षट्तिला एकादशी व्रत कथा (तिलस्य षड्विधोपयोगाः)

In Chapter 42 of the Uttara Khanda of the Padma Purana, Sage Dalbhya asks Sage Pulastya:

Sage Pulastya replied:

The word Shattila refers to the six specific ways sesame seeds are utilized on this holy day:

1. 1.Til-Snana: Bathing in water infused with sesame seeds.
2. 2.Til-Ubtan: Applying sesame seed paste onto the body before bathing.
3. 3.Til-Homa: Offering black sesame seeds into the sacred sacrificial fire (Yajna).
4. 4.Til-Tarpan: Offering sesame seeds and water to ancestors (Pitrus).
5. 5.Til-Bhojana / Til-Prasad: Consuming sesame seeds in fasting foods and prasad.
6. 6.Til-Daan: Gifting sesame seeds, sesame sweets (Gajak/Revdi/Laddus), and earthen pots filled with sesame to the needy.

Lord Sri Krishna narrated the ancient history of an intensely religious Brahmin woman who lived during ancient times.

This noble woman was deeply devoted to Lord Vishnu. She performed continuous fasts, penances, and temple worship throughout her life. However, despite her great austerities, she had a flaw: she never gave charity of food or grains (Anna-Daan) to anyone.

Lord Vishnu decided to teach her the supreme virtue of charity. The Lord assumed the form of a hungry, wandering mendicant (Bhikshu) and knocked on her door, begging for alms.

Annoyed by the mendicant, the woman picked up a dry lump of clay (Mitti ka dhela) from the ground and dropped it into the Lord's begging bowl. Lord Vishnu accepted the clay peacefully and departed.

Eventually, the woman passed away and ascended to the celestial realms due to her rigorous fasts. In heaven, she was awarded a grand, golden palace with beautiful gardens.

However, when she entered the palace, it was completely empty. There was no food, no water, no clothes, and no furnishings, and she sat in an empty golden mansion suffering from intense hunger.

Distressed, she prayed to Lord Vishnu:

Lord Vishnu appeared and gently explained:

The woman followed the Lord's advice, learned the sacred rites from the Deva Kanyas, and observed the Shattila Ekadashi fast. By donating sesame seeds and food, her celestial palace instantly filled with boundless divine food, sweet fruits, silk garments, and radiant spiritual wealth.

The katha's teaching is twofold. First, personal austerity (fasting, bathing, worship) purifies the self, but it does not by itself create the capacity to sustain others, and so it leaves the woman's heavenly reward hollow. Second, the sixfold use of sesame on this one Ekadashi is held to compress a lifetime of charitable giving into a single day's merit, which is why Shattila Ekadashi is especially recommended to devotees who wish to balance personal tapasya with concrete generosity toward the hungry.

The vrat begins before sunrise on Magha Krishna Ekadashi with a formal Sankalpa. The devotee bathes with sesame-infused water, sits before Lord Vishnu, takes water in hand, and vows to keep the Ekadashi fast with sesame observance through the day and night, dedicating the fruits of the vow to the Lord and resolving to perform Anna-Daan and Til-Daan before the fast concludes.

Through the day, the devotee avoids grains and ordinary food, keeping to fruits, sesame-based prasad, or a complete fast according to capacity, and offers worship to Lord Vishnu with incense, lamps, and sesame laddoos (Til ke Laddu) while chanting the mantra Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya. Puja is offered to Lord Vishnu at both morning and evening, and the sixfold sesame observances, bathing, body paste, homa, tarpan, prasad, and daan, are ideally performed across the day rather than left to its final hours.

Because the katha turns entirely on the woman's failure to give Anna-Daan, charity is not an optional addendum to this vrat but its central discipline. Devotees donate sesame seeds, sesame sweets, warm blankets, shoes, and cooked food to the needy and to Brahmins, since Magha is still a cold month in much of Bharat and these gifts answer real hardship as well as ritual merit.

The fast concludes on Dvadashi morning, after sunrise and after the Hari Vasara period, the final quarter of Ekadashi that spills into Dvadashi and during which breaking the fast is forbidden, has ended. The devotee bathes, offers morning prayers and sesame seeds to Lord Vishnu, completes any charity not yet given, and then breaks the fast with simple prasad rather than rich food.

Through sesame seeds offered in six forms, this one Ekadashi teaches that true spiritual abundance is built as much on what is given to others as on what is renounced for oneself.