Right Attitude

If Buddhism has a central philosophy for life it is "Right Attitude"
I always thought that right attitude was simply having enthusiasm for life.

I got my first adult lesson of the true depth of quality right attitude can bring to life on a golf course.

I had became an avid golfer the moment I lobbed a ball a hundred and eighty yards through the air and landed it three feet from the target I was aiming at and sank the putt for my first birdie. Ten years into my golf game, on my home course in Johannesburg, with a couple of near-scratch games to my credit, I watched Gary Player play the same holes the way a world class professional does.

On one of the par four holes he drove into the rough a hundred eighty yards short of the green. Between him and the green a large weeping willow guarded the approach. Its long leafy tendrils trailed on the edge of the green. I had landed in more or less the same place many times myself. From that lie I had never managed to float a ball over the willow and land it anywhere on the green So I was particularly keen to see how Gary played the shot, and said so to an older companion standing beside me.
He chuckled. "Gary is not trying to get the ball on the green. He is trying to get it in the hole."
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