One day, the Buddha was preaching when a man came to him and, without a word, spat on his face. The Buddha was unperturbed. He wiped off the spit and said, ‘My friend, do you wish to say something more to me?’ The man was surprised. He had been expecting an angry reaction from the Buddha, and not to be addressed as a friend. His anger slowly changed into shame, and he left. Buddha’s disciples looked shocked by what had happened, but he calmed them.
The next day, the man came again. This time, he was full of remorse and begged the Buddha for forgiveness. The Buddha said, ‘My friend, you spat at me and I wiped it off. That was the end of the matter. Much time has elapsed between yesterday and today. Much water has flown under the bridge. Do not waste your time on what has happened. Live in the present.’
Our body always lives in the present, but our mind tends to keep going back and linger on to past events. To be happy, it is necessary to leave the past behind and live in the present. During winter, trees shed their leaves, the flowers fall off, and the branches become bare. Even birds cannot be seen on trees. Slowly, the season changes. Spring arrives, and with tender and shiny leaves sprouting from the trees, the trees start turning green again. Slowly, colourful flowers blossom and birds start chirping again. The same trees that had an ugly and withered look in the winter, turn beautiful and healthy again in spring. This conveys that because the past has been left behind, the present is able to bring new joy and hope.
Most of us keep agonising over the past and worrying about the future, and forget to live in the present. If we don’t let go of the past, it will keep becoming a heavier and heavier burden on us. It will wear us out, and at some point, we will no longer be able to bear its burden. To fly high, we need to shed this unnecessary weight. Alexander Graham Bell said, “When one door shuts, another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open up.” We need to realise that neither the past nor the future exists in the present moment. It is only the present that exists. We haven’t seen the future, so we have no memories associated with it, and it does not seem real. The past may seem very real because of our memories, but the truth is that it too exists only in our imagination.
