In the restaurant next to where I stay there is a large cookhouse. One can occasionally get a glimpse at the flurry of activity through the small opening into the dining area into which waiters shout guest orders and further collect the prepared dishes for onward serving to guests who are waiting in the dining area.
If you visit the restaurant at 6 am though, you get to see sleepy-eyed waiters and a certain slowness of activity inside the cookhouse. I think to myself: after all, people come in for breakfast only starting 7:30 am or so. And there are not so many people coming for breakfast anyway; further lunchtime - which is the peak hour - doesn't occur before 12 pm so there's enough time. So whats the rush! I thought to myself that perhaps by 10 am they would start getting the dishes ready for lunch.
But I was surprised today when at 7:30 am I noticed that lunch was already getting ready. And the cooking staff were busy as hell - So basically cooking staffs come in starting about 6 am after which they attend to the slow demand for breakfast but further to that, pace immediately picks up. There is no pause. They do not wait for a breakfast time to get over and then perhaps pause a while before starting cooking lunch. No! That's not the case - it's more like a fast-paced movie;- starts a tad slow, but immediately picks up.
There is a wisdom here on how life works and how we too may work. We cannot wait once the day starts - pretty much like the bees, the butterflies, the birds and the sun too...we just have to enter into one activity after the other...with thoughtfulness and attention (Shraddha) but not with self-interest - at the heart of laziness and most planning, there usually is the ego. But this is not the way the Vedas ask us to work. It rather points to the Sun and the seasons and suggests that we involve in our work in a selfless way! It is difficult but not impossible. The surprising thing is that this is not a recipe for ineffectiveness or disharmony. On the contrary progress, effectiveness and harmony increase. We know of E Sreedharan and Abdul Kalam. Their work was clearly an act of selflessness, the wise say so. They were Karma Yogis. And we know how good they were - they were the best of the best professionals.
Another recent discussion with Dr.Manoj seems to align with the similar thinking when he suggested: "to not move forward is to go backward". This was with reference to the suggestion for stopping all forward movement and rather focusing on consolidating the present progress. Interestingly Lewis Carroll had said this well in Alice in Wonderland when the Queen of Hearts advises Alice: “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that” . Its was Dr.Khurshid how pointed to this line in an earlier discussion.
If you visit the restaurant at 6 am though, you get to see sleepy-eyed waiters and a certain slowness of activity inside the cookhouse. I think to myself: after all, people come in for breakfast only starting 7:30 am or so. And there are not so many people coming for breakfast anyway; further lunchtime - which is the peak hour - doesn't occur before 12 pm so there's enough time. So whats the rush! I thought to myself that perhaps by 10 am they would start getting the dishes ready for lunch.
But I was surprised today when at 7:30 am I noticed that lunch was already getting ready. And the cooking staff were busy as hell - So basically cooking staffs come in starting about 6 am after which they attend to the slow demand for breakfast but further to that, pace immediately picks up. There is no pause. They do not wait for a breakfast time to get over and then perhaps pause a while before starting cooking lunch. No! That's not the case - it's more like a fast-paced movie;- starts a tad slow, but immediately picks up.
There is a wisdom here on how life works and how we too may work. We cannot wait once the day starts - pretty much like the bees, the butterflies, the birds and the sun too...we just have to enter into one activity after the other...with thoughtfulness and attention (Shraddha) but not with self-interest - at the heart of laziness and most planning, there usually is the ego. But this is not the way the Vedas ask us to work. It rather points to the Sun and the seasons and suggests that we involve in our work in a selfless way! It is difficult but not impossible. The surprising thing is that this is not a recipe for ineffectiveness or disharmony. On the contrary progress, effectiveness and harmony increase. We know of E Sreedharan and Abdul Kalam. Their work was clearly an act of selflessness, the wise say so. They were Karma Yogis. And we know how good they were - they were the best of the best professionals.
Another recent discussion with Dr.Manoj seems to align with the similar thinking when he suggested: "to not move forward is to go backward". This was with reference to the suggestion for stopping all forward movement and rather focusing on consolidating the present progress. Interestingly Lewis Carroll had said this well in Alice in Wonderland when the Queen of Hearts advises Alice: “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that” . Its was Dr.Khurshid how pointed to this line in an earlier discussion.
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