How can we live in the present alone without learning from the past or preparing for the future?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
we have to sometimes prepare for the future and sometimes we have to look at the past and learn from the past also so how can we live in the present when I talk about the past and the future being distractions what it meant was the distracted mode of thinking certainly we need to learn from the past certainly we need to prepare for the future but learning from the past is different from lamenting about the past and preparing for the future is different from worrying about the future the key difference between learning and lamenting or between preparing and worrying is who is in control when I am lamenting about things, I am not in control, that means my mind is just going here, there and everywhere, hey that went wrong why did they speak like that, why did this happen and we are just passively watching, ok this is like this this is like this when we are learning from the past, we are in control, ok I will direct my thoughts to this incident ok, this is what I did and this is what that person did and this is what happened, maybe if I had done things like this then, why did I do like this oh I thought like that right, if I had thought this way then I would not have done like this, so if we are in control, it is not our mind dragging us towards the past and making us do this, do that and think about this and worry about and lament about that that means if we are calm if we are self aware, if we are self focused, then we take our thoughts to the past and then we learn from the past that is beneficial similarly if we are just passively observing and that may go wrong our mind thinks that may go wrong, that may go wrong that may go wrong and then the thoughts that go in the future they simply make us paranoid, they make us extremely worried but if we are in control, we are calmly evaluating ok, this can happen then I will be doing this this can happen, then I will be doing this so whether we have inner calm and control or not, that is very important you see there are three kinds of people some people make things happen some people watch things happen and some people wonder what happened so when we are not in control, then we just wonder what happened, oh maybe this happened, why did this happen oh maybe that will happen and we just worry, so learning from the past and preparing for the future are both not just desirable they are essential, but to be able to do that we are in the present in the sense that we are aware that ok, I am sitting here right now and I am going to think about my past and then I will learn about the past it is not that we let our thoughts just go away without our conscious awareness, without our conscious control so when we are aware and when we are in control and then we direct our thoughts towards the past or the future then we can learn for the past and we can prepare for the future, does it answer your question? yeah ok