata dynasty, when the quality of rajas vivrddhe, becomes predominant; etani, these indications; jayante, come into being; lobhah, avarice, the desire to appropriate other’s possessions; pravrtih, movement in general; arambhah, undertaking;-of what?-karmanam, of actions; asamah, unrest, lack of tranquillity-(i.e.) manifestation of joy, attachment, etc.; and sprha, hankering, desire in general for all things.