What the Dalai Lama captures here is something subtler than mere tolerance: he's suggesting that emotional guardedness and intellectual rigidity are two faces of the same coin. When we armor ourselves against feeling hurt, we simultaneously narrow what we're willing to consider true. A person who's afraid to be moved by another's suffering will rationalize why that suffering doesn't matter, doesn't exist, or is deserved—and there's your closed mind, born from a closed heart. Watch how a parent's willingness to admit "I was wrong about you" coincides precisely with their ability to truly listen when their estranged child finally calls; it's the same opening.