One day, Yangzi’s neighbor lost a sheep and mobilized his whole family as well as many others in the community to help look for the animal. He came to Yangzi for help, and Yangzi sent all of his students and servants out to help look for the sheep.
Together with the neighbor’s relatives and friends, Yangzi noticed that a very large group of people had been gathered to join in the search.
"Why are so many people required to look for one lost sheep?" Yangzi asked the neighbor.
"Because there are many forked roads," the neighbor answered.
When night fell and everyone returned, Yangzi asked, "Have you found the sheep?"
One of Yangzi’s servant replied: "There were many forked roads, with each one leading to more forked roads. Because I did not know which road to follow, I gave up."
The others agreed that this was the same reason they came back.
Yangzi became thoughtful and silent for a long time, looking very serious and leaving his students puzzled and not understanding what their teacher was thinking about.
Then, after having deeply pondered the situation, he taught the following principle to his students: "When there are too many side roads diverging from the main route, you are unable to find a lost sheep and could easily lose the way yourself. Similarly, when a student has too many interests diverging from his main goal, he can easily fritter away his time."
Source: Lie Yukou's Works (5th century BC)
I was thinking about distraction, what is distraction? Of course I already know the answer, when I say distraction I mean those things that we think or do, and of which we don't want and should not attend, but still divert our attention from those things in which we want and must concentrate.
I was not distracted of course, although I was thinking about distraction.
Because this is the problem, usually, in modern times, we are used to living with a lot of distractions around us, and every distraction is one more road, one more road to find the sheep.
The sheep is what we want and should concentrate on, while the distraction is, as we have said, exactly the opposite. But it's not like that, because in fact, when something distracts us, we must pay attention to it.
Usually we would think that we should ignore the distractions, in which we must separate them to focus on what we want, but in doing this, the distraction does not disappear at all, it is still there, only now we avoid it, and worse, we spend energy to avoid it. Ignorance is never the way.
At the moment when something attracts our attention, we must, in fact, pay our full attention, because as long as we continue to ignore it, it will continue to be present, obstructing the other things on which we want to concentrate.
So the distraction is really that thing to which we should pay attention, but we don't want to do it. But here again comes another problem, and that is, if we don't want to pay attention to the distraction, then it will not distract us at all, the reality is that we want to pay attention to it.
The distraction is, therefore, that thing we want and we must pay attention to, but even so, we don't do it. Why? It would be the question. The answer is in fact, curious; something distracts us.
That's right, something distracts us from distracting us, you know what? The Sheep.
And this is the case, every time we have a distraction, until we put our attention on such a thing, everything else is a distraction too, because what we should pay our attention to, at that precise moment, is at what distracts us.
If we could avoid such a distraction and still concentrate on something else, we should not boast, I think it would be making a mistake, because in the very act in which something distracts us, it is necessary to attend to it, and to ignore such a distraction, would be precisely to distract us.
It is, therefore, of patience, to travel through all roads, one at a time, until find the sheep, otherwise, nothing.
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