Know rajas to be of the nature of passion: from its colouring it is passion; know it to be of the nature of passion, like red ochre. It has its rise from craving and clinging: craving is the longing for the unattained; clinging is the joining, marked by the mind's fondness, toward an attained object. It binds, that rajas binds, O son of Kuntī, by attachment to action: attachment to action is the clinging, the giving-of-oneself, to actions of seen and unseen purpose; by it rajas binds the embodied one.

Rajas is of the nature of passion, the cause of passion; passion is the mutual longing of woman and man. It is the birthplace of thirst and attachment, the seat of the arising of thirst and attachment, the cause of thirst and attachment. Thirst is the longing for all objects, sound and the rest. Attachment is the longing for close union with relations, son, friend, and the rest. So it binds the embodied one by begetting longing for actions, for acts; for the actions that the embodied one begins through longing for acts are of the form of merit and demerit, and so become the causes of birth in the wombs that are the means of experiencing their fruit; so rajas binds the embodied one by the door of attachment to action. So it is said that rajas is the cause of passion, thirst, and attachment, and the cause of attachment to action.

This is a brief sub-gloss. For a fuller reading of this verse, see Madhusūdana, Śaṅkara, or Rāmānuja above.

He speaks with the word 'rajas'. It is the arising of thirst and attachment, the cause of those two.