Sattva in the Bhagavad Gita

Verses across the Gita that speak to sattva, drawn from all chapters and ordered by where they appear.

• 2.49Clear discernment is richer than reward-chasing.
• 2.56Steadiness remains when pleasure and pain lose their grip.
• 6.27Joy comes when the restless mind finally becomes still.
• 6.28Repeated union with the supreme reality yields effortless, lasting joy.
• 10.36What shines through victory and resolve is not separate from the divine.
• 12.16True closeness releases craving, anxiety, and compulsive beginning.
• 14.6Even clarity becomes bondage when you cling to its pleasure.
• 14.9Each force traps you in a different way: comfort, activity, or blindness.
• 14.10What dominates the mind is temporary, not who you are.
• 14.11Inner brightness is the sign that clarity is taking over.
• 14.14A clear state carries consciousness toward a clearer destination.
• 14.16Action carries its own flavor of result.
• 14.17Your mental weather has causes: clarity, craving, and confusion each grow from different qualities.
• 14.18Your inner quality decides the direction of your life.
• 16.17Pride can hollow out sacred action until only appearance remains.
• 17.2Faith takes the shape of the nature beneath it.
• 17.4Faith reveals itself in what each person chooses to revere.
• 17.7Even sacred actions differ; their inner quality decides their worth.
• 17.11Right action becomes pure when reward stops being the reason.
• 17.16A trained mind is its own austerity.
• 17.17True discipline is clean only when reward is no longer the motive.
• 18.10Freedom means neither resisting the hard nor craving the pleasant.
• 18.20True understanding sees one undivided reality inside every divided form.
• 18.23The purest action asks for nothing back.
• 18.26Pure action leaves the ego out and stays calm in victory or defeat.
• 18.38What feels sweetest first can become the harshest later.