The story of two monks and a woman

TJL #97

Mar 02, 2021

Helping a Lady Across the River – A Zen Story

The story of the two monks and a woman is a well-known Buddhist parable. I found this version in the book Busy, it goes something like this.

Two Buddhist monks were walking together when they came to a river. Next to the river was a beautiful woman. She turned to the monks and asked them to carry her across the stream so she didn’t spoil her dress. The first monk, knowing that touching women was not allowed, apologised but said no. The second monk, without pause, picked her up and carried her across the river.
They walked on for many hours and miles. Then the first monk turned to the second and asked why he had carried the woman. To which, the second replied, “I carried her a few steps across that stream; you have carried her many miles.”

Moral of the story

This story can be interpreted in different ways. The first interpretation is about mindfulness and the second interpretation is about productivity.

The first one is to take the story as a reminder not to dwell on the past so much that it starts interfering with living in the present.

The second one is to link this to the Zeigarnik effect. The Zeigarnik effect is the phenomenon that an unfinished task is remembered much better than a finished one. The monk that carried the woman across the river finished the task and was able to free his mind for other things (presumably meditation). The other monk walked hours and miles thinking about the woman (the task), taking up all his available mental bandwidth.

Do this now!

To maximize your mental bandwidth empty your brain of all thoughts about women.. I mean tasks.

Grab a piece of paper and do a braindump of everything that you still need to do. This will close these open loops in your brain and free up valuable mental bandwidth. Just make sure you actually transfer them to your todo system to not forget about them!

Here’s mine:

Previous TJLs

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Today Jan Learned

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