BE TOLERANT TO PEOPLE WHO ARE OVERZEALOUS IN THEIR DHARMA GIVING
Question: We have a dedicated platform primarily to broadcast Master’s latest discourses and notification on the activities of Guan Yin Hall.
In the group, there is an overzealous disciple who diligently forwards Master’s discourses that he receives from other social media platforms, including Words of Wisdom and Buddhism in Plain Terms, be it in text or graphical format. On top of that, every now and then, he will share messages related to health and diet. As a result, we receive a massive influx of messages from him daily.
This flood of information has caused frustrations among some fellow practitioners, especially those who only have access to the messages in the evenings. Due to the constraints of their phone storage, they end up having to continuously delete these messages. In addition, this disciple is mindless in his posting as he does not even read what he posts, resulting in many duplicated posts.
Some fellow practitioners are at their wits’ end and have requested to leave the platform as they can’t even find notices on Guan Yin Hall upcoming activities due to this problem.
Is this sentiment a reflection of our subpar spiritual cultivation that manifests in our lack of compassion and tolerance? Or could the problem lie in the one who causes the annoyance in this regard?
Answer: First and foremost, the content that this person is sharing is not junk or random things. He may have gone overboard in doing so, but you should not have let it ruffle your feathers. You must have a heart of tolerance.
After all, he is also eager to accumulate more merits. You have the choice to delete the messages on your phone – let this be an opportunity for you to cultivate patience so that you will not get annoyed easily.
We are never short of news that requires constant deletion. There are even occasions when all sorts of nonsense keep popping up on our computer. In such times, you should not be ruffled because if you are, it means your spiritual cultivation is not up to scratch.
The sharer is selfish to speak of. Eager to accrue merits for himself, he bears no consideration for others. As such, he is also at fault. Having said this, you should not get irritated because of his problem. Think about it, human mistakes are aplenty in society and many people are extremely selfish, and if you are troubled by all these, aren’t you setting yourself up for depression?
Source: Master Jun Hong Lu’s Discourse (Question 293), 11 March 2019
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