Tamas in the Bhagavad Gita

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

• 8.9Hold the ungraspable source in mind, not the passing form.
• 13.18What illumines everything is already nearest to you.
• 14.8Confusion binds most through laziness, not force.
• 14.9Each force traps you in a different way: comfort, activity, or blindness.
• 14.10What dominates the mind is temporary, not who you are.
• 14.13Darkness does not stay still; it breeds neglect and confusion.
• 14.15Your strongest tendency decides the shape of your next beginning.
• 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.
• 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.
• 17.10What you repeatedly choose to consume reveals the heaviness within.
• 17.13Ritual without trust becomes empty and heavy.
• 18.22Small certainty can hide the least real understanding.
• 18.28Dullness in the doer makes even action inert and harmful.
• 18.38What feels sweetest first can become the harshest later.