Commentaries by Vee Jay Attri during the Book Study – Secrets of Karma
Let us continue with our study from the book Secrets of Karma. We are still with the ‘ART’ of Living. We talked about A for Acceptance, R for Responsibility, now, we come to T for Tolerance.
‘‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
– Jesus Christ
True tolerance comes from deep compassion, it gives inner strength and wisdom to accept people as they are and bring long term solutions to many issues.
First sentence is very, very important. True tolerance stems from deep compassion. You have to understand what it means by this. When Lord Christ was on the cross, he did not curse anybody. He did not say anything excepting asking for forgiveness, so that the people who, out of ignorance, had crucified Him, are not being punished.
So, this is basically an extraordinary example of boundless compassion. When somebody is doing wrong to you, there are several, several things. The first and foremost thing is, the person cannot do anything wrong to you unless and until you have a karma to face that suffering.
That is the first and foremost thing because you are simply reaping what you are sowing and therefore, you learn to accept what people do to you. The second level is the Lords of Karma, as per the Masters, have chosen that person to help you neutralize your karma and also to learn the lessons that you are expected to learn.
So, this person who gives you pain actually is an instrument, a catalyst for you to help neutralizing your own negative karma and in the process of neutralizing it, you are also learning the lessons. That is inherent in that situation.
So, the person has simply been chosen as an instrument. Now, unfortunately the person will be definitely undergoing karmic consequences for whatever he or she is doing to you, not an easy thing to understand and accept. But that is a reality because they have been chosen as an instrument to help you but unfortunately the karmic consequences also do not leave that person. The laws of nature anyway shall take care of everybody who is doing any forms of harm, inflicting injury or pain on people.
So, the laws of nature will anyway take care of that person because that person who is giving you so much of harm and pain will be receiving whatever that he or she is doing many, many manifold and therefore a spiritual aspirant has a very deep level of compassion towards that person. Compassion because they do not know what they are doing to themselves. That is why, there is a very profound statement from Lord Christ from the cross: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
So, a great spiritual aspirant needs to cultivate compassion towards people who give you so much of pain, who inflict so much of pain and suffering on you. So, there are three levels:
- What you sow is what you reap.
- The person simply is acting as an instrument to give it whatever that belongs to you.
- You have got nothing to forgive excepting to cultivate compassion because you are simply reaping what you have sown.
So, in all the three circumstances, the forgiveness has to be exercised regardless of the nature of the pain people are inflicting.
Some people keep repeating mistakes, inflicting much pain on others. The Masters call them ‘young souls’ and sometimes in lighter spirit ‘green mangoes!’ They cannot act like an ‘old soul’ who have travelled a ‘long journey.’
Meaning, an old soul who has taken several, several incarnations and out of which is born higher level of maturity. So, do not expect a young soul who has taken just a few lifetimes of incarnations to behave like a matured soul. That means you have to exercise tolerance at any given time.
Do not expect people to be like you; everybody cannot be like you, even if they are spiritually advanced, they have their own rays as we call it in esoteric parlance. Everybody comes with a specific trait, they have got their own ways of looking at life, their own perspective.
So, on one side we have young souls, on the other side we have people coming with myriad of background, experiences and therefore it is not easy to find people who all the time agree with us, not possible.
So, there will always be some people who understand you but there will always be people who criticize you, who condemn you. You have to rise above that. You have to cultivate higher levels of maturity and understanding and that is exactly what we are talking here.
Sometimes, even spiritual teachers tend to be intolerant with others who do not agree with their way of life or understanding.
You may have to deal with them patiently, the way you would handle infants and nurture them gently like saplings until their ‘roots’ are strong.
The reality is, at some point in time, you and I had also given much challenge to others. There were people who had to accept us as we are, be patient with us, be tolerant with us, and give us an opportunity to grow.
Now that you have grown, you have to give the same privilege for the people who are in your life. So, rather than expecting people to behave in a particular way, you learn to cultivate tolerance, understanding, understanding that everybody are not the same.
There is an interesting episode in the Holy Bible about prophet Abraham being reminded of the virtue of tolerance by the Lord Himself:
Once a traveler came to prophet Abraham while he was in the desert, and Abraham offered food and water to him. This is the custom in the desert in the ancient times. Then, Abraham asked the traveler to praise God, but he refused saying “I know nothing about your God.” Abraham got furious and sent the traveler out of the tent.
At that moment the Lord appeared and asked Abraham: ‘‘Why did you send away the poor traveler?’’ Abraham replied: “Lord, he refused to take Your Holy Name. He is a terrible infidel. “The Lord said: ”I have tolerated him for 60 years, surely you can bear with him for a day!”
Do not judge anyone’s way of life and be kind to those striving to grow, for you too was like them at some point, and someone had to tolerate you! Besides, you can grow only by helping others to grow.
So, please listen very carefully what we read now simply tells you that people are really struggling a lot with their lives. On one side they have karmic lessons to be learnt, that means even a person like a drug addict is enduring so much of pain, so much of suffering of doing this activity, primarily because they have to learn an intense lesson.
So, sometimes what you call as blunder, what you call as terrible is actually a compulsion of the soul, they had to go through this process. So, there is so much of weight on the soul, burden on the soul to act or do things in a particular way, they are compelled to do it because they carry a karma to be neutralized.
They carry a lesson to be learnt in a very, very hard way. So, while you are looking at these people, do not brand them as bad people or terrible people. On one side, they are suffering already because of their karma, on the other side, your intense negative thought is actually a psychic attack that will actually compound the misery and pain for the person.
Do not ever be a part of increasing the pain and sufferings of the people. This is very very important. So, that is exactly where we exercise a higher level of tolerance, patience. There will come a time when patience, tolerance, all these words will be replaced with compassion.
Tolerance comes because you have to tolerate somebody, but there comes a point in time when the tolerance gets transformed into compassion and therefore, I don’t have to tolerate you anymore.
It is like a mother accepting a baby as the baby, without even thinking for a moment how many times I will have to take care of the baby or feed the baby. This example all of us know because we have heard it from Masters.
The reason is, the compassion and the love actually overrides all forms of pain, all forms of sufferings, all forms of burden coming from people. So, the word “patience” or “tolerance” does not exist between a mother and a new-born baby.
There is so much of pure love and compassion that overrides the words tolerance and patience. It does not exist. Same thing happens with spiritual aspirants. At some point in time, when you have grown sufficiently, you will realize there is no need for you to tolerate anybody, no need to be patient.
It becomes your nature to be compassionate and therefore, compassion rules your life.
Tolerance is a spiritual strength. It is the virtue that enables one to bring out excellence in others. In his book ‘Living with the Himalayan Masters’, the great saint Swami Rama talks about how his revered Guru tolerated his poor manners and groomed him with patience.
In many institutions, the students or disciples with many weaknesses are patiently nurtured with love, and they eventually become mighty souls who then act as a supporting pillars of those organizations.
Further reading: Secrets of Karma, Page 70-68