Dr. Mandi, as part of our course activity asked us to watch and understand the Chinese folktale : Three monks. The Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. After the cultural revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animations created as part of the rebirth period. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.
The story revolves around three monks who come to a temple on top of a hill to do service to God.
The first monk arrives at a temple built on the top of a hill. The monk used to lead a simple life, meditating, tending to his vegetable
garden and fetching water from a cold stream.Everyday
he used to get two buckets full of water from down the hill and carry
them back to temple using a shoulder pole Rain or shine, he never
used to miss a day lugging this burden up the mountain to the temple. The water he got was more than
enough for one person.
One
fine day the second monk visited the temple and started living there. The second monk happily took responsibility to fetch water. The first monk tried to act smart by putting all the burden on the second one thereafter. One day the monk got aware of the first monks ill thoughts and
refused to do it alone. therefore they decided to share
the responsibility but the shoulder pole was small and could accommodate
only one bucket then.The water they got was still enough for both of them.
Later
a third monk came to stay with them. As soon as he came, he drank all the water and there was no water left in the jar.
The short monk and the tall one asked him to fetch water by himself. He carried
a bucket of water, and drank it up immediately. From then on, nobody would fetch
water, so they had no water. Everyone chanted his own mantras and knocked his own
wooden fish. As nobody would add water to the holy water bottle, the plant in
the bottle withered soon. At night, a mouse came out stealing, but everyone
pretended not to see it. As a result, the mouse was so rampant that it knocked
over the candle holder and caused a
fire. Only thus did the three monks make a
concerted effort to put out the fire, and finally awaken. After that,
they
started hanging together forgetting the animosity among them and came
out with an ingenious idea to fetch water where one monk would fetch the
water from the river into the bucket, the other would pull it up
through a pulley arrangement and third monk would then receive the water
for storage and handover the second bucket. This greatly improved the
productivity.
Finally
all the three monks got together to fight the fire and started working
together to get the water every morning and no one suffered from thirst
thereafter.
1.Team Work
This is the most obvious lesson learnt form the story. The three monks in crises statrted to work together and reaped benefits which they were not able to do alone. I am able to relate this to a situation that happened on my office where the post-production team was struggling to get the work done when they were overloaded after an exhibition. At this time the management decided to indulge every one available to engage in this work by teaching certain easy concepts to them. Thus the work was split and end result was achieved well within the due date.
Eventually, when the pulley came into action the monks were able to pull off the work more easily. This reflects the significance that technology and innovation can have on any current working system.
3. Right resources at the right Place
The idea to use the monks at the right place according to their strengths was an important decision to make the whole process more efficient. For example the fat monk was used at the bottom so he will drink the water from the pond when he is tired after working and the reserve at the temple will remain in tact.
The monk story helped me understand the effects that good planning and management can have on any result . I hope this has helped you too. Thanks for reading.
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