Burst Sixty One :
Efficiency and Effectiveness
Everyone wants to be efficient and effective in one’s field of activity. Many a time, however, one loses interest and enthusiasm and just drags on. What could be some tips to work towards the best results, with peace and joy in the heart?
Negative emotions weaken us and prevent us from playing well in the game of life. When things like guilt, pride and shame (called GPS1 by somebody humorously) occupy our bosom, it is extremely difficult to do well in complex work situations. When failure depresses us and insult injures us, we tend to withdraw and under-perform. In other words, the varieties of “results of action” disturb our equanimity and we are unhappy. How do we remain like the lotus2 leaf, which does not get wet even when water falls upon it?
Terrible attachment to success, defined by us in narrow terms, is the cause of our getting into low spirits. We need to put things in the larger picture and take a second look. What appears a loss in one sense may come out as a gain in another. Financial loss may help us review some of our relationships and may enable us to weed out false friendships. Loss of health could make us slow down and savor the joy of reading or of music. There is an old story of a king who did not have the small finger in his right hand. He thought it was a very bad thing, but his prime minister suggested that it could be good in some way. Angered by that suggestion, the king got the prime minister jailed. The next day the king went for hunting and some tribal people captured him. They were about to kill him before a huge idol of their deity, making him a sacrificial offering, when they saw he had a handicap. They let him go for he was unfit for the sacrifice. When he came back to the palace, he released the prime minister, who remarked, “How good it was of you to put me in jail yesterday; otherwise I would have come with you to the forest for hunting and those tribal folks would have severed my head in front of their deity!”
“Every adversity has some blessings hidden in it,” observed Swami Chinmayananda. We need to constantly question and review all our opinions on what is good and desirable. All that glitters is not gold. The grass on the other side of the river looks greener. Let us avoid jumping to conclusions and keep an open mind. Our ego, which is nothing but a bundle of memories, invites unnecessary suffering. If only we turn objective, we would regain our poise and balance.
Sage Ramana used to narrate a story where a woman boarded a train with a heavy basket on her head, filled with vegetables. Even after she took her seat, she would not keep the basket down on the ground. When other passengers asked her, her reply was, “The train is taking the burden of my weight; as for the basket of vegetables, let me keep it on my head.” That is what we do, when we act egoistically. We burden ourselves where there is no need; the sense of I, me, my and mine is the basket of vegetables. We keep it down and relax when we replace the “I” with “We”.
Seeing the falsehood in our present values leads to a change of our mind’s content. Then a number of apparently depressing scenarios do not pull us down. We remain cheerful and succeed in bringing out the best from within us.
Swami Chidananda
Varanasi
February 9, 2009
(Camping presently in Hyderabad )
1 GPS = Geosynchronous Positioning System
2 Geeta 5.10