Productivity & Performance

An old proverb has been quietly waiting for us all along: if you chase two rabbits, both will escape. The frustration in this is familiar. To succeed at almost anything, one has to set a single clear goal, and stay with it long enough for the goal to recognise its pursuer.

In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna says something almost identical, in the older register of the spiritual life:

"Those who are on this path are resolute in purpose, and their aim is one. O beloved child of the Kurus, the intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched."

— Bhagavad-gita 2.41

One aim, gently held

Bhakti yogis, knowing Krishna to be the source of everything that pulls at our attention, settle on a single aim — to think of him, and to act in his service. Held this way, the mind is not so much narrowed as gathered. It begins, finally, to do its one good thing.

Adapted from a reflection by Vaisesika Dasa.

The verb prepare means simply: to make something ready for use, or for consideration. It sounds modest. And yet the people who think most carefully about a life keep returning to it.

"Opportunity is a haughty goddess who wastes no time with those who are unprepared."

— George Clason

"All things are ready, if our mind be so."

— William Shakespeare

Across centuries and very different vocabularies, the same small claim recurs: our destiny — in this life, and beyond it — is largely shaped by how we prepare for it now.

Or, said more simply

Our preparation leads us to our destination.

The bhakti teachers extend the sentence one step further. This short life, they say, is itself a kind of preparation room. Srila Prabhupada writes plainly: by our activities here we either rise or sink, and what we make ready in this body is what we will be carried into in the next. The current hour, in this view, is not background. It is the work.

Adapted from a reflection by Vaisesika Dasa.