Tolerance Is Unavoidable

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Speaking online to devotees in London
28 July 2018, part 7

Question: You say that if a person is a Vaishnav, a Vaishnav never takes offence. But we always feel offended by everything. How can we develop that humility? We always feel, "Oh this person told me this, I am offended," "This person did this to me, I am offended." How we can dominate our ego and never feel offended by anything?

Do not react. You have to tolerate it, and you have to have so much tolerance. Gurudev said jokingly one time, "When I cannot tolerate so many things, I am biting my arms." I also cannot tolerate so many things, but what can I do? If I cannot tolerate something, it is not Vaishnav etiquette.

Gurudev told one story also about a manager from one ISKCON temple. Sometimes he would go outside for preaching, distributing books, etc. and one time when he came back he saw there was no prasadam, so he only drank some water. After that, he gave an order, "You must keep some prasadam for me!" And what did they do? The next day they kept so much prasadam for him that it would be enough to feed five people. When the manager came back, they told him, "Now you must take all this prasadam!"

Gurudev told also that the scriptures say and sometimes Prabhupad Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur told it also that if you do many offences for one hundred births, then you become a temple manager. [His Divine Grace laughs.]

Yes, it is very difficult to tolerate. What you are saying is simple and obviously we react when something happens. Actually, if something is intolerable, if you hear something and cannot tolerate it, then it is better to avoid it.

They tell so many things about me also. When some disciple or some godbrother of mine comes to me and says, "Oh, Maharaj, they are telling so many things against you," I say that what they are saying is nothing, I am much worse than that!

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