The Busy...

In Adage 4, Master Sheng Yen remarks, "The busy make the most of time; the diligent enjoy the best of health." What does that mean, I wonder? I think that being busy has often been berated in recent years, and I recall that Master Sheng Yen once talked about Bertrand Russell's essay "In Praise of Idleness" as being written when people were way too busy rebuilding after the second World War. These days, people hardly praise idleness, and the point is that people tend to find their deepest insights when they are engaged with something that is interconnecting. "Being busy" could be framed as a kind of being connected, and it might be seen as making the most of one's time.
  However, doesn't being too busy affect one's health? I think this has been a kind of assumption in a lot of accounts of medicine, but I don't think that having a busy body is the culprit. Having a mind that is busy with vexations may be more responsible for the ills of the world. Hypertension, for example, is not necessarily caused by having "too much to do" but may be attributed to one's attitude. If one is stressing about work, then even the slightest bit of work will seem like a big mountain of work. On the other hand, when a "big pile" of work is approached in a positive way or with gusto, it can actually seem like an enjoyable past-time or hobby. So what this adage points to is that work can invigorate the body and mind if one approaches it in a certain way and from a perspective of uplifting character rather than dampening one's spirits.
   But when being "busy", there are other elements to keep in mind. First is that one should learn to stay with one activity at a time rather than jumping to something else or endlessly distracting the mind. The second is the importance of not treating one's work as a results-only benefit. The work itself is already beneficial when it engages the body and mind in creation. The third aspect is about dedicating the work to other sentient beings and recognizing how people are unified to achieve otherwise impossible goals through work itself.

References
http://www.dharmadrum.org/content/about/about2.aspx?sn=46