Drop your Past and Move On

Your thoughts bridge your past to the future.

Your mind is constantly in motion, without a purpose. Its purported purpose is to provide a rational link between your past and your future. However, there is no such rational link. Neither past nor the future exists.

Your past is dead, it is gone, it is finished. As the poet Omar Khayyam said in Rubaiyat, ‘the moving finger writes and having writ moves on; nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.’ No regret, no penance will recreate your past differently. Reliving the past is an exercise in futility and foolishness.

The future does not exist yet. To create the future is speculative. You do not even know whether you will breathe your next breath. What arrogance, therefore, to think of creating your future.

Worse still is to flash back into the past so as to create the future. If you think you will learn from your past mistakes to create a faultless future you need to think again. You do not have the intelligence to learn from the past and make new mistakes; you will keep making the same mistakes again and again.

What exists in reality is your present. The present is all that there is. Once you suspend thoughts you are grounded in the present, the state of truth and the state of awareness. When you are in the present truly, in deep awareness, you become aware of your past and present as well. You become a tri kala jnani, an enlightened master who is in all three time zones past, present and future, all at once.

A great Zen master was asked: what is the difference you found when you became enlightened? He said simply: I eat when I eat and I sleep when I sleep.

When you become aware and mindful, you live in the present all the time. You focus on what you do at that moment. Your mind is where your body is.

Normally when you are at work, your mind wanders and takes a vacation; and when you are on vacation at a beach, your mind worries about your work that you should have done, but did not. Once you learn to be in the present dilemmas disappear; your mind becomes clear.

Drop your thoughts, Now, and you will be at peace.