Especially for SME’s – 55: Examples of selecting where only.
31 August 2022
Mr. Lowe: Drona, the guru of both the kauravas and the Pandavas, was taking bath in the Ganges one day. As he was standing in the river and praying, his eyes closed, a crocodile stealthily moved closer and got hold of his leg. He tried to extricate from the crocodile but in vain. All his students were there in the bank of the river and heard the shouts of their guru. Everyone fled in panic to report this incident to someone else. Arjun however took his bow and arrow. He hit the crocodile to save his guru. Where do you think he would have aimed? In the eye of the crocodile like he did the other day in the test that his master gave him, to prove that he was the best student when challenged by his own son, Aswathama? No, he shot an arrow into the mouth of the crocodile vertically between the upper and lower jaws, so that if the crocodile tries to tighten its grip to hurt his guru and then swallow him, the crocodile cannot without hurting and cutting its own mouth and jaws. In fact, the arrow would pierce his jaws and the crocodile had no choice except open its mouth wider. The crocodile did the same thing and Drona extricated himself and walked ashore.
SME 2: What lessons can we learn from this example?
Mr. Lowe: What an elegant example of choosing where only. This tells us one more thing: It is not every time the same place, what was eye of the bird became the mouth of the crocodile here. But what do we do normally in our lives? For us eye of the bird becomes a constant to be hit! If anything gives us success, we repeat the same thing so many times, thinking we have found a formula for success. And every time we repeat the formula, the return from the effort decreases as per another energy law, the law of marginal returns. But we are blind to these decreasing returns and keep on repeating the same one trick that we have discovered for getting success. We repeat the same business formula, the same product, the same process etc. There is no formula for success, what is there is only a systematized thinking process that I have tried to discover over the three books I have written.
SME 1: What you say is so true!
Mr. Lowe: There is no point in hitting Achilles at any part of his body except his heels. You have to find Achilles heels in every situation. Taking one more example from Mahabharat, when Duryodhan and Bhim were fighting, Duryodhan was on the rise when Krishna got perturbed. So when Bhim got really badly hit by Duryodhan, Krishna clapped: This surprised Bhim as to why Krishna was appreciating when he was getting hit badly. This made Bhim think and he saw Krishna was not using his two hands to clap but was making noise with one hand hitting his thigh below the belt. So Bhim got the message that, if he had to win over Duryodhan, he had to hit Duryodhan below the belt on his thigh, which was the Achille’s heels of duryodhan. Bhim won over Duryodhan. Choosing the bottleneck in space dimension is what choosing where only is all about.
SME 1: Can you give some more examples from other aspects of our life?
Mr. Lowe: The system of health care of ancient China was based mainly on this one aspect of strategy namely choose where only. I am referring to the famous and effective system of Chinese medicine namely acupressure and acupuncture.
In politics of course this is profoundly and frequently used. The dignitaries visiting chosen places, the politicians choosing the constituencies they want to contest in elections, and of course the Nations they want to align with. If this goes wrong, the so-called all- weather friends could suddenly become bitter enemies. ……………………..contd.