The three guṇas · sattva, rajas, tamas

Three strands twisted through everything that exists: sattva (clarity, poise), rajas (heat, drive, agitation), tamas (weight, inertia, dark). Nothing is made of one; everything is a proportion, and the proportions shift. The Tree also organises by three — Mercy, Severity and the Middle Pillar that holds them — and the temptation is to line them up. Resist it slightly: the pillars are positions in a structure, fixed columns you can name and point to, while the guṇas are proportions in a substance, present everywhere at once in different mixtures. A diagram against a chemistry. The threeness is shared; what the three are is not.