Endurance Is Required for Progress, Growth and Success

Each part of the being has its own form of endurance. Endurance is essential for any true and lasting development. Change tends to be mostly incremental. When it comes more rapidly it is usually accompanied by major disruptions to the status quo. In either case, one form of endurance, or another, is required.

Physical endurance is the ability to withstand pressure on the physical body and continue on. This is seen in sports, exploration activities, and adventure challenges, such as climbing mountains, or undertaking marathon races or triathlon. Vital endurance includes the power to remain positive and confident in the face of opposition and apparent setbacks. Mental endurance implies that the mind remains firm and without doubt about the results, even when everything looks bleak. Despair, depression and gloom are signs of a lack of endurance.

We tend not to understand the way Nature develops and evolves, and the time frame needed to accomplish these changes. Endurance implies ‘staying the course’ despite immediate appearances. For example, Sri Aurobindo, in his epic poem Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, has the following passage: “When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp, As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread Of one who steps unseen into his house.” When all around us is darkness, defeat, suffering, death, and pain, the need for utmost endurance is required. As the proverb says, ‘It is always darkest before the dawn.’

The Mother notes: “Let endurance be your watchword: teach the life-force in you — your vital being — not to complain but to put up with all the conditions necessary for great achievement. The body is a very enduring servant, it bears the stress of circumstance tamely like a beast of burden. It is the vital being that is always grumbling and uneasy. The slavery and torture to which it subjects the physical is almost incalculable. How it twists and deforms the poor body to its own fads and fancies, irrationally demanding that everything should be shaped according to its whimsicality! But the very essence of endurance is that the vital should learn to give up its capricious likes and dislikes and preserve an equanimity in the midst of the most trying conditions. When you are treated roughly by somebody or you lack something which would relieve your discomfort, you must keep up cheerfully instead of letting yourself be disturbed. Let nothing ruffle you the least bit, and whenever the vital tends to air its petty grievances with pompous exaggeration just stop to consider how very happy you are, compared to so many in this world. Reflect for a moment on what the soldiers who fought in the last war had to go through. if you had to bear such hardships you would realise the utter silliness of your dissatisfactions. And yet I do not wish you to court difficulties — what I want is simply that you should learn to endure the little insignificant troubles of your life.”

“Nothing great is ever accomplished without endurance. If you study the lives of great men you will see how they set themselves like flint against the weaknesses of the vital. Even today, the true meaning of our civilisation is the mastery of the physical through endurance in the vital. The spirit of sport and of adventure and the dauntless facing of odds which is evident in all fields of life are part of this ideal of endurance. In science itself, progress depends on the countless difficult tests and trials which precede achievement…. What you must do is to give your vital a good beating as soon as it protests; for, when the physical is concerned, there is reason to be considerate and to take precautions, but with the vital the only method is a sound ‘kicking’. Kick your vital the moment it complains, because there is no other way of getting out of the petty consciousness which attaches so much importance to creature comforts and social amenities instead of asking for the Light and the Truth.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter VII Attitude, pp. 66-68