How do I stay in the present? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Question: Sir, my question is, ‘How to focus on the present?’

Acharya Prashant: Do you need to focus on the present?

Listener: Sir, that is my only problem. When I study, all the shortcomings of my past keep coming to my mind.

AP: Present is there. You don’t need to focus on it. A better question would be, ‘How to do away with the thoughts of ‘what is not present’? How to get rid of the past and the future?’

Don’t ask, ‘*How do I get into the present?*‘

The present is anyway there. The question must be, ‘*How do I get rid of the thoughts of past and future?*‘ That must be the question.

You think of the past and the future only upon the arousal of that thought. Past and Future come to you only when thought is aroused. Thought is stimulated only by an external stimulus. Look carefully at your life and see where do these stimuli come from, and do away with them. Thought does not just get up and starts running on its own. A limitation of thought is that it needs somebody poking to you from outside.