सत्त्वं सुखे सञ्जयति रजः कर्मणि भारत।ज्ञानमावृत्य तु तमः प्रमादे सञ्जयत्युत॥
sattvaṃ sukhe sañjayati rajaḥ karmaṇi bhāratajñānam āvṛtya tu tamaḥ pramāde sañjayaty uta
Word by word
The verse says
Clarity attaches you to being happy, Arjuna, and drive attaches you to action. Heaviness covers over knowing, and attaches you to carelessness.
In plain words
Each one named with what it fastens you to.
Clarity to feeling well. Drive to doing. Heaviness to not noticing.
The verb is the same for all three: sañjayati, it makes you stick.
Where you've felt this · in relationships
Three friends respond to the same bad news in three ways. One becomes very calm and wants to talk it through properly. One starts organising things that do not need organising. One goes quiet and sleeps a lot. None of them chose their response and each would describe it as the obvious one.
Going deeper
The same verb for all three states is doing the chapter's main work.
If different verbs were used — clarity lifts, drive drags, heaviness smothers — the hierarchy would be built into the grammar. Instead each one sticks you to something. The things differ; the sticking does not. A person stuck to being happy is in a better situation than one stuck to carelessness, and the chapter is careful not to call it a freer one.
That is the claim Chapter 2 was making about pleasure and pain from a different direction.
And it reframes self-knowledge usefully. The question is not which of these you are, as though it were a temperament. All three run in everybody, by turns, and the thing worth knowing is which one has you at the moment, because what looks like a considered judgement at four in the afternoon is often just whichever strand is currently on top.