Story of 3 Buddhist monks

                                
                                             Based on an old Chinese saying, “three monks, no water,” this story teaches a gentle, humorous lesson about responsibility. Three monks allow personal pride to interfere with the performance of daily tasks, each believing that the other two should be the ones to go downhill to fetch water. When a fire breaks out, however, they understand how silly they’ve been and work together to save the temple. 

Lets study the different situation they came across,what were the challenges they faced and how they manged to overcome it and at last what lesson can be leanings we can fetch from it.

 

Story

A monastery located on the top of a hill and water can be availed from the lake below. To get water, the monk has to get to the bottom of the him. The monk's daily routine included fetching water, chanting mantras and adding water to the water pot placed in front of the Goddess of Mercy, thereby respecting it. His life was smooth and comfortable.

Second Monk Joined

As soon as the second monk joined, he completed the entire water from the container, so the little monk asked him to fetch the water from the source below. The taller monk felt that the work should be equally divided, so the bucket was placed in between the rod and both the monks shouldered the responsibility of fetching the water

Initially they marked middle line using hand.As every one has different palm length the marking was not perfect and they had problem in carrying the bucket, so they used a scale to mark middle line and after that they easily carried the bucket.

Lesson : Measurement cant be relative.A standard scale can only give the true result

Third Monk Joined

The taller and the little monk were joined by another fat monk, who was tired by the time he reached the monastery situated at the top of the till. Naturally he craved for water and finished the entire water available and was asked by the other two monks to refill the container.

The fat monk after fetching the water finished it again. After this everyone carried out their own mantras and didn't bother to fill up the container. In this way the water has eventually dried up.

 Fire in Temple

Later that night, a mouse in search of food climbed up near the holy Goddess and bit into the candles lit. That has caused the curtains around to burn apparently causing a fire. Since there was no water left, there was a panic and this encouraged them to act smartly and work as a team. In a crisis situation, the differences were all forgotten and the three monks worked together as one unit and the total work was divided into three parts.

1. The first monk filled up the water and gave it to the second monk.

2. The second monk ran to the almost half the distance between the water and the monastery to give the bucket of water to the third monk.

3. The third monk took it from there and pour the water to douse the fire.

With all the efforts, the fire was extinguished.

Learning:  This crisis brings the three monks together. They co-operate with each other and extinguish the fire.The major emphasis laid here was on productivity increase when working in a team. 

Innovation in process

 

After extinguishing  all the three monks developed a new system for water filling.They used pulley system and divided the work amongst themselves according to their strength so now they had different predefined and clear roles. Their roles were different but interdependent and everybody was equally responsible for the job. The job and responsibilities were equally distributed so that nobody felt cheated.
  
Lesson : Thus by using simple management principles the job is simplified. Usually most of the complex problems have the simplest solutions. It is up to us to look at the problems differently and think out of box and innovate to reach to the solution. This way the work becomes fun and the productivity is improved significantly and this in turn helps the organization become efficient and grow by leaps and bounds.

Now lets compare the three case in terms of productivity which is the ratio of output to input.

	Method I	Method II	Method III
Members	One Monk	Two Monks	Three Monks
Input  - Effort by monks	40 J  by One person	25 J by two persons together	2J per person
Output - Water	2 buckets	One bucket	One bucket
Productivity           ( Input / Output)	80 / 2 = 40	25 J / 1 = 20	6J/1=6

Here in the story at first the monk tries to carry water all by himself. He possesses the necessary discipline and skill to do that. So he is able to carry two buckets a day. When he finds a partner in the other monk the workload gets reduced as he is able to get more number of buckets with the same effort. This is called increase in productivity. This happens when people work together in the right direction. However, in the end when three monks designate different set of jobs for each other in the process, they help add accuracy and efficiency to the job. This is the best example of achieving higher productivity through innovation and co-ordination at the same time.