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Tolerance and Acceptance: What is The Difference?

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By Lisa Ernst

Tolerance – the willingness to endure, to put up with
Acceptance – the action of consenting to receive something offered

What is the difference between acceptance and tolerance? Sometimes the line is blurred. We may think we’re accepting an experience, a feeling, a pattern or cluster of persistent thoughts when we’re actually only tolerating them. Knowing the difference is essential in our practice if we want to reduce our suffering.

In his beautiful poem “The Guest House,” Rumi encourages us to welcome and entertain all of the visitors that come our way. The visitors are metaphors for what arises in our experience: joy, depression, meanness, even a crowd of sorrows. At times we will struggle to welcome them all with open arms and that’s ok. Sometimes we can only muster tolerance. When we know the difference, we can navigate our challenges more skillfully.

Staying with the guest analogy, imagine a relative is visiting over the holidays. Someone you tolerate yet you always feel relieved when they leave. Let’s say this year your relative is in the midst of a messy divorce and asks to extend their stay. Compelled by compassion, you agree. But accommodating this guest is challenging and after several weeks your tolerance is stretched thin. You do your best to extend patience and conceal your internal strain. But gradually this arrangement presses you down, it has weight. This “pressing down” is the entomology of depression. Tolerance of the unpleasant, when extended for long periods and not met with awareness, often leads to depression.

I suffered with untreated clinical depression for many years. Unconsciously, I developed tolerance for grief and loneliness while my truest, most intimate experience of depression went unexamined. I lived with it like a guest who overstays their welcome. I mistook this tolerant attitude for acceptance rather than recognizing my resistance. Like the guest overstaying their welcome, I said, “I will tolerate you for a while because I expect you to leave.” But when the guest didn’t leave the depression grew deeper along with hopelessness and uncertainly.

Gradually, though my dharma practice I came to know the depression experientially, how it showed up in my body and thoughts. I also learned how to hold it in loving, compassionate awareness. Though this intimacy, space opened that allowed me to find my way through depression’s dark tunnel.

Intimacy is quite difference from tolerance. When people say to me that they are “with” their suffering, often they are just tolerating it. Yes, they definitely feel it, but still kept it at arms length, held only in truce. When they practice tolerance only in order to feel better, the visitor won’t budge. Prolonged tolerance leads to inaction, resentment or abrupt anger. True acceptance, on the other hand, paves the way for skillful action. This is what many people overlook – they believe acceptance is resignation or passivity. But authentic acceptance opens our heart to what is true and this clarity reveals a wise path.

Engaging your visitors with awareness, knowing them intimately is the acceptance that brings peace. You may need time and patience but gradually the sense of self entangled in the depression begins to lighten up and even dissolve.

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

 

Practice Tip: Three Steps to Releasing Difficult Thoughts in Meditation

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When we meditate, at times difficult, unresolved encounters with friends, loved ones or co-workers may dominate our thoughts. If we don’t repress them (and normally we shouldn’t) they may instead begin to take over our meditation session as we swing from replaying the encounter to trying to figure out how to address it. So what to do? How do we find the wise middle way between over-identification and repression?

As an example, let’s say you and your boss were brainstorming how to solve a problem and your boss failed to listen to an idea you felt was important based on your firsthand knowledge of the situation. Instead, your boss decided on a plan you knew missed important information. You tried to convey this but your boss wouldn’t listen and ended the session. You left the encounter feeling frustrated and unheard.

The next morning during meditation, the situation came back full force. You replayed the encounter several times wondering what you could have done differently, then tried to figure out the next step, whether to approach you boss about it and what to say. Then you realize 10 plus minutes have passed on the cushion and you were completely unaware of your breath, body and immediate surroundings.

In situations like this, I have found a three step process helpful for creating space to work with unresolved situations. Staying with our example, first recognize the thoughts replaying the meeting with your boss as “past.” This may sound obvious but consciously noting that the thought content is focused on the past, without repressing it, can reduce its seeming solidity. Then notice and explore what sensations and emotions are present that accompany these thoughts.

Now, looking forward to your thoughts of how to address the situation with your boss, note that these thoughts are about the “future” but also be aware of how these thoughts show up here and now. Perhaps when you think back to the encounter with your boss you notice anger or even sadness for not being heard. When you think ahead to your possible next step, maybe you notice anxiety and tension.

Now bring it all into the present. Of course thoughts only exist in the present moment. While we may think about the past or future, every thought is only arising in the present moment. So now we see the past and future thoughts as “present” and our physical responses, sensations and emotions as “present.”

Past, future and present are all just this moment of awareness. As we see them coalesce, chances are they will lose their grip, soften and begin to settle. The sense of me against the other begins to fade. From this more settled, less self identified place, we have more possibility of seeing the situation clearly and with insight. This is not about passivity. In fact, a clear plan of action may arise from this emptier, steadier state. (If nothing arises, that’s fine too.)

You can use this three step process for most situations that begin to dominate your meditation. Occasionally a situation may be too charged to work this way. In that case, its fine to move to a more neutral focus of attention such as the breath, body or sound. Only return to the investigation if you feel able.

This practice can help us let go of the sense of self at the center of our narratives. Seeing our challenges with the clarity of present moment awareness broadens perspective, reduces the suffering of reactivity and opens new possibilities.