Nowadays most people feel that they don’t have enough energy and disposition to do everything they need to do. Modern life can be quite difficult and oppressive, especially when we are not in our best form. When this happens, we lose initiative and become just passengers in our own lives, just reacting to external events. This can be a quite disheartening experience.
Do the Vedas say anything about how to improve our mood, or how to have more energy and disposition to solve our practical problems and attain our goals in life? Actually, they speak quite a lot.
The Vedas explain that the Universal material energy influences all living beings in different ways. There is something called the three Gunas, or the three modes of material nature that are an especially powerful influence. The Sanskrit word “guna” means “rope”. These three Gunas are like three ropes that pull us in different directions.
The first is Sattva-guna or the mode of goodness. It is connected with happiness, good health (physical, mental, and spiritual), satisfaction, and peacefulness. This is the ideal platform for one who wants to execute any kind of meaningful intellectual work.
The Raja-guna or the mode of passion is connected with activity, creation, and goals. It leads one to obsessively pursue his goals until one can achieve them. The mode of passion allows one to achieve great things, materially, but it doesn’t bring happiness. One can use the mode of passion to a certain extent, but he needs to be careful to not to be swallowed by it. For a spiritualist, the mode of passion is the dark side of the force, so to say.
Finally, there is Tama-guna, or the mode of ignorance. This is the rope that pulls us down to vices, inactivity, depression, and degradation. Nothing good is obtained by associating with it.
In our modern society, we are normally already very much stimulated by the mode of passion, therefore the main focus should be to reduce the mode of ignorance and increasing the mode of goodness. This leads to a good balance, where the mode of goodness balances the downsides of the mode of passion, and the dark influence of the mode of ignorance is minimized.
This is done by changing our habits and our attitude to life. Krsna explains in great detail the three Gunas in the Bhagavad-Gita:
“Material nature consists of three modes – goodness, passion and ignorance. When the eternal living entity comes in contact with nature, O mighty-armed Arjuna, he becomes conditioned by these modes.” (Bg 14.5)
“O sinless one, the mode of goodness, being purer than the others, is illuminating, and it frees one from all sinful reactions. Those situated in that mode become conditioned by a sense of happiness and knowledge.
The mode of passion is born of unlimited desires and longings, O son of Kuntī, and because of this the embodied living entity is bound to material fruitive actions.
O son of Bharata, know that the mode of darkness, born of ignorance, is the delusion of all embodied living entities. The results of this mode are madness, indolence and sleep, which bind the conditioned soul.” (Bg 14.6-8)
O son of Bharata, the mode of goodness conditions one to happiness; passion conditions one to fruitive action; and ignorance, covering one’s knowledge, binds one to madness.
Sometimes the mode of goodness becomes prominent, defeating the modes of passion and ignorance, O son of Bharata. Sometimes the mode of passion defeats goodness and ignorance, and at other times ignorance defeats goodness and passion. In this way there is always competition for supremacy.” (Bg 14.9-10)
“The manifestation of the mode of goodness can be experienced when all the gates of the body are illuminated by knowledge.
O chief of the Bhāratas, when there is an increase in the mode of passion the symptoms of great attachment, fruitive activity, intense endeavor, and uncontrollable desire and hankering develop.
When there is an increase in the mode of ignorance, O son of Kuru, darkness, inertia, madness, and illusion are manifested.” (Bg 14.11-13)
The first advice is to get free of vices, like alcohol, drinking, smoking, etc. These are habits in the mode of ignorance, which leads to apathy and suffocates the very spirit of human life. The best way to get free of these habits is to replace them with healthy habits, like doing exercise, eating healthy food, etc. Such habits increase the mode of goodness, which naturally reduces the influence of the mode of ignorance. To cultivate spiritual knowledge, reading books like the Bhagavad-Gita helps enormously, awakening our spiritual intelligence, which helps us to see things in perspective and change undesirable habits in our lives.
It’s important to understand that all these vices may offer one some momentary relaxation or another effect in the short term, but they all create damage to our body and mind in the long run.
Caffeine, for example, stimulates our brain and nervous system, but it actually doesn’t give more energy. It makes one more active, but as the body uses its reserves, the effect is offset by exhaustion. In the long term, a person needs to drink coffee just to feel normal. At this point, one does not get any extra energy from caffeine, just the downsides.
Apart from avoiding bad habits, it helps enormously to wake-up early. According to the Vedas, the ideal time to start one’s day is one and a half-hour before the sun rising. This is the ideal time for practicing meditation or any other spiritual activities, or for any creative work. More than that, the positive sattvic influence of this time of the day will influence you positively for the rest of the day. The secret to wake-up early is simply to go to sleep early. To stop with caffeine is very helpful with that. Most people fail to realize how much caffeine disturbs their sleep.
Do exercises daily (the early morning is also perfect for that) and eat healthy. Avoid any type of processed food and instead focus on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and pure milk products. Try to start cooking instead of buying food.
It’s also very beneficial to fast sometimes. If you have the opportunity, you can try to follow ekadasis. The ekadasis are connected with the phases of the moon and the natural rhythm of the body. By fasting in these days, one can deride not only physical benefits but also very important spiritual benefits. To fast on Ekadasi also helps one to get free of his karma, which is also one of the secrets for a happy life. There are different options for fasting on ekadasis: one can fast from grains and eat only fruits, vegetables, roots, and seeds, one can eat only fruits and milk, only fruits, only water, or he can fast completely (a rigorous type of fasting called nirjala). These different options award progressively more benefits.