Daily follies

There is a famous Buddhist Zen parable about four monks observing silence. They sat meditating around a candle light. A breeze blew in, the candle flickered and went out. The first monk said, "The candle is out." "Why did you talk?" the second monk accused the first monk. The third monk admonished, "Why are the two of you breaking the silence?" The fourth monk laughed and said proudly, "Ha! I'm the only one who didn't speak."






It's a well-known parable and most people who hear this parable would laugh at the foolishness of these monks. Yet, the truth is, most of these people never see the foolishness in themselves when they are parties to such follies.

I see this happen again and again in the office. It is something that never seem to go away.

Every now and then, some one would make a mistake sending something to a wide email distribution list. Someone would reply with something like "you send to the wrong person", "please remove me from this distribution list" etc. Then someone would reply to all and said, "please do not reply to all." And it would snowball. Someone would then reply to all again shouting "STOP REPLYING TO ALL". The strangest thing is that there are many who would say something like "I am sending to all of you to tell you that you should stop sending to all."

Actually, the easiest solution to the above is just ignore the message and simply delete it and it would die down quickly. But the person who send to all admonishing others or urging others not to reply simply fails to see that he is committing the act that he wants others not to do, and that he is contributing to the problem.

It is amazing how this email war never seem to go away. It keeps coming back and often take many days before it would die down.

In spite of the common wisdom we all know from parables like the above, we simply keep committing the same follies again and again. Of course, some of us do get wiser. :)