When we are disengaged it often drains our energy. We are not so much conserving energy or renewing energy as much as we are letting the energy drain from us with very little to show for our efforts.

Here is a short snippet story from Sakyong Mipham’s Turning The Mind Into An Ally:

I have a friend who’s particularly susceptible to attacks of basic laziness. For example, one day when we were relaxing together, he decided to take a rest on the couch. He poured himself a drink, placed it on the coffee table, and then lay down on the sofa. After a few minutes of lying there, he realized he’d placed his glass on the far side of the table, out of reach. Instead of sitting up and picking up his glass, he found a clothes hanger that was wedged between the cushions and hooked the leg of the coffee table with it to drag the table closer. Predictably, the drink fell off the table. We often expend much more energy being lazy than it would take to deal with our life straightforwardly.

What is your straightforward path to employee engagement?

Photo Credit: lazy polar bear by http://flickr.com/photos/laenulfean/448547930/

When is the time for full engagement?

This very moment.

Right now, right here is a great opportunity. That is the moment you are you, as you really are, prior to the germination of thinking. For this you must be in time; you must be at the moment where you cannot think about a previous moment or a following moment. ~ Dainin Katagiri, Each Moment Is the Universe.

Photo Credit: Yellow rose of friendship http://flickr.com/photos/spiralz/12284170/

Is your work a work of art?

We have come to think of art and work as incompatible, or at least independent categories and have for the first time in history created an industry without art. ~ Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.

Photo Credit: Work of Art by http://flickr.com/photos/glsims99/112098751/

Can you engage with yourself, the moment, and the work before you?

Ultimately, Zen is about seeing into the nature of reality- the true nature of reality and not just what appears on the surface. It is about seeing ‘who I really am’, not ‘who I think I am or think I should be’. But in order to do this, one must first be in the present moment – with the ‘just this’ and the ‘just now’ of the present moment. This is an extremely difficult thing to do. The reason is that our mind keeps taking us out of the present moment into either the past or the future; we so rarely seem to be in the present. Either we’re re-writing the past, what it could have been and so forth, or we’re worrying about or planning or imagining the future And, if we arein the present moment, most of the time our mind views the ‘just this’ and the ‘just now’ of that moment as unacceptable, criticizing and judging, wanting it to be something else or wishing that it not change. ~ From the Still Mind Zendo of New York City

Photo Credit: lotus by http://flickr.com/photos/charles_chan/852840096/