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.
Sri Sankara defines Titiksha in Viveka Chudamani 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)
The spiritual path invites ups and downs of wider amplitude than usual.
The additional insight needed in spiritual life is to realize that at the core,
it is our ego alone that keeps complaining about the opposites (pleasure and
pain).
The ego wants only its own way, whereas Titiksha compels it to yield its
own demands to opposing circumstances. Yes, it is a blow indeed to the ego to
be criticized, and a boost to be praised.
Only one who is training to free himself from ego can face both with
equipoise.
God always finds a way to tell us, “You are nobody”, and therefore He
sends us confrontations. We as seekers are expected to meet these with
Titiksha.
Continued.....
Love.
