Master Sheng Yen remarks in Adage 8, "8. To take on anything, one must first be able to let go. One is truly free who can take on and let go of anything in peace." Taking on something requires letting go. I think this means that in order to take on any responsibility, one needs to be fully present to that responsibility, without trying to achieve multiple things all at once. It means not having to get attached to any result (success or failure, for example) but learning instead to be happy with one's best efforts. Perhaps the "let go" part is related to letting go of self-attachment.
On my way home today, I reflected on how one of the big challenges I suffer from is having to always have definitive certainty about what I am doing. Being attached to "certainty', such as a certain outcome, for me seems to be the sign of my own attachment to the self that assumes some degree of control over things. I want the thing to go smoothly, but it's my attachment to certainty that leads to all kinds of doubts. This principle is true of anything: whatever one struggles to erase (such as doubt) actually ends up coming back in the form of getting attached to doubt, to the point where a person cannot bear even a moment of doubt.
Perhaps an antidote to all these quests for certainty is the realization that whatever I thought before no longer applies now. Conditions, states of being, thoughts, etc. are like water running through a stream. They continue to change, the same way that the world changes. If I let go of trying to make my experiences, obligations, and responsibilities so concrete, so "real" and so permanent, then I can have more of a mind of simply handling what is emerging in this moment. Then my mind is much more free to take on more challenges, without the anxious clinging to specific outcomes or gains.
References
Sheng Yen, 108 Adages. http://www.dharmadrum.org/content/about/about2.aspx?sn=46
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