(To know more about Blog Your Blessings Sunday, click here, and to view the blog roll click here. If you participate and your name is not on the roll, just leave a comment and your name will be added as soon as possible. If you do not participate yet, it’s never too late to start. Just Blog Your Blessings.)Life, especially modern life, is full of distractions. There is so much to do and there is so little time and one tries to, or at least wants to, attempt as many things as he or she can possible fit into one life. Big Mistake.
Let me tell you a story from the Mahabharata, the great Indian Epic.
One day Dronacharya, one of the greatest teachers of all time in the art of war, had taken his students outdoors to practice shooting. As they were looking for a target they spied a bird sitting on a high branch of a tree.
“I want you to shoot the bird, through its eye”, said Dronacharya to his students.
Each student wanted to be the first to be given a chance to shoot the bird down. So, the teacher asked one of the eager students to step up and take aim. As he got ready to shoot, the teacher asked him, “What do you see, son?”
“I see the bird sitting on that tree “, the student replied.
“Ok, step back” the teacher told him, and asked the next student to step up and take aim. Before he was allowed to shoot, Dronacharya asked him the same question.
“I see the sky and the bird outlined in it” the student replied. He was asked to step back too.
So one after another, students took aim and were asked the question, to which they gave varied replies. Some saw the bird, some the tree, some sky, some leaves and so on. They were all asked to step back. Finally it was young Arjun’s turn.
As Arjun took aim, Dronacharya asked him, with a smile, expecting the right answer from his favorite student.
“What do you see?”
“ I see the bird’s eye and nothing else.”
The teacher let him shoot, and Arjun was successfully able to hit the target.
This little story is a perfect example of how goals, specific ones, help us cut out all the distractions and focus on what we want. Whatever we want in life, there are many things that distract us and make us lose focus from our goal. Eventually we fail to get what we want and ending up blaming our luck. The best way to avoid that is have specific goals and focus on it so that all we can see is the bird’s eye. No tree, no sky, no bird but only the bird’s eye.
Goals, thus are great blessing in life, because they help us decide what we want in life and help us get that thing and keep all the distractions at bay.
8 comments:
Mmm. The great epic is filled with wisdom indeed.
Having goals do incline us to meet them & we often do need to be able to focus what with all the wonderful distractions around us in our lives today.
This parable is interesting and helpful--and completely new to me. Thanks for this.
Happy BYB Sunday!
Wow, what a wonderful way to show how having goals can keep us on track. Happy BYB Sunday!
Very wise, and something I believe we should all try to focus on, working towards our individual goal! Happy BYB Sunday. My entry is also online .. :)
Great story
Happy BYB Sunday
Hii BP.
Dont Forget Ur Goal
Happy BYB Sunday!
An interesting blessing, and one with two sides to it. Goals allow us to achieve --- those with goals do much, others less. Some of the moments I'd proudest of: graduating college, moving to a different part of the country, etc. are the products of goals and long term work.
They also narrow our world. While the one student only saw the bird's eye, he doesn't see the sky. He doesn't see the tree the bird is sitting in, he doesn't see the chicks that will die from starvation because their parent is killed.
A mixed blessing, but then again, I guess sometimes it pays to focus on the positive :-)
That sounds like a good epic everyone should read!
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