---
type: Concept
bundle: sankhya-darshana
bundle_version: 0.13.0
id: sattva
title: Sattva
iast: Sattva
devanagari: सत्त्व
description: The guna of lucidity, clarity, and manifestation -- one of the three constituent strands of prakriti, NOT a synonym for 'goodness' in a simple moral sense, and NOT the same word as sattva/sat meaning 'existence' or 'being' used elsewhere in the corpus.
darshana:
- Samkhya
tags:
- sattva
- guna
- samkhya
- lucidity
not:
- term: '''goodness'' as a simple moral virtue'
  why: Sattva is often popularly glossed as 'goodness,' but it is an ontological property of matter -- the constituent responsible for lucidity, lightness, and manifestation -- not a moral achievement. A calm mind is described as sattvic because sattva is locally dominant in it, not because the person has performed a virtuous act.
- term: sat / existence (unrelated homophone-adjacent root)
  why: Sattva shares a root sense with sat (being, existence, truth) but functions here as a specific technical term for one of the three gunas, not as a general philosophical claim about existence or reality.
related:
- /concepts/guna-samkhya.md
- /concepts/rajas.md
timestamp: '2026-07-10'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Sattva -- सत्त्व

**Not:** 'goodness' as a simple moral virtue, sat / existence (unrelated homophone-adjacent root)

## What It Actually Means

Sattva is the guṇa responsible for lucidity, lightness, and the capacity of prakṛti to manifest and reveal -- it is what allows buddhi to reflect puruṣa's consciousness with the least distortion. A predominance of sattva in the mental apparatus produces clarity, calm, and discernment; this is why viveka-khyāti (Tier 3) depends on a sattva-dominant buddhi. Sattva never occurs alone -- it is always in dynamic tension with rajas and tamas, the way light is always mixed with some motion and some inertia in any real system.

## Audience Metaphor

Sattva is like a clean signal in a noisy channel -- never the whole channel, but the component that lets information (here, puruṣa's reflected light) come through with the least static.

## Citations

1. Samkhya-Karika 12-13 -- see [references/samkhya-karika.md](../references/samkhya-karika.md)
