---
type: Concept
bundle: sankhya-darshana
bundle_version: 0.13.0
id: guna-samkhya
title: Guṇa (Sāṃkhya)
iast: Guṇa
devanagari: गुण
description: 'The three constituent strands of prakriti -- sattva, rajas, tamas -- whose dynamic equilibrium and disturbance constitute all of manifest reality. This is guna''s DOCTRINAL SOURCE: the term appears downstream, as an applied or cross-referenced concept, in bhakti-marga (v0.4), cosmology-creation (v0.7), nyaya-vaisheshika (v0.9, an unrelated ontological sense), and ayurveda-consciousness (v0.11). This file is the origin point, not another peer usage.'
darshana:
- Samkhya
tags:
- guna
- triguna
- samkhya
- sattva
- rajas
- tamas
not:
- term: the Vaisheshika padartha sense of guna (v0.9)
  why: Nyaya-Vaisheshika's guna names one of roughly twenty-four inhering qualities of a substance (colour, number, contact, and so on) -- an entirely unrelated ontological category that happens to share the word. This file is the Samkhya triguna, the three constituents of prakriti; it has no relation to Vaiseshika's guna beyond the shared syllable.
  instead: 'When both appear, name the collision explicitly: Samkhya triguna (three cosmic constituents) vs. Vaiseshika guna (one of ~24 inhering qualities) -- see nyaya-vaisheshika v0.9''s guna.md, which already documents this collision from its own side.'
- term: a moral or virtue framework
  why: Guna in this sense is not a virtue system; sattva, rajas, and tamas are ontological constituents of matter itself, not ethical categories, even though their psychological effects (clarity, restlessness, inertia) are sometimes moralized in derivative or popular usage.
related:
- /concepts/prakriti.md
- /concepts/sattva.md
- /concepts/rajas.md
timestamp: '2026-07-10'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Guṇa (Sāṃkhya) -- गुण

**Not:** the Vaisheshika padartha sense of guna (v0.9), a moral or virtue framework

## What It Actually Means

The three guṇas -- sattva (lucidity, manifestation), rajas (activity, motion), and tamas (inertia, restraint) -- are not qualities prakṛti has, they are what prakṛti is made of: three inseparable constituent strands whose ever-shifting proportion and balance produce every state of matter and mind. This is the source doctrine. Where the other eleven bundles in this corpus use the word triguṇa or guṇa in the Sāṃkhya sense (bhakti-marga's discussion of guṇa-transcendence, cosmology-creation's tāmasic cosmic phases, ayurveda-consciousness's guṇa as the third referent for mental constitution), they are drawing on this doctrine as their common source, not offering competing definitions of it.

## Audience Metaphor

Think of the three guṇas as three dials on a single mixing board -- brightness (sattva), drive (rajas), and drag (tamas) -- present in every channel of reality at once, in constantly shifting ratios, never fully absent, never fully isolated from each other.

## Citations

1. Samkhya-Karika 11-13 -- see [references/samkhya-karika.md](../references/samkhya-karika.md)
2. Cross-bundle note (source framing, D4): downstream/applied referents in bhakti-marga v0.4, cosmology-creation v0.7 (trigunas-cosmological), ayurveda-consciousness v0.11 (third referent) all trace to this doctrine
3. Cross-bundle warning: unrelated ontological sense in nyaya-vaisheshika v0.9's guna.md -- shared word, no shared doctrine
