Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: “Nasti Tapah Pranayamat Param” - There is no penance greater than pranayama. Doing the pranayama correctly itself will be a penance. “Tapo dvandva sahanam” - You should bear the conflict. You shouldn’t be depressed in times of grief and too excited in times of happiness. This is penance. To bear the conflict is penance. You have to bear the heat and the cold alike.
Suppose you are travelling somewhere in a bus, and it is a 12 hour long journey for which you have to sit. Then that also is a sort of tapasya. Being in a state of equanimity, and enduring whatever come, whether it is hot or cold, good or bad, praise or criticism, is tapasya. Can you listen to an insult with the same equanimity as when you listen to compliments? That is tapasya. When someone praises you, you listen to it with a smile. When someone criticizes you, can you listen to it with the same smile and equanimity, and watch what is happening inside you? That is tapasya.
When you do not like something but are able to undergo that, then that is tapasya.
If you can like something, can you be a witness to it and not be feverish about it, then that is tapasya. Forbearing the opposites is called tapasya, and it is essential in life.
The extent to which we follow tapasya in life, to that extent we become stronger and stable.
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