Real tolerance – being dutiful in all circumstances

Speaker: Radhanath Swami
Source: Pure Devotional Service

One time a professor, scholar, Indian man asked Srila Prabhupada, “Krsna says in Bhagavad-Gita matra sparsas tu kaunteya (BG 2.14) yet we see Subhadra weeping when Abhimanyu was killed, Arjuna weeping after having heard the Bhagavad Gita. Why was he so disturbed? He wasn’t supposed to be disturbed. After all, body is a temporary thing, his soul wasn’t killed”. Srila Prabhupada said, “It is natural. The body is the medium by which we communicate with the soul. It is natural when parent(s) lose their child, they are going to feel the pain in the heart and cry. But he did not stop his service to Krsna in the battlefield”. Arjuna was not crying because the soul was dead. He was crying because the body which is the medium to communicate with the soul as father and son is no longer there.