One morning in the monastery courtyard, a monk saw a few red flowers held on a tree and a dozen sparrows. Everything he saw produced with in him a sense of jubilation and of the infinite purity of phenomenon. He forced his mind into a down beat mood and conjured up all sorts of negative feelings. Suddenly the tree looked dusty to him and the flowers sickly, the chirping of the sparrow begun to irritate him. He wondered which was the right way to look at the things and come to the conclusion that the first had been the correct way because it generated and opened, creative and liberating attitude and lead to greater satisfaction. Such an attitude allows us spontaneously to embrace the Universe and beings and to tear away any ego centric divide between the self and the world.
On the other hand, when we cling to a negative perception of phenomenon, something rings falls - we feel disconnected from the universe, which comes to seem dull, strange, distant and sometimes hostile.
There are unsubstantiated accusation against optimism, psychologists have long believe that mildly depressive people are realistic in their outlook. Optimists have a tendency dwell longer on pleasant incidents than on painful situations and to over estimate their past performance and mastery of things.
This implies that the pessimist tends to go around with his eyes wide open and to assess situation more lucidly than the optimist. Reality may not always be a barrel of laughs but you have to see things the way they are, He might say, where as the optimist is a genial but incurably naive dreamer. Life will bring him down to earth soon enough, We think. It so happens that this is not true. Further studies have shown that the pessimist's objective, detached and very judgement is inadequate. When it is a question of real situations drawn from daily life, the optimist's approach is in fact more realistic and pragmatic than that of the pessimist. If, for example, a cross section of women who drink coffee are shown a report on the increased risk of breast cancer linked to caffeine or if a cross section of sun bathers are informed that lying out in the sun increases the risk of skin cancer, a week later the optimists have better reach ll of the reports details than the pessimists and have taken them more into account in their behaviour. More over, they concentrate attentively and selectively on the risk that truly concerned them, rather than fretting vainly and ineffectually over everything. In this way, they remain more serene than the pessimist and gather their energies for real threats.
