Hear with an open mind

Nan-in, a Japanese master received a university professor who came to inquire about the Absolute Truth.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you the Absolute Truth unless you first empty your cup?"

Hence it’s very important when we hear or take association from seniors; we go with an empty cup and hear with an open mind, keeping aside our own opinions and speculations.

Courtesy: Email fwds

Good ideas are not the monopoly of the educated

A lady bought some bathing soaps from a shop. When she opened one of the packets, she found that it was empty. There was no soap in there; it was just an empty wrapper! She lodged a complaint against the manufacturer and got her claim. That being settled, there was a task before the management of the soap factory. How had this happened? How could they ensure that the incident did not occur again? They had suffered enough bad publicity besides having to pay the compensation to the lady.

After a detailed investigation, it was discovered, that during the process of wrapping, it so happened that inevitably, one or two wrappers did get through, having no bar of soap in them! There was no way to make out the difference between a full wrapper and an empty one. The process of handling each one separately for this purpose seemed to be very cumbersome. So, the technical head was given the job of devising a method to overcome the problem. The man prepared a detailed report and proposed the setting up of a computer based system that would weigh and scan each bar, for the empty packs would not get detected by a normal x-ray machine. He proposed an expenditure of a large amount to put this system into place.

The management heard him out and passed the order to release the funds and to buy the machinery that he had proposed. An uneducated worker said, “Excuse me Sir, for my impertinence, but I have a solution that shall cost a fraction of what you are planning to go in for.”

The management hesitated initially. But eventually they heard him out and agreed to try out his proposal. The next day, the worker brought a strong industrial fan. He put it at an angle near the conveyor belt on which the packed soap bars were coming through and switched it on. The few empty wrappers that came through got blown off by the fan! The rest of them went past easily.

A simple solution, for a complex problem! This goes to prove that ideas are not the monopoly of the educated.

Courtesy: Email Fwds

Homage to Google in China

Courtesy: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/china-scientists-google/

Before We Give Any Criticism

A young couple move into a new neighborhood. The next morning, while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hang the wash outside.

"That laundry is not very clean", she said, "she doesn't know how to wash properly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap".

Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: "Look! She has learned how to wash properly. I wonder who taught her this."

The husband said: "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows!"

And so it is with life: "What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look. Before we give any criticism, it might be a good idea to check our state of mind and ask ourselves if we are ready to see the good rather than to be looking for something in the person we are about to judge."

Courtesy: Email fwds

1 year @ RDT

It has been 1 year since I started working for RDT, Anantapur.

Very good experiences of life n work here...

Going ahead with more josh.....

Spend Half Day in a Graveyard

A physician gave some rather whimsical advice to a patient, an aggressive, go-getter type of businessman. Excitedly the businessman told the doctor what an enormous amount of work he had to do and that he had to get it done right away or else things will fall apart.

“I take my brief case home every night and it’s packed with work,” he said with nervous inflection.

“Why do you take work home with you at night?” the doctor asked quietly.

“I have to get it done,” he fumed.

“Can’t someone else do it, or help you with it?” asked the doctor.

“No,” the man snapped. “I am the only one who can do it. It must be done just right, and I alone can do it as it must be done, and it has to be done quickly. Everything depends upon me.”

“If I write a prescription, will you follow it?” asked the doctor.

This, believe it or not was the prescription. His patient was to take off half-day a week and spend that half-day in cemetery.

In astonishment the patient demanded, “Why should I spend a half-day in a cemetery?”

“Because,” answered the doctor, “I want you to wander around and look at the gravestones of men who are there permanently. I want you to meditate on the fact that many of them are there because they thought even as you do, that the whole world rested on their shoulders. Meditate on the fact that when you get there permanently the world will go on just the same &, as important as you are, others will be able to do the work you are now doing.”

The patient got the idea. He stopped fuming & fretting. He got peaceful and developed a more competent organization & his business is in better condition.

Courtesy: Email fwds

See Something Positive in Every Person and in Every Situation

Andrew Carnegie came to America from Scotland as a young boy. He started out by doing odd jobs and ended up as one of the largest steel manufacturers in United States.

At one time, he had 43 millionaires working for him. A million dollars is a lot of money today, but in the 1920s it was worth much more.

Someone once asked Mr. Carnegie how he dealt with people. Andrew Carnegie replied, "Dealing with people is a lot like digging for gold: When you go digging for an ounce of gold you have to move tons of dirt. But when you go digging, you don't go looking for the dirt, you go looking for the gold."

Andrew Carnegie's reply has a very important message. Though sometimes it may not be apparent there is something positive in every person and every situation. We have to dig deep to look for the positive.

Courtesty: Email fwd

How Well It Was Done!

Three people were laying bricks. A passerby asked them what they were doing. The first one replied, "Don't you see I am making a living?" The second one said, "Don't you see I am laying bricks and making a wall?" The third one said, "I am building a beautiful monument."

Here were three people doing the same thing who had totally different perspectives on what they were doing. They had three very different attitudes about their work. And would their attitude affect their performance? The answer is clearly yes.

Excellence comes when the performer takes pride in doing his best. Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it, regardless of what the job is, whether washing cars, sweeping the floor or painting a house.

Most people forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well it was done.

If a man is called to be street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Courtesy: Email fwds

Develop Your Compassion

Compassion is a sympathetic feeling. It involves the willingness to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to take the focus off yourself and to imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s predicament, and simultaneously, to feel love for that person.

Compassion is the recognition that other people’s problems, their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our own---often far worse. In recognizing this fact and trying to offer some assistance, we open our own hearts and greatly enhance our sense of gratitude.

Compassion is something you can develop with practice. It involves two things: intention and action. Intention simply means you remember to open your heart to others; you expand what and who matters, from yourself to other people. Action is simply the “what you do about it.”

Compassion develops your sense of gratitude by taking your attention off all the little things that most of us have learned to take too seriously.