Kalu Rinpoche | Patience and Tolerance and Compassion

Q: Rinpoche la, how can we improve our love when nothing goes right according to our wish ?

A: I think proper planning is important, being patient is important.

Wanting is one thing and not having a strategy is another. So having a strategy is important, having a good heart is important. Because we think that we can deceive people and we think we are the smartest person ever existed and that is all ego, that is all ignorant.

Thinking that you are the smartest person is a very wrong approach to begin with. Thinking that, thinking and knowing what is needed, what is unnecessary, that makes the success in your life. But doing something like “Oh I’m going to fool people, other people are stupid” whether it is a business, whether it is a spiritual, perception with “other people are foolish, I’m smart”. That is not going to work very well if you carry on with that philosophy, you know. So having a good heart is important, a noble heart and having a strategy is important.

Because what you want with your desire is one thing but emotionally, you know, we need to have a stability. If you’re emotionally, you have a unstability and whatever the succeed may be, it will be a short term benefit, short term happiness.

So that’s why it is very important for, whether it’s in a spiritual aspect whether it’s materialistic aspect, having a strategy, wisdom, patience.

Patience very important. With patience it’s not, it’s not about not doing it, it’s about doing it right and having a consistency mental attitude and having a vast, you know, sense of courage and wanting to continue. That’s a patience. Patient doesn’t mean that you, somebody slap you then you try to say, you know, , somebody humiliate you and then you be quiet, somebody disrespect you, you be quiet. It doesn’t mean like that. Somebody disrespect you, you have to speak your mind, you have to speak with your, you know, discontent and the wrong treatment and disrespectful that it was as it is, as it should be.

But, you know, many people they have this idea of being patience, in a Tibetan, you know, we have this Buddhist concept, context, you know, oh, བཟོད་པ “Zopa”. བཟོད་པ “Zopa” doesn’t always mean, you know, like “being quiet”, you know? “Zopa” means “being tolerance”. But you have to be wise with what you tolerate with and whom you tolerate to. That is important.

If you have a tolerance to somebody killing and hurting so many people and if you say “oh, I have to be tolerant” that is not tolerance, that just being ignorant. That’s why it’s important to have a wisdom. Just like that, you need to have a patience and tolerance and compassion all combined together with a sense of clarity in mind. So, so that’s that.