Three Monks !!!!!

Background:

Three Monks  is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1976, It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.
The film is based on the ancient Chinese proverb "One monk will shoulder two buckets of water, two monks will share the load, but add a third and no one will want to fetch water.

 

Plot:

There was a monk who lived in a temple built on the top of a hill everyday he used to get two buckets full of water from down the hill and carry them back to temple using a shoulder pole. The water he got was more than enough for one person.

One day a monk visited the temple and started living there. Next day when they got up, first monk thought of giving the responsibility to bring water to the new monk.

But the new monk 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. On the next day morning when all the monks got up, nobody took the responsibility to fill the buckets as the shoulder pole could accommodate only two persons and they could not decide who should stay back. On that day, they began to suffer from thirst since water had finished. That night temple caught fire.

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.

Video link as below :

Learnings

1. As the saying goes: “Unity is strength" we should co-operate with each other and work  together in a harmonious manner.
2. Team work is the fuel that allows common to attain uncommon results.
3. Process improvement can reduce effort to a great extent.
4. Work distribution , work segregation and proper utilization of resources leads to increase in   productivity.

Real Life example :

In first year of graduation, I and some friends thought of participating in a dramatics events. When we teamed up for the very first time, we were bunch of enthusiastic people who lacked professionalism. Each of us had one’s own idea with a feeling about that idea as the best one. No one was ready to give much thought to the ideas of others.

We kept moving without reaching any consensus and got too late in finalizing the script and scene. Though we had worked hard but we ourselves felt that the finalized play was not up to the mark. Our play got rejected.

The failure turned out to be a big learning for us. As all of us were friends, we sat together and introspected about the reason. We realized that we worked as a group and not as a team.We were more focused on our idea getting accepted. Had we been open to accept each other’s ideas we could have qualified for the final round.

The incident taught me the importance of team work and leaving behind one’s ego for the common goal. I also learnt that failures are biggest learning in life and team work is the fuel that allows common to attain uncommon results.