“In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.”

– Dalai Lama

My mother told me, on my first day of school, to be nice to others and try to get along with everyone.  It sounds so simple when we say such things to a child in kindergarten.  Our world was so small in those days, and rules were laid down and enforced by a benevolent adult — the teacher — so that we could learn to live within the boundaries of a classroom.  Later we would expand these lessons and these boundaries to have relevance in a much larger world.

We learned early on, in the kindergarten classroom that there were answers that the teacher considered to be correct where rules and cooperation and peaceful coexistence were concerned.  As life became more complicated and our choices were left to each individual, knowing which answer was right and which was wrong became less obvious.  The larger our world becomes, the more likely we are to rub elbows with others whose ideas and values will challenge us to reconsider our own.  Unless we choose to keep our world very small, we will sooner or later find ourselves challenged to work out ways to get along with other folks whose ideas of right and wrong may anger us, confuse us, or cause us to disagree about matters that seem obvious and simple to us.

Where does tolerance fit into all of this?  How are we supposed to tolerate behaviors and ideas that we have been taught is absolutely wrong?  Should we risk losing touch with the things that are true in the name of not making waves?  I think we often see tolerance as a mixture of pity for the other person’s ignorance and glorification of our own ability to grasp what our inferior simply is not able to understand.  We judge in the name of tolerance, and that is not tolerance at all.  The Dalai Lama makes an excellent point when he says that our enemy will be our best teacher if we truly decide to practice tolerance.

Tolerance means slipping your feet out of your own shoes and into those of your enemy.  It means walking in the path that he walks and trying to understand his point of view.  How can we practice tolerance and not learn something about our own limited ability to have compassion for people who disagree with our ideals?  Today I will be thankful for opportunities to practice tolerance and increase my compassion for all I meet.