"I is like heat and cold; when it is the cold season, you crave for warmth and in the hot season you crave for coolness. The sense-object contact is exactly like this. So long as the world is there, objective contact cannot be avoided; so long as the burden of previous births is there, the joy-grief complex cannot be avoided. Still, one can master the art, the discipline, the secret, of avoiding them or bearing them without bother."

"Of what use is it to wait till the waves are silenced, before you wade into the sea for a bath? They will never cease. The wise man learns the trick of avoiding the blow of the onrushing wave and the drag of the receding wave. But a sea bath is essential. Some people avoid that very thing, because they are too idle to learn the art, Arjuna. Wear the armour of fortitude, of Thithiksha, and the blows of good and bad fortune can never harm you."

"Thithiksha means equanimity in the face of opposites, putting up boldly with duality. It is the privilege of the strong, the treasure of the brave. The weak will be as agitated as peacock feathers; they are ever restless, with no fixity even for a moment. They sway like the pendulum, this side and that; once towards joy, the next moment towards grief."

"Here, some pause has to be made on one point. Fortitude is different from patience. Thithiksha is not the same as Sahana. Sahana is putting up with something; tolerating it, bearing it, because you have no other go; having the capacity to overcome it, but yet, disregarding it - that is the spiritual discipline. Patiently putting up with the external world of duality combined with inner equanimity and peace - that is the path to liberation. Bearing all, with analytic discrimination - that is the type of Sahana that will yield good result."

(Viveka is the word used for such discrimination. It means the capacity to recognise what is called the "Aaga-maapaayina" nature of the objective world; that is to say, the world of objects that "come and go" and are not eternal).

"Generally, man seeks only happiness and joy; under no stress will he desire misery and grief! He treats happiness and joy as his closest well-wishers and misery and grief as his direct enemies. This is a great mistake. When one is happy, the risk of grief is great; fear of losing the happiness will haunt the man. Misery prompts inquiry, discrimination, self-examination and fear of worse things that might happen. It awakens you from sloth and conceit. Happiness makes one forget one's obligations to oneself as a human being. It drags man into egoism and the sins that egoism leads one to commit. Grief renders man alert and watchful."