A Short Story About Tolerance

(Clearwisdom.net)

Long ago, there was a junior monk who was extremely playful, and his mind was not on cultivation. The senior supervising monk saw this, but he did not jump to criticize him.

One night, the junior monk could not control the impulse of wanting to play: he wanted to sneak out. However, the doors of the temple were tightly locked. So he moved a stool to the side of the wall, stepped on the stool and jumped over the wall. He happily snuck out into the night.

Later the senior monk was checking around, and found the stool beside the wall. He immediately understood what had happened. He decided to wait for the junior monk so that he could teach him some things. The senior monk heard someone jumping on the other side of wall, so he moved the stool, and squatted next to the wall with both hands holding his knees. The junior monk thought the black shadow was the stool he put there. He jumped down and felt that what he landed on was unexpectedly soft, so he was frightened. He turned around and saw that it was the senior monk, so he quickly ran to his room. He was lying in bed and waiting for the senior monk to come enraged, and he could not sleep for the whole night. In the early morning class of the next day, the junior monk felt restless in anticipation of being punished by the senior monk. The senior monk had a very solemn expression but did not bring up this matter. A few days passed, and the senior monk found that the junior monk was not so playful as before and studied harder. From then on the junior monk persevered, cultivated diligently and reached great heights in his cultivation.

In this story, the senior monk did not use a simple and crude method of criticizing when he dealt with the mistake of the junior monk, but looked for chances to let the junior monk realize his shortcoming and correct his own behavior. Because of the senior monk's tolerant and ingenious actions, the junior monk was able to improve and become a great cultivator.

I feel that Teacher is doing the same to let us realize our own attachments and shortcomings in every environment of cultivation. Teacher doesn't directly criticize students. Teacher said:

"I have seen the attachments in some of you, but I cannot tell you directly. If I did, you would keep Master's words in mind and become attached to them for the rest of your life. I do not wish to ruin even one of my disciples. Saving people is indeed very difficult, and their enlightening is even more difficult. More importantly, everyone should carefully examine himself or herself in this light. You all know that Dafa is good, so why can't you give up your attachments?" (from "Further Elimination of Attachments")

Teacher also said in "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.":

"So what's their state of mind? It's tolerance, an extremely immense tolerance, being able to accept other beings, and being able to truly think from other beings' perspectives. This is something a lot of you haven't achieved yet in your cultivation, but you're gradually catching on and achieving it."

Tolerance contains Compassion and Truthfulness. We have to ask ourselves, have we truly enlightened to the deep meaning of tolerance among people, among fellow practitioners in all environments?
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.cc/mh/articles/2003/1/11/42539.html

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