Introduction to Vedas and Vedanta - Part 26

TITIKSHA

Titiksha is the state of enduring or bearing.

It is the capacity or power to endure without opposition, and to suffer pain, distress, hardship or any prolonged stress without succumbing, murmuring, complaining, lamenting or repining. It is patient fortitude. It is the ability to bear and continue in spite of destructive forces.

He who endures conquers. Through endurance, will-power and patience are developed. Through endurance, evils and difficulties are overcome. Your strength often increases in proportion to the obstacles imposed upon you. 

The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight, and even so the character of man. The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Through endurance, you exhibit your divine grandeur and make alliance with God. Titiksha is a condition of wisdom. It is a means for acquiring knowledge.

Though Titiksha develops your will-power and brings happiness herein and hereafter, it has one defect. People misconstrue those who practice forbearance for impotent, effeminate men.

Power of endurance is a virtue to be possessed by a Yogi, a Jnani and a Bhakta. Many hardships and privations have to be faced by the students in the successful performance of Yoga. 

Sri Sankara defines Titiksha in Vivekachudamani as follows: "The bearing of all afflictions without caring to redress them, being free at the same time from anxiety or lament on their score, is called Titiksha, forbearance."

Lord Krishna advises Arjuna to bear heat and cold: "The contacts of the senses with the objects, O son of Kunti, which cause heat and cold, pleasure and pain, have a beginning and an end; they are impermanent; endure them bravely, O Arjuna. That firm man whom, surely, these afflict not, O chief among men, to whom pleasure and pain are the same, is fit for attaining Immortality." Bhagavad Gita (II-14, 15).

Continued.....

Love.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Introduction to Vedas and Vedanta - Part 25

UPARATI- SELF WITHDRAWAL

Uparati is satiety; it is resolutely turning the mind away from desire for sensual enjoyment.

Some define Uparati as renunciation of all works and taking up Sannyasa.

This state of mind comes naturally when one has practiced Viveka, Vairagya, Sama and Dama.

Sri Sankara defines Uparati in his Vivekachudamani as follows: "The best Uparati, self-withdrawal, consists in the mind function ceasing to act by means of external objects".

Uparati implies an inner satisfaction gained through constant discrimination and unshaken faith in the spiritual fact that the experience of true bliss and plenitude is to be had only in the Atman. 

The mind of the student who is established in Uparati will never be agitated when he sees a beautiful object. There will be no attraction. He will have the same feeling when he sees a woman as when he looks at a tree or a log of wood. 

When he looks at delicious fruits or palatable dishes he will not be tempted. He will have no craving for any particular object or dish and will never say "I want such and such food".

He will be satisfied with anything that is placed before him. This is due to the strength of mind he has developed by the practice of Viveka, Vairagya, Sama and Dama. 

Further, the mind experiences a wonderful calmness and transcendental spiritual bliss by the above practices. 

It does not want these little illusory pleasures. If you have got sugar-candy, your mind will never run after black sugar. 

You can wean the mind from the object to which it is attached by training it to taste a superior kind of bliss. 

If you give cotton-seed extract to a bull or a cow, it will not run towards dry grass or hay. 

Mind is like the bull. Those who practice celibacy (of heart, not only in its literal meaning)  must be fully conversant with the technique of Sama, Dama and Uparati. Then only they will be established in its practice.

Continued.....

Love.