Wrinkles and Freckles

Once a grandmother took her grandson to the zoo. At the zoo there was an artist who was doing face painting. The boy, whose face was covered in freckles petitioned his grandmother to allow him to have his face painted. When he approached the face painter, the face painter remarked, "Your face is full of freckles, where will I put the designs?". He laughed at the boy, and the boy felt sad.

The loving grandmother knelt down next to her grandson and said, "You know, when I was a young girl I always thought that the most beautiful thing was freckles and I always wish I had some of my own." The boy wiped his tears and looked lovingly at his grandmother, "Grandma, there is something even more beautiful than freckles.............WRINKLES!"

The moral of this little exchange is that we all have faults and if we are not willing to look past those of others, why will anyone want to look past ours?

Krsna's first instruction in the Gita is that we should be tolerant...........tolerance means not just of the various situations that we may encounter. It also means that we have to tolerate others in our dealings. Srila Prabhupada writes in this regard:

"Tolerance means that one should be practiced to bear insult and dishonor from others. If one is engaged in the advancement of spiritual knowledge, there will be so many insults and much dishonor from others. This is expected because material nature is so constituted. Even a boy like Prahlada, who, only five years old, was engaged in the cultivation of spiritual knowledge, was endangered when his father became antagonistic to his devotion. The father tried to kill him in so many ways, but Prahlada tolerated him. So there may be many impediments to making advancement in spiritual knowledge, but we should be tolerant and continue our progress with determination." (BG 13.8-12 purport)