Question: In our roles as your assistants, is patience more important than tolerance, or are they one and the same?

Sri Chinmoy: Tolerance and patience are not the same thing; they are entirely different. Patience is a divine quality. It is the strengthening and lengthening of our capacity. Patience knows that there is a past, a present and a future, but it keeps the future reality, which is eternal love, right in front of its vision. But tolerance is entirely different. We tolerate something because we are under compulsion. If we don't tolerate something, then the anger or frustration we will get will be more destructive than the thing itself. We tolerate something on the physical or vital plane, feeling that if we don't tolerate it, then the consequences will be most devastating. So tolerance is a good quality only in the sense that something is better than nothing. In tolerance there is always a sense of cleverness, or you might even call it wisdom. You are trying to avert some future calamity, so you tolerate something. But patience is a positive, conscious illumination of our self-giving and world-embracing capacity. Patience infinitely more important than tolerance.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Service-heroes, Agni Press, 1978
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/sh