Sankhya Yoga 2.14

 Verse 2.14

मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदु: खदा: |

आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत || 14||

mātrā-sparśhās tu kaunteya śhītoṣhṇa-sukha-duḥkha-dāḥ

āgamāpāyino ’nityās tans-titikṣhasva bhārata

mātrā-sparśhāḥ—contact of the senses with the sense objects; tu—indeed; kaunteya—Arjuna, the son of Kunti; śhīta—winter; uṣhṇa—summer; sukha—happiness; duḥkha—distress; dāḥ—give; āgama—come; apāyinaḥ—go; anityāḥ—non-permanent; tān—them; titikṣhasva—tolerate; bhārata—descendant of the Bharat

O son of Kunti, the contact between the senses and the sense objects gives rise to fleeting perceptions of happiness and distress. These are non-permanent, and come and go like the winter and summer seasons. O descendent of Bharata, one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.

Titiksha (Tolerance)

Sri Krishna here gives an important piece of advice to a spiritual aspirant. When the senses come into contact with the sense objects they undergo various experiences such as hot, cold, pleasure, pain etc. The unacceptance of these experiences leads to distress. These experiences will come and go and they are transient. When the senses perceive sense objects the experiences come, when they don’t, the experiences go, meaning they do not materialize. The undesirable experience given by this material world to the body which is made of the same material is unavoidable. One can enjoy the summer while the winter could give him pain. He may want the summer to last for the entire year. But the laws of nature cannot be changed. The person who loves heat during winter runs away from it during summer. The same thing creates two diametrically opposite reactions in the experiencer due to the difference in situation. In matters that cannot be willfully changed one needs to practice titiksha.

What one has to do about these experiences is to bear them without complaint. Krishna does not say one should not do anything about removing undesirable situations. If one has a headache, one needs to do something about it in order to get relief from pain, such as taking a tablet. But the pain will not go away immediately after taking the medicine. One needs to allow some time before the medicine could take effect and cure the illness. This intermediate period is when one needs to practice titiksha (tolerance). Notice that Sri Krishna also asks us to tolerate sukha (pleasure), which in our opinion needs no tolerating. But for a spiritual aspirant pleasure is as much an obstacle as the pain itself. It puts obstacles subtly in the path of a spiritual aspirant. As spiritual seekers we are trying to go beyond duality. Hence we need to practice tolerance against both pleasure and pain. Titiksha is one of the qualities mentioned in the sadhana chatushtaya sampatti (the four fold qualifications of a sadhaka, the spiritual aspirant.)