Present Moment Wonderful Moment
“To dwell happily in the present moment,” was a common phrase of the Buddha. Often he advised his disciples, “Do not lose yourselves in the past, do not run after the future. The past no longer is, the future has not yet come.”
There are so many wonderful things in our world to enjoy, and yet we concentrate on what is not going well.
... our mind is like a television set with many channels. In the present moment we can choose the channel that we want to watch. Buddha has taught that there are fifty-one mental formations including love, joy, hate, jealousy, feelings, and perceptions, and it is up to us to choose which program we want to watch. For many of us, however, a program will appear on the screen of our mental television which is not of our choosing. This is because we have not yet rained in the art of mindfulness, which is the art of recognizing which mental formation is arising and of taking good care of that mental formation as it arises and for as long as it is present. The more mindful we are the more we can choose which mental formations appear on the screen of our mind.
[Thich Nhat Hanh] does not mean to tell us that we should not suffer or that suffering is wrong. [He] has suffered much and would not advise us not to suffer. It is our suffering that makes us compassionate. It is our suffering that acts as a compost to bring about the flowers and fruit of understanding and compassion. [He] tells his disciples, “You have every right to suffer, but you do not have the right not to practice when you suffer.” If we do not practice mindful breathing and walking when we suffer, we shall drown in our suffering and it will not be converted into that compost on which the flowers of understanding can grow.