How does one find greatness?

Understanding the journey to greatness rooted in wisdom from the Mahabharata and Thirukkural

The Career Journey

As I step back and reflect on my 25+ year career in tech, a recurring question surfaces: were things always going well? Or was it always difficult and an uphill battle?

There were exciting, energizing days — solving a hard technical problem, helping a colleague find their footing, or watching a project finally go live. But there were also not-so-good days.

On the days when I felt low, it was rarely due to a difficult technical problem. Many times, it was due to a situation I could not control — perhaps a misunderstanding of my words or actions by a colleague or a manager. These were times of deep introspection and learning. They were hard, sometimes tearing at the very identity of who I thought I was. It forced me to examine how I felt, how I was showing up, and what mindset shift I needed to make.

These hard days are very much a part of any long, successful career. They are periods that test us as much as they grow us.

What we often don’t realize is that the good days are also tests. Success has its own quiet way of inflating us — making us believe we are the cause of every good thing that happens. The test of a good day is whether we can rein ourselves in and stay grounded, just as the test of a hard day is whether we can stay open and not collapse into self-doubt.

One of my managers — the one who helped me grow the most — used to say something to me in those difficult moments that I now understand more deeply than I did then. The gist of his advice was: take the arrows, stay in the room, your time will come. At that time, I heard it as encouragement to stay patient. Looking back, I now understand that he was conveying the wisdom from Vedic philosophy in his own way.

Yudhiṣṭhira’s Wisdom

The Mahābhārata’s Yakṣapraśna captures this dynamic in the following śloka. When the Yakṣa asks केनस्विद्विन्दते महत् (How does one find greatness?), Yudhiṣṭhira’s answer is packed into the second important principle of his reply:

श्रुतेन श्रोत्रियो भवति तपसा विन्दते महत् । धृत्या द्वितीयवान् भवति बुद्धिमान् वृद्धसेवया ॥

śrutena śrotriyo bhavati tapasā vindate mahat | dhṛtyā dvitīyavān bhavati buddhimān vṛddha-sevayā ||

• Through deep hearing (śrutam), one becomes a learned scholar (śrotriya).

• Through tapas, one finds greatness (mahat).

• Through steadfastness (dhṛti), one gains a worthy companion.

• Through service to elders (vṛddha-sevā), one becomes wise (buddhimān).

Four virtues, four desired outcomes. In an earlier blog, we explored the first line — śrutena śrotriyo bhavati — and what listening truly means. This post delves deeper into the second principle.

Defining Tapas: Enduring the Opposites

तपसा विन्दते महत् — through Tapas, one finds greatness.

To understand this answer by Yudhiṣṭhira, we need to understand what Tapas is.

While it is often translated as “penance” or “austerity,” that translation, like with many Sanskrit terms, is incomplete. The Vedic philosophical texts (the Śrutis and Smṛtis) are best learned with the guidance of an Ācārya. Acharya Sūryanārāyaṇa Nanda explains this beautifully in the class on Yakṣapraśna.

तपः = द्वन्द्वसहनम्

tapaḥ = dvandva-sahanam

Tapas is dvandva-sahanam — the ability to bear a pair of opposites.

Tapas is not about giving up the life we are in and going to an ashram to perform penance. It is the ability to bear the pairs of opposites we face in our day-to-day lives with equanimity.

Heat and cold. Pleasure and pain. Praise and criticism. Success and failure. Gain and loss. A good day and a difficult day.

Tapas is the ability to bear these while continuing to stay engaged in the world.

The Wisdom of the Gita: Staying Centered

The Gita returns to this principle repeatedly. The following verse summarizes it:

मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदुःखदाः । आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत ॥ २.१४॥

mātrāsparśās tu kaunteya śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkha-dāḥ | āgamāpāyino’nityās tāṁs titikṣasva bhārata ||

The contacts of the senses with their objects, O son of Kunti, bring cold and heat, pleasure and pain. They come and go; they do not last. Endure them, O Bhārata.

Here, Sri Krishna is not asking Arjuna (and us) to deny these experiences, nor to numb ourselves in the face of them. The important word is titikṣasva — endure them, hold them, allow them to come and go without being swayed by them.

The Gold in the Fire

These teachings are also emphasized by Sage Thiruvalluvar. While he dedicates an entire chapter (Chapter 27 — Tavam) to this practice, the following verse captures the essence beautifully:

சுடச்சுடரும் பொன்போல் ஒளிவிடும் — துன்பம் சுடச்சுட நோற்கிற் பவர்க்கு ॥

cuṭa-c-cuṭarum poṉ-pōl oḷi-viṭum — tuṉpam cuṭa-c-cuṭa nōṟ-kiṟ pavar-kku

Like gold that shines brighter the more it is heated, so too do those who endure suffering through tavam grow ever more luminous.

The underlying principle is the exact same as Yudhiṣṭhira’s declaration and Sri Krishna’s advice. Heat is not the enemy of the gold; heat is what reveals the gold. The difficulty is not what destroys you; it is what reveals who you actually are.

Tapas in our day to day lives

Tapas is not a retreat from the world. It is the disciplined willingness to stay in the room when the meeting gets hard. To stay with the difficult feedback rather than collapsing into self-justification or harsh self-criticism. To remain in the unresolved moment and introspect while drawing from what we learnt about confidence in the previous blog. This learning is relevant to every executive, leader, engineer, parent and marathon runner.

Greatness is not won by avoiding the dvandva — the pairs of opposites. It is found — vindate — by the one who has learned to bear them while staying centered.

Looking back at the harder days of my own career now, I see they were not interruptions to the journey. They were the ones that made me better. After all these years later, I am still immensely grateful to that manager — for trying to help me see what I could not yet see.

That is the profound truth embedded in the second line of Yudhiṣṭhira’s answer.