Vedanta is a teaching about oneself. Vedanta is an inquiry wherein one discovers that the real meaning of the word 'I' is the self who remains unchanged from childhood to youth to old age, whose nature is pure awareness that is absolute contentment and love, and who is free from any sense of limitation. To appreciate yourself as that limitless wholeness you require a mind that is prepared to assimilate that knowledge. For the one with an unprepared mind, Vedanta is like calculus for a person who is learning basic mathematics. In Vedanta the preparation required is a mind that has, in relative measure, that which it seeks to discover in the absolute sense. If the self is absolute contentment, then the mind of the seeker must be relatively content. If the self is absolute love, then the seeker must be a relatively loving person, a person who happily accepts people and things as they are.
To gain such a mind means to develop certain values and attitudes and to be clear about them as far as understanding their importance. Accommodating others is such a value. In fact, anger is due to lack of accommodation. If you expect the world to conform to your desires, then it is your own expectation that brings anger to you. Accommodation is an understanding that the other person behaves as he does because he cannot act contrary to his nature. You have no right to expect something different from him just because it suits your needs. If you think you have a right to ask him to change, then he has the right to ask you to let him live as he does.
In fact, only by accommodating others, allowing them to be what they are, do you gain a relative freedom in your day to day life. In many ways, everyone interferes in everyone else's life. Everyone creates a global effect by his or her actions. Ordinarily you just look at things from a small perspective, and you find the person you are angry with looming large before you. In face, you are never free from anyone's influence or from all the forces of the universe. Nor can you perform an action without affecting everyone else. Even your statements will affect others. Therefore our freedom needs to include the fact that we are all interrelated.
Even the swami is not free. A couple of people passed when I was at a zoo. One said to the other, "Did you check out the new one?" People often make such comments. I try not to disturb people, but it seems that my clothes, the traditional robes of a renunciate do cause them to react. I have made a decision, and it will definitely affect others. If I am disturbed by other's comments, then I gain only that much freedom that they grant me. But if I reverse the process, if I give freedom to others to be what they are, to that extent I am free. So I do not argue with them. My freedom is the freedom that I give to them to have any opinion they want about me, even though it may be wrong.
Thus, there are benefits to accommodating people as they are. If someone makes a comment about you, allow him to do so. If the comment is not true, you usually try to justify your actions and prove him wrong. If you are objective, you can see if there is any validity in his criticism of you. If he has put you down for his own security, give him that freedom and then you are free. What tightening can you do to a bolt when the threads are not there? Similarly the world can disturb you only to the extent you allow the world to disturb you. And you do not allow the world to disturb you if you give the world the freedom to do what it wants within the rule of society. By changing yourself totally in this way, you gain according to your value for accommodation, relatively abiding contentment and freedom.

Swami Dayananda
(to be contd..)