If some people are more tolerant by their nature does that tolerance mean they are advanced devotees?

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Transcript

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So, the question is that, sometimes different people have different tolerance levels based on their nature. And if somebody is more tolerant, we may say that they are an advanced devotee, but actually they might just be more passive or just tolerance is an example. So, is the tolerance that comes from our nature necessarily indicative of one’s spiritual stature or spiritual advancement? Not necessarily.
Secondly, see sometimes we think of tolerance in a very negative sense or in a very passive sense. That means whatever is happening, tolerate it. See the Bhagavad Gita’s call to tolerance is not a call to passivity.
It is a call to focused activity. Now, if tolerance meant passivity, then why did Krishna tell Arjuna to fight the war at all? Isn’t it? If tolerance meant blanket tolerance of everything, Krishna would have told Arjuna, you know tolerate the insult to Draupadi, tolerate the loss of your kingdom, tolerate. Krishna doesn’t tell that.
You have to fight. Yudhyasva vigata jyotaha. So, Krishna is not telling Arjuna to tolerate anything and everything.
You know, if we simply take tolerance itself as a virtue, now Prabhupada could have said, oh the whole world is going into illusion, tolerate it. No, Prabhupada actually couldn’t tolerate the ignorance and illusion in the world. And that is why he worked so hard to share Krishna’s message all over the world.
So you can’t consider tolerance as a blanket virtue. See if you see what Krishna talks about, where does he talk about tolerance, 2.14 and 15. 2.14 says, matras parashastu kaunteya, shitostha sukha dukkhada, agama apayino ityas tam siddhikshya suvarada.
So just as the seasons come and go, similarly happiness and distress come and go, tolerate it. But what is the purpose of such tolerance? That he describes in the next verse, yam dheena vithayante te purusham purushar sabha, samadukha sukham dheenam somrutattvaya kalpate. Those who tolerate like this, they will attain amruta, they will attain immortality.
That means the purpose of tolerance is to focus on those activities that will take us towards spiritual growth, that will help us to attain immortality, which is the characteristic of spiritual realization. So in this background, we can say tolerance means not passivity, but the capacity to keep small things small so that we can focus on the big things. To keep small things small so that we can focus on the big things.
That is tolerance. So it is not that anything and everything that is going wrong, I tolerate it. Some people might just be, they are apathetic, what is happening in life, what is happening in the world, I don’t care.
As long as my life is going on nicely, I don’t care about it all. Now that apathy is not necessarily indicative of spirituality. Some people may go to the other extreme and they will be hyper excited.
Anything and everything that is going everywhere in the world, they get worked up about it. That is also not conducive to spirituality. If I am worried, okay, you know, what is going to happen in this part of the world? What is happening over there? What is happening over there? Well, how am I doing anything productive about it? So we may all have our natures where we tend to be apathetic about things or we may tend to be hyper excited about things.
So what we have to do is, with spiritual knowledge, we understand what is most important. And then around the focus on the most important, we tolerate other things, we keep small things small. See, even within the bhakti movement, there can be things that are wrong.
And or rather than saying they are wrong, there can be things which are not yet right or not as right as they should be. So then in that case, what we need to do is, what is my focus? What can I do? We all need to choose our battles. We cannot fight all battles all around us, we have to choose our battles.
So sometimes some devotees may find a particular battle important. Some devotees, you know, when a kirtan is going on, you know, if anybody is playing an instrument wrong, they just can’t tolerate it and you have to go and tell them to correct it. Other people say, new devotee, at least he is Chinese, he is playing some instrument, let him play it.
So, you know, it depends on what is, if it is an important meeting, if it is an important program where many new people have come and they want to look at the musical quality, then we may say, you know, let somebody else, if it is a devotee program where people are appreciating the devotion itself, then you may let it go on. So we all have to choose the battles. So rather than thinking of apathy or hyper-excitability as signs of spiritual advancement or lack of spiritual advancement, what we can focus on is how dedicated a person is to doing some service.
Now, different people may be dedicated to different services and that’s why the seriousness of the advancement of a devotee is seen primarily by their commitment. Now, Prabhupada, I will conclude with this, Prabhupada, you know, in one lecture, he defines Krishna Consciousness. Now Prabhupada could say, you know, always chant Hare Krishna, you know, always be thinking about Krishna and he has explained about this in his purports at various places.
But in this lecture, Prabhupada said, what is Krishna Consciousness? He says, when you come to the temple and when you come in front of Krishna, if you feel that Krishna is asking you, what are you doing for me? If you feel that Krishna is asking me, what are you doing for me? Then you are Krishna Conscious. It is an amazing level of consciousness. It is so practical and so profound.
Now, most people, when we come to the temple, we actually ask God, what are you doing for me? Don’t forget, you have to do this and you have to do that and you have to do that also. So, Prabhupada is actually turning it all around and saying, if we feel Krishna is asking me, what are you doing for me? And then we feel that and it is very practical. Okay, I am doing this service and this is how I am going to do this service.
Then actually we are also devoted to Krishna. So we can see the seriousness of devotion, not just by their tolerance, but actually by their dedication, dedication to a particular cause. And if they are dedicated to one cause, they, because of their dedication, they may neglect other causes, because we all are finite beings and we can only fight so many battles.
So tolerance itself is not necessarily a virtue. Tolerance as it enables us to focus on some constructive activity, that is a virtue. Does it answer your question? Thank you very much.