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to find out the secret of his family's harmony and benevolence. After exchanging greetings, the Emperor asked the old man, "What is the great spell by which you bind your enormous family together with such unbreakable ties of mutual tenderness and affection?" The old Minister took up parchment and ink and wrote down a hundred words with trembling brush strokes, and then placed it before the Emperor. When the Emperor read it, he found it consisted of the same word written out a hundred times: "Tolerance, tolerance, tolerance......." The Emperor was dumbstruck. The old man. said, "Your Majesty, this is the spell that binds my family together with hoops of steel." If in today's society fathers and sons, daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law, wives and husbands learnt the magic of tolerance and forbearance, then countless social problems would be easily resolved.
⚫ A gentleman who, though very spiritually minded, is rather dry and doctrinaire, sometimes comes to visit me. One day in the course of our conversation, he suddenly
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said, "In life both evil and good deeds create bondage. Surely, both should be avoided!" I replied, "Good deeds do certainly carry karmic consequences and can be considered as binding to the soul; however, until one has been purged of all karmic particles and reached the fourteenth gunasthanak - the stage of purity, the bondage of good deeds will continue. There is no need to follow any other independent method to rid yourself of it." He replied, "Yet it is a sort of bondage, and one should strive to free the soul from all types of bondage. That is why to do too much good is undesirable. It too makes the soul heavy and binds it to the wheel of re-birth." I said, "There was once a prosperous merchant who sent his servant to the post office with an urgent letter. He said to the man," I am afraid that the letter might be too heavy and may require more stamps. Check at the post office counter and put on as many extra stamps as are needed." The servant heard him out in silence, but secretly he thought to himself, "Surely my master is getting senile! If I put on more stamps the letter will only weigh more! Since my master is worried about the
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