Are tolerance and surrender directly proportional to each other?
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What is tolerance? What is surrender? And are they directly proportional to each other? There are very broad terms, but firstly from a practical point of view, Prabhupada talks about tolerances. In the Krishna book, he says, one's greatness is estimated by one's capacity to tolerate provoking situations. Prabhupada says.
That means if somebody is trying to make me angry and and somebody is trying to make me angry and to become angry, that's very easy to do. Anybody can become angry. But at that time to maintain one's self-control, that requires strength.
So tolerance, Prabhupada generally talks about it in terms of not getting provoked by small things. So that tolerance is a great strength. And in life, you will see there are so many things which can provoke us.
We are just going along the road and somebody cuts us on the car in between. Why did you do this? There are cases of road rage. People just get angry and start blasting at each other.
They sometimes take a gun and shoot the other person also. So that is very, very great intolerance. In relationships, if there is not enough tolerance, then every small wrong interaction becomes like a bomb explosion.
So then if there is no tolerance between people in a relationship, then the whole relationship becomes like walking in a minefield. We don't know what will cause a sudden explosion to go off. So basic tolerance comes from recognizing that I am imperfect, others are imperfect.
And we have to tolerate each other's imperfections and move on in our life. So tolerance, to put it simply, is to keep small things small. The mind's tendency is to make small things very big.
Why did you not do this? How could you have forgotten this? I told you this. Do not do this. Keep small things small.
Now tolerance is not a virtue in isolation. There are times when tolerance can also become a weakness. If somebody is abusive, somebody is repeatedly doing the same wrong thing and is showing no signs of correction, at that time to tolerate would become like self-abuse.
And although Krishna tells Arjuna to tolerate, but the whole Bhagavad Gita is spoken to make Arjuna fight the war. Krishna did not tell Arjuna, you just tolerate the Kauravas abuses. So tolerance, if there are big things, big things often require assertive action to correct them.
But tolerance enables us to not overreact to small things. So keep small things small. That is the essence of tolerance.
And surrender is understood in various ways. Often the notion of surrender is how Draupadi raised her hands, Krishna, I surrender to you. That is one way of surrendering.
But at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, surrender. And Arjuna says, yes, I surrender to you. I will do your will.
But Arjuna does not raise his hands and surrender. Arjuna picks up his bow and fights. So surrender can be done in various ways.
Depending on one's situation, depending on one's nature, one's qualification, surrender can be in different ways. So Draupadi raising her hands and Arjuna raising his bow, both of them are surrendered. Surrender, how we surrender will vary according to time, place, circumstance.
And the Hari Bhakta Vilas gives a very practical definition based on the Puranas of surrender. The first, it talks about six elements. anukulyasa sankalpa, prathikulyasa varjanam rakshishyati di vishvasu, gota prithve varanam tatha, atma nikshepa karpani, sadvidhah saranagati That except that which is favorable, reject that which is unfavorable.
Have faith that Krishna will always protect you. Know that Krishna is your maintainer. Be humble and offer yourself entirely to Krishna.
These six are the elements of surrender. Now among these six, the first two are actions. Accept the favorable, reject the unfavorable.
And the last four are dispositions. Krishna is my protector. Krishna is my maintainer.
I am nothing without Krishna. I offer my whole being to Krishna. The last four will take a long time to cultivate.
What we can do right now is the first two. That means, whatever we are doing, what should I do in this situation that is favorable to my bhakti? And what should I do? What can I avoid which is unfavorable to my bhakti? So this makes surrender a very dynamic activity. So at each situation, we can be choosing to do the favorable, avoiding the unfavorable and in that way we can be surrendering to Krishna.
So tolerance enables us to surrender. How is that? Because if small things are going wrong and we get caught up in the small things and the big thing of directing our life towards Krishna will not be able to do that. Say, somebody spoke a little roughly to us and then we are after that sitting down in a class.
But we are sitting in the class. If we don't have tolerance, we are not hearing the class. We are simply hearing the mind's revenge fantasy.
I spoke like that. I will spoke like this. I should have spoken like that.
Next time when I meet, I will speak like this. The mind can go into a whole hyper drive of its own. So tolerance enables us to surrender.
Now in all these activities, the basic thing is to stay connected with Krishna. So we can to some extent try to develop these virtues of either surrender or of tolerance separately. But we can focus primarily on how can I be connected with Krishna.
And if anything starts distracting me from my connection with Krishna, then it is not all that important. Let me put it on the pause right now. So that focus on Krishna will enable us to tolerate and that focus on Krishna will also enable us to surrender.
So it's not that we cannot say that because I don't have tolerance, I can't surrender. No. With whatever tolerance we have, we surrender right now.
And by our surrendering, our tolerance will also increase. Because when we get connected with Krishna, when we start feeling… and when somebody has spoken harshly to us and we are feeling disturbed, but somehow at that time we fix our mind on Krishna and we start getting absorbed and we start feeling peaceful, we start feeling joyful, then we ourselves realize that it doesn't matter so much. I spoke like that and so many people keep speaking things.
I don't have to take it so seriously. So we should just focus on connecting with Krishna and both tolerance and surrender will follow by that. Thank you.
Any other questions? Yes.