How can we let go of the past and the future and focus on the present?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
how can we overcome our past not become overwhelmed by the future and truly feel the happiness of the present moment very good question, in fact I gave a class on this topic in Dallas be not fretful or fearful be faithful so fretfulness is about the past, oh you know this went wrong he did like that, she spoke like that fretfulness fearfulness is about the future what if this goes wrong, that goes wrong so the be faithful means we understand that God has a plan and I just need to do my part in that plan that way we can free our mental energy from the past to the future and focus in the present so the whole idea is that yes bad things have happened to us in the past we ourselves may have done bad things but Krishna is so expert that he can bring good even out of the bad so what has happened, has happened in the Mahabharata it is said that greed, that lamentation achieves nothing except to sap the mental energy of the lamenter so what has happened, it’s over let’s close that chapter and move on so if you understand, if you have this faith that Krishna can bring good even out of the bad then we can just put, leave the past behind and focus on the present similarly about the future you know as I mentioned in the introduction, I write articles in the Gita everyday at Gita Daily, so one such article was now worry is the interest we pay on loans we haven’t yet taken so actually, most of the things we worry about if we see more than 90-95% of those things they never happen what if this goes wrong, what if that goes wrong so we recognize that more this worrying is simply sapping our energy so the future is in we don’t know what the future holds but we know who holds the future when we have faith in Krishna we don’t know what the future holds for us but we know that Krishna is always in control he holds the future so that way when I talk about faith, it’s not just a conception that God is in control that faith is actually realized through practice so if we practice mantra chanting mantra meditation if we study the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita our faith becomes intellectually grounded and it becomes personally experienced and then we can actually recognize the past and the future past is over, Krishna will bring good out of it future, now Krishna will take care of it let me focus on the present so that attitude of devotional service, Krishna I am here to love and serve you please guide me how I can serve you in the present that will help us to fully focus on the present and that way we can relish the beauty, the sweetness, the opportunity of the present moment