When envious people criticise us and put us to test in a severe way, all we can do is tolerate. Their only motivation in life is to pull us down, and if we try engaging with them in any sort of a dialogue, we have only fallen a victim to the traps set by them.
George Bernard Shaw once said, "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."
Those who aspire to be sādhus therefore should try very hard to learn the quality of tolerance, even if in the process they may fail on some occasions. Slowly but surely, tolerance will win and the sādhu will be able to escape free from this world. A particular verse in this mood describes a golden ornament speaking the following words to a goldsmith:
he hema-kāra! para-duḥkha-vicāra-mūḍha!
kiṁ māṁ muhuḥ kṣipasi vāra-śatāni vahnau?
sandīpyate mayi suvarṇa-guṇātireko
lābhaḥ paraṁ tava mukhe khalu bhasma-pātaḥ
kiṁ māṁ muhuḥ kṣipasi vāra-śatāni vahnau?
sandīpyate mayi suvarṇa-guṇātireko
lābhaḥ paraṁ tava mukhe khalu bhasma-pātaḥ
"[The golden ornament says to the goldsmith]: O Goldsmith! You are certainly fully unaware of the suffering experienced by others! Why do you test me by throwing me in fire hundreds of times?
[But even if you do so, the result is that] the brilliance of my golden color keeps increasing with every test, whereas your only achievement is that your face progressively becomes covered with more soot and ash."
— (Subhāṣita-ratna-bhāṇḍāgāra, Suvarṇa-kāraḥ, Page 246, Verse 23)
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