Namaste,

One of the best ISKCON teachings is that one ought to be as humble as a blade of grass and as tolerant as a tree.

Coming to the second virtue, namely tolerance, is where I have issues.

Let me cite an example.

A simple situation. I know someone through Facebook, who is not a close friend, but we have communicated pretty thoroughly in the past over phone. She has confided in me that she pretty much leads a miserable life on many fronts. In fact, she disclosed so much that I had to stop her.

That aside, after a long gap, today I sent her some good wishes through WhatsApp asking after her welfare. Although WhatsApp says she read it (with the double Blue tick marks), she never replied. And I noticed she was active in Facebook the whole day today.

That pissed me off so much I made a post in Facebook, "Some people are so miserable in life their misery is contagious should you contact them".

I know I sound thoroughly mean, it is like hurting one further where they precisely ache.

Normally I am not mean, I am more of a well-wisher of sorts. But one could say I'm not very tolerant. Dissing me for no reason pisses me off, very much.

So my question is how do I build upon that tolerance? It may be that japa and upavasa could be measures that build on this virtue, really, but then they would take an entire lifetime to see results as they are slow. Unless one can do japa every moment of their waking hours, that is.

May be this is why ISKCON advices its disciples to do book distribution, as it really would build tolerance.

I welcome advice on how to build tolerance, to be like a tree.

Many thanks.