How to handle oneself when time starts testing one’s patience?
Question by :Sneha Dwivedi,Teacher, Lucknow
I know, Sneha, it is not your direct question. But, it does smell of something or some relation testing your patience. However, it echoes everybody’s query as to how long to keep patience—there is limit to it!
Patience is a variable, believe me. It varies with time, place and person. If you are dealing with the infinite then you will have to have infinite patience. But, in the relativity, it cannot be infinite and it should not be. In fact, too much of non-reactive hope (as you are calling it patience) will degenerate into frustration after some time. Patience is just a measure of time —keep it to process your reaction, anger and greed into response, corrective energy and will power respectively. Consider a hypothetical situation—an enemy is attacking you and you are keeping patience. But, what if you don’t respond to the attack and still keep “your patience”? Definitely, you will lose the energy to fight back and will be enslaved by the enemy! The situation demands a processed response to the enemy. The time taken in the processed response is called patience. Till then you will have to bear it out. Krishna suggests a good answer to this in the Gita, Chapter 2, Shloka 14. The key words are Maatrasparshah and taan titikshaswa. Bear it out to the measure of its impact. That simply means respond as soon as it begins to impact you negatively. What it means? That patience has a limit. The limit is keep patience till you are not affected by somebody/something’s touch (sparshah) NEGATIVELY. Had it not been the message, Krishna would have agreed to Arjuna’s insistence on “non-reaction with a view not to hurt his relations” in the course of the righteous war. He even calls Arjuna a eunuch and says this state of overpatience, non-reaction is bad. Get up and fight for your cause, was the command. But, fight how? With a processed and determined response. How? Krishna says,”fight without a fever of passion (vigatajwarah).” What is it? It is a processed response. Therefore, whenever you feel angry, just observe patience till your anger becomes a response! Deliver the response then. You will feel energetic by following the principle.--VS