It is so easy to waste time and energy projecting fears into the future. To build elaborate stories about things that will never happen and in doing so to miss the present moment.
For the sake of some made up stories we disrupt the peace and contentment that is our current experience.
The Obvious? 
Absolutely. It’s all too easy to ignore the present. However, the present can be awful, can’t it?
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I’m increasingly convinced that the immediate present is rarely awful. The very recent past can be, and the our imagining of the future can be, but this very moment is rarely awful.
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Isn’t this very moment the mental phenomenon we are currently creating and experiencing? I don’t think we can measure it (with a watch) and I think the present moment can vary in duration.
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Time is the mental phenomenon that we create for sure, and yes we experience our feelings about the past and the future in this moment. But invariably nothing is actually wrong in this moment.
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Euan, your comments reflect the thinking of another culture. Why do Buddhist focus on the present?
We feel the need to change the past or to control the future, and we attempt to change something through worrying. Trying to change the past or the future is, according to Buddhism, the deeply rooted cause of worrying. … It is in the present moment where we live, where we are happy, where we create our future.
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Indeed. Our house is full of writing on the various Buddhist traditions. They have also informed a lot of modern day thinking about mindfulness and stress reduction. Nothing new under the sun!
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