---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: sattvavajaya
title: Sattvāvajaya
iast: Sattvāvajaya
devanagari: सत्त्वावजय
description: 'Mind-mastery therapeutics: the classical psychotherapy that withdraws the mind from unwholesome objects and retrains judgment, restraint, and memory, one of the three classical classes of treatment; NOT positive thinking, NOT suppression of feeling, NOT a modern psychotherapy equivalence claim.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Sūtrasthāna 11.54
tags:
- sattvavajaya
- psychotherapy
- therapy
- ayurveda
- consciousness
not:
- term: 'positive thinking'
  why: 'Affirmation culture aims at mood. Sattvāvajaya aims at governance: withdrawing the mind from harmful objects, replacing one emotion with its physician-chosen counter, retraining dhī, dhṛti, and smṛti through knowledge, patience, and repeated practice. It is closer to disciplined cognitive retraining than to optimism.'
  instead: 'Render sattvāvajaya as mind-mastery therapy, the victory of clarity over the mental doṣas, and keep the Sanskrit term.'
- term: 'suppression of feeling'
  why: 'The method withdraws the mind FROM objects that feed rajas and tamas; it does not sit on affect. The same tradition separately warns against suppressing arisen urges. Redirection and cultivation, not repression.'
- term: 'a claimed equivalent of modern psychotherapy'
  why: 'The family resemblance to cognitive approaches is real and worth studying, but asserting equivalence flattens both systems. This file documents the classical category; it makes no clinical efficacy claims.'
related:
- /concepts/manas.md
- /concepts/manasa-dosha.md
- /concepts/prajnaparadha.md
- /concepts/sadvritta.md
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Sattvāvajaya -- सत्त्वावजय

**Not:** positive thinking, suppression of feeling, a modern-psychotherapy equivalence claim

## What It Actually Means

Charaka divides all therapy into three classes: daiva-vyapāśraya (rite and observance), yukti-vyapāśraya (the rational medicine of diet and drug), and sattvāvajaya, defined as restraining the mind from unwholesome objects. The word means victory of sattva, the win of clarity over agitation and dullness. Its instruments are stated plainly: jñāna (knowledge), vijñāna (applied understanding), dhairya (steadiness), smṛti (recall), samādhi (collectedness); the commentarial tradition adds replacing one emotion by another under the physician's direction, assurance, and the deliberate cultivation of wholesome company and objects. Because prajñāparādha, the cognitive etiology, is what breaks dhī, dhṛti, and smṛti, sattvāvajaya is its designed repair: the therapy that retrains exactly the faculties whose failure causes disease. This is a complete loop, cause and cure both stated in terms of consciousness, inside a medical system.

## Audience Metaphor

A physiotherapy program for the mind. After an injury you do not lecture the knee or cheer it up; you retrain it against graded resistance until it bears load again. Sattvāvajaya is graded load-bearing for judgment, restraint, and recall, prescribed and progressed the way a therapist progresses an exercise plan.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 11.54 on the three classes of therapy including sattvāvajaya -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 1.58 on the treatment of mental doṣas by knowledge, steadiness, and collectedness -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
