When I was in junior school, they told us this story from Mahabharata repeatedly. It was a nice to hear a good story, but it was awful to hear misinterpretation of it.
The story goes like this…
Once upon a time, Dronacharya (royal mentor of princes of that time) was teaching them archery. He asked the princes to aim at the eye of a bird sitting on tree.
Then he asked one of them, “What do you see?”
“I see tree, leaves, bird and sky.” He replied. Dronacharya was disappointed. Then he went to Arjuna (famous hero of Mahabharata) and asked him the same question.
Arjuna said, “I see the eye.”
“Don’t you see the tree, leaves, birds and sky?” asked Dronacharya.
“No. I see the eye.” replied Arjuna.
The Screwy Conclusion
The conclusion they made out of this story was ‘importance of concentration’ and ever since I can remember, elders have tried to ‘help’ the younger generation to concentrate on one thing. You will often find them crowing that their generation did one thing at a time and that multitasking is a bad thing.
the Generation Gap
But I want to declare / proclaim / remind you that the world is not getting worse, the world is getting better. It is not possible to regress. Generations today have much more capacity of contemplate data then any generation before. And when they want us to sit and do one thing – it never works out.
That is why our generation condemns so many of old ways as ‘boring’ because we need to have that much going on in our minds or we will feel bored.
This helps us to be more creative and precise in focus. This doesn’t diminish focus but enhances focus because now we can focus in much more detailed way.
The Real Moral of Story
The meaning of the story is not ability to focus. It is ability of choice. You can choose what to focus on and you will not see evidence of any other in your life.
You can choose to focus on problem rather than solution. You can choose to feel hopeful rather then fearful and the difference between two is difference between the prince who’s name I do not remember and Arjuna – the hero.
F*** Concentration
Pardon my language but this is what younger generation wants to say. We do not want to concentrate – we want to focus. Concentration and focus are quiet different things. Concentration is like forcing yourself on a point. Focus is like expanding a point to eternity.
The first one is to be ****** and the second one is series of meditation and contemplation and joyous growth.
Yours is not to concentrate on thoughts for you cannot control them. Yours is o choose the feeling in which you focus your ‘self’ for that will choose the average direction of your thought and life.
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