Can you explain with examples how we can tolerate?
So I was talking about tolerate. Can you give examples of what it means to tolerate? Suppose we are, say, riding to office, and somebody just cuts across us.
How dare this person cut across? Now, if we just get angry, that person just gone off on their way, and we think, I'll go after that person, I'll give them a piece of my mind. Now we are thinking of giving them a piece of our mind, but we are losing our own piece of mind. Isn't it? And, you know, we may have an important meeting in office, but then, by the time we reach, we chase after that person, and try to catch that person, and try to chastise that person, and we get so worked up by that, so exhausted, so irritated.
We reach late for that office meeting, we're not able to compose enough for the meeting. We've just made a mess of things. So tolerance simply means to keep small things small, so that we can focus on big things.
There are many things that, around us, which are wrong. Now, we can't go about fixing everything that is wrong. Shankar Prabhupada writes in the Seventh Canto, Purport, that we need to be always healthy and stout in mind and intelligence to distinguish the goal of life from a life full of problems.
In life, there are many problems, but which problem should I focus on? That is determined by my goal of life. So, to distinguish the goal of life from a life full of problems, to distinguish that, we need to be healthy and stout in mind and intelligence. So, tolerance means that we let small things pass, so that we can focus on big things.
Now, if we let everything that happens matter, then we don't let what matters happen. If we let everything that matters happen, Oh, this person spoke like that, this person did like that, Oh, they did like this, Oh, this happened. If we let everything that happens matter, then what we are meant to do, what we are supposed to contribute, we don't let things that matter happen.
As I said, if you have an important meeting with someone, if we let anybody and everybody just monopolize on our time and take our time away, we want to be there for the meeting only. So, we won't allow them to take time away like that. But often, we let people take our consciousness away.
We let people take our mind away. They consume us emotionally. And then when something is important, we are not emotionally available with that.
We are not mentally available with that. So, tolerance means, essentially, the capacity to keep small things small. So that we can focus on big things in life.
So, could Krishna tell Arjuna, tolerate in the Bhagavad Gita? There might seem to be a little contradiction. Krishna is telling Arjuna, tolerate. And Krishna is also telling Arjuna, fight.
So, if he is tolerating, why is he fighting? But the point is, Krishna is telling, Arjuna, while fighting, you have to fight against your elders. You have to fight against your loved ones. That is difficult for me.
I know that, but you don't. As compared to the cause of establishing the rule of Dharma, that cause is so glorious, that cause is so big, that when compared to that, the pain of fighting against your relatives, that is small. So, keep that small thing, keep the pain of fighting against your relatives small.
It's a small thing, don't think about it too much. Keep it small, so that you can focus on the big thing of doing your Dharmic duty as a Kshatriya, as a Maharishi and guarding your society. Does that answer your question? Thank you very much.
So, we will continue tomorrow.