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TEACHINGS | EASTERN HORIZON 13

Photo by Liza Matthews

What is attitude anyway? Attitude is the climate of Attitude literally means “stance.” The way you hold your
our lives. Everyone has some kind of attitude or set of body, your posture; the way you stride forth into your life.
attitudes. Probably we have never thought about them,
never examined them, and don’t much experience We come by our attitudes honestly. We get them from
ourselves as having any particular attitudes. A fish doesn’t our parents, communities, and cultures; from our
know what water is because it sees and experiences experiences, traumas, and triumphs. We assume our
everything through the medium of water. Like a fish in attitudes reflect reality. We assume they are fixed and
water, we swim in the medium of our attitudes. unchangeable.

In the bodhisattva path, we don’t assume anything is But attitudes aren’t fixed. Neither is the world. Neither
fixed and solid. are we. In the bodhisattva path, we don’t assume

anything is fixed and solid. And we don’t assume that
Or maybe attitude is character: We are this or that sort of our picture of the world is the way the world has to
person. We are kind, generous, animated, quiet, fearful, look. This is where imagination enters in. Imagination
grouchy, stingy, “nice,” not very nice, relaxed, anxious. is a warm breeze that loosens up what seems rigid and
We think life is good, people are good. Or we think life is cold. Bodhisattvas have imagination. They assume that
a struggle and people are not to be trusted. And so on. anything can be fluid and warm, subject to challenge
However much we haven’t examined them, all of us have and revision. They see that everything is provisional
fairly consistent attitudes that condition our lives. Our and open. Inspired by their imaginations, bodhisattvas
attitudes may be self-contradictory and confused, but we believe that there are always possibilities.
don’t notice. Few of us have the time or capacity for deep
self-reflection, and even if we did, the more we looked, The perfection of generosity confronts and softens
the more confused we’d get. It’s hard to see ourselves our basic attitudes. To practice it is to appreciate the
accurately. Our attitudes distort the picture. natural abundance of being, the inherent generosity of