Tomorrow Will Worry About Itself; Each Day Has Enough Trouble of Its Own — Arahan Live

From Drowsiness Caused by Cold Medicine to a Discussion of Living Today

I opened Arahan’s live broadcast on April 9, 2025. It was not yet eight o’clock, so I greeted the viewers and asked what we should discuss. The previous day I had unexpectedly told part of my life story, and I said there would probably be another chance to continue it someday. Again, rather than following a predetermined lecture plan, the subject gradually emerged from the conversation.

My cold had not gone away. The morning and evening medicines prescribed by the doctor inevitably made me sleepy; only the midday medicine caused less drowsiness. These days I took the medicine, nodded off and slept, ate, took a walk, looked at the news while wondering what to discuss, and then turned on the broadcast. I seemed to be sleeping twelve hours a day, about four hours more than usual.

As the weather improved, I wanted to resume exercise, although the cold prevented me from doing much. I did try walking up to the thirteenth floor of my apartment building. It seemed easy through the fifth and sixth floors; my legs began to hurt after the seventh, and beyond the tenth they felt as heavy as lead. My body confirmed the obvious fact that climbing stairs is also exercise. I realized how little I had been moving.

I had begun hanging from a pull-up bar and doing small exercises that raised my waist and legs, trying to care for the body in which, as the saying goes, a sound mind dwells. A regular life does not always proceed as we intend, but we do need a certain amount of strength and movement. From this talk about the body and a cold, the conversation naturally moved toward the self of yesterday and today, time, and our attitude toward life.

The Awakening of a Twenty-Year-Old and the Laughter Thirty Years Later

When I looked back at the previous day’s story, I had to laugh. Around twenty, a young man who had entered university after an extra year of preparation suffered alone as though life were unbearably difficult. Then one day he felt that the world was impermanent and that he should see what was present, and his mind became more comfortable. The experience itself was real for me. The world looked bright and beautiful, and I began to notice other people’s expressions, tones, and actions that I had missed while confined inside my own pain.

The problem came next. Without knowing why I had suffered that way, and without even knowing what I did not know, I began to speak. I thought I was helping others out of goodwill, but because I did not understand clearly, the other person would reach a point at which my explanation failed. The experience of feeling relief once is not the same as understanding the entire process behind it. My younger self did not know the difference.

Someone whose attitude changed through Buddhism or who escaped suffering once naturally wants to share the experience with others. The impulse itself is not wrong. Yet the reality of one’s experience does not mean one understands it down to the roots. Attempts to explain, teach, and help can fail to communicate and can even make relationships uncomfortable. At that time my ego was vigorously alive, but without insight into that ego I placed myself in the position of “the one who teaches.”

Mixing Books Together Without Even Knowing That I Did Not Know

My father saw what I was doing and told me to read books from the library of a relative he knew. I brought home philosophy and religion—New Testament texts and stories of the Buddha, Laozi, the Dao De Jing, Zhuangzi, Nietzsche, Krishnamurti, and much more. Reading books, however, did not mean reading them critically. I mixed different teachings together and could not distinguish what was sound from what was merely printed in a book.

Some books presented rebirth as fact; others spoke of souls and an afterlife. I had no way to verify them, yet accepted them because they appeared in print. Not knowing even that I did not know, I became intoxicated with one experience and went around speaking at length to other people. We might call this a youthful mistake, but if someone beside me had understood the process, that person might have guided me in a better direction.

A Father Who Told Me to Speak Less and Nourish Myself Again

My father had probably gone through a similar experience in his own past. He wanted me to stop speaking everywhere, read, and spend time filling myself again. Yet he too later went around talking, and he did not follow the path all the way. He had limits. There is no need either to make him an absolute teacher or to deny the help he gave.

Buddhism is easy if we call it easy and difficult if we call it difficult. Rather than confining it under the name Buddhism, we might call it wisdom for living. If someone could have perfectly conveyed its foundation in one blow, I would not have lived full of conceit. If I had learned with real humility, understanding that I was a frog in a well, it might have helped more. Looking back at myself thirty years ago, I raised these questions.

My Father’s Question and the Understanding That Everything Arises Through Conditions

A viewer said, “Did you not become the Arahan you are now because of your father? Had even one apparently accidental event passed you by, the present you would not exist.” I said that was plainly right. On the night my father died, when the person who had asked me throughout his life, “Who are you?” could no longer ask it, I felt that the world truly was dependent arising.

The claim that I became something through my greatness cannot stand within Buddhism. If even one condition had missed me, the present I would not exist. We awaken through conditions, are born through conditions, live through conditions, and die through conditions. My father’s help and violence, books and failures, conversations and wounds all helped form the person here now. No single element can be isolated and called the absolute cause.

When someone mentioned that thirty years had passed, I noted that at fifty I can wish I were twenty or even ten years younger, while an older person may see me as very young already. Human beings tend not to appreciate what is already in their hands and look only at what is absent. Deep practice of the mind asks what I have now and whether I can be content with what is present.

There Is No Guarantee That What We Want Will Happen

We may work hard for a career and money, romance and family, social change, or something we want to do. But hard work does not guarantee fulfillment. I may die tomorrow; if I am trapped in the belief that I must suffer today because I have not obtained something, every day becomes suffering. This does not mean that we should not try. It means seeing the illusion that the result is under my control.

Time flies like an arrow and cannot be restored. That is how the main subject of this broadcast emerged. I proposed reading Jesus’ words about time in the Sermon on the Mount and examining where they meet Buddhism. It was already 8:15, so I declared the main broadcast underway and chose to discuss “how to live today.”

We Must Question the Translation and Historical Background of the Bible Too

I searched for material in which I had once translated parts of the New Testament from English. I did not mean that my translation was necessarily correct; I wanted to recover meanings that a Korean translation might obscure. English Bibles also continue to change as research and the concerns of each era are reflected. Most of my old translation was lost, so I decided to use the remaining fragments and sources such as Kim Gyo-sin’s commentary on the Beatitudes.

A viewer joked that writing the Sermon on the Mount in a pocket notebook and carrying it everywhere would bring good fortune. I replied, “How would carrying it bring you fortune? You must understand its meaning and live it.” At the same time, I said that shortcomings in Southern Buddhism or the Jogye Order as institutions do not justify condemning every person within them at once. We must leave open the possibility that someone there may actually have awakened.

I mentioned Buddhadasa as someone within Southern Buddhism who firmly rejected rebirth as nonsense incompatible with not-self. Yet most of today’s institutional Southern Buddhism affirms rebirth. We should not trust a claim merely because it wears the names “tradition” or “early”; we must examine the actual words and behavior.

Is the Bible a History of Love?

Another viewer asked whether universalizing love was awakening and salvation and whether the Bible was therefore a history of love. I answered that it was difficult to call the Bible as a whole a history of love. The Old Testament is a collection in which the myths, superstitions, ethnic outlook, and religious practices of a particular people are mixed. The New Testament is not the pure record of one person’s words either, but a literature in which many contemporary philosophies and ideas overlap.

We need not tell a story in which Jesus personally traveled as far as India or Gandhara, practiced Buddhism, and returned. In my view, skeptical, materialist, and Buddhist philosophy had already spread through the Greek and Roman world around the turn of the era via Pyrrho and the Epicureans. Since the earliest New Testament documents were written in Greek, the philosophy and language of their authors naturally entered them.

Whether Jesus was a historical individual and which words he directly spoke are separate from the need to see the intellectual background of the literature. I judged that much nonsense is mixed into the New Testament, yet substantial parts of the Sermon on the Mount contain highly critical, skeptical, and materialist thought. In this broadcast, I read only those parts that overlap with the Buddhist wisdom of living today.

The Eye Is the Lamp of the Body, and Seeing Properly Comes First

We first read the passage saying that the eye is the lamp of the body, that if the eye is sound the whole body is full of light, and if the eye is bad the whole body is dark. It can be read as a statement that life changes according to whether we see properly. If we see through illusion, our whole life becomes dark. Whether or not one labels it Buddhist, it meets the demand to break illusion.

We then moved to the words: “Do not worry about what you will eat or drink for your life, or what you will wear for your body. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” We already possess body and life, yet may fail to see that life while worrying only about whether we can obtain better clothing and food.

The text continues with birds of the air that neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and flowers of the field. These verses include lines that can sound as if belief in God will automatically provide food, but the central issue is that anxiety cannot lengthen actual life.

Adding a Cubit to Height, or Adding an Hour to Life?

One Korean Bible asks, “Who among you can add one cubit to his height by worrying?” I called this a mistranslation. The English sentence, “Who of you can add a single hour to his life?” asks whether worry can add even one hour to a life. It should be read as a question about life’s duration, not bodily height.

This sentence is enormously important. My worry does not lengthen my life. I can think about food and clothing, but anxiety itself does not extend life. We should therefore ask what the worry that consumes today actually does for us.

Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself, and each day’s trouble is enough for that day. Can your worry add even a single hour to your life?

The Mind Extends One Day’s Trouble Across Many Days

The Sermon on the Mount reaches its peak in the words, “Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day’s trouble is enough for the day.” The sentence looks simple. Yet if a superior unjustly curses us and shifts unfair work onto us during the day, anger boils through the evening. At home we drink, smoke, and rehearse the event, take it out on family members, and reopen yesterday’s incident again the next day.

Rehearsing an event may briefly relieve stress. But after a point, the incident has ended while suffering continues to be produced anew. The superior spoke once in the afternoon; inside the head, the speech plays dozens of times. An event from ten years ago can torment me now. The brain recalls a strong impact repeatedly whether I want it to or not.

The Dream of Being Drafted Again

I entered the military later than most. For almost ten years after discharge, I sometimes dreamed that I had already completed service but was being drafted again. In the dream, the rule had changed and I had to enlist once more; feeling horribly wronged, I went through training and military life again. It was in the past when I woke, but in the dream it was the present.

Strong experiences alter the brain and body. Some memories among them do not easily disappear and remain powerful enough to dominate everyday life. I used the word PTSD but added that I was not claiming a diagnosis identical to the professional meaning of the term. The point was that a past event can continue to operate as a present response.

One Curfew Order from My Father Held My University Life Captive

When I entered university, I expected that I would finally live freely. Our family had little money; I went to school with only bus fare, no lunch money, and worked part-time. Yet from the first day my father ordered me to “do nothing foolish and come home by nine, no matter what.” I felt wronged because my situation differed from my friends’, and the words lodged heavily in my chest.

I did not actually obey the curfew, but carried both the burden of disobedience and anger over why he had given such an order. I repeatedly recalled one sentence that had already been spoken and ruined my first year at university. It was my concrete experience of failing to let one day’s trouble be enough for that day.

The Young Monk Who Could Not Put Down the Woman

A viewer brought up an old story about two practitioners crossing a stream. A woman unable to cross asked for help, so the older monk carried her to the other side and put her down. The younger monk walked on in distress, caught by the thought, “How could a monk carry a woman?” The teacher said, “I put her down back there, but you are still carrying her.”

The story commands us to let go, but I asked another question: why can we not put things down? It is not enough to instruct people, “Live in the present.” We must understand why the shock inflicted by my father troubled me again the next day and why the injustice of military service appeared in dreams ten years later.

Can a Command Erase a Wound That Grows Every Time It Is Recalled?

Jealous suspicion between spouses, conflict between parents and children, a friend’s betrayal, fraud, and violence can grow larger with every recollection. An event from twenty or thirty years ago can make the body heat as though it happened today. Thought does not stop because someone says “do not think about it.” Memory and emotion are not simple switches of will.

We must first abandon the idea that we can control everything. People easily say, “I can do anything if I set my mind to it.” But one who has observed how mind and body respond to conditions will not conclude that the self is a perfect controller. This does not mean change is impossible. It means that change too occurs by forming conditions, repeating actions, and being affected by impact.

How My Attitudes Toward Cigarettes and Alcohol Were Conditioned

I had stopped smoking for about eight months and had begun again. One way of quitting is repeatedly conditioning oneself with “this truly harms the body”; another is the great shock of recognizing that my father died because of cigarettes and that I too could die from them. Knowledge alone may not be enough; the brain and body need conditions that register the danger as real.

My aversion to alcohol developed similarly. My father drank throughout his life, and for years I watched alcohol lead him to hurt people around him. Alcohol therefore brought my father to mind. The pleasure of a gathering may be fine, but whenever I saw someone lose control and harm both self and others, the response “alcohol does this to people again” accumulated. Within those conditions, I stopped drinking.

Consciousness and the Body Say Different Things During Drowsy Driving

We may know intellectually that falling asleep on the highway can kill us, while the body feels that sleep is safe because the car is quiet and the road runs straight. Surface consciousness says, “This is dangerous,” but the body’s response says, “It is quiet; you may rest.” We then need actual stimulation—slapping the cheek, singing, opening a window, hearing sound—to tell the body that we are moving and in danger.

This example shows how simplistic it is to believe that the body always obeys the mind’s command. I remembered my father claiming that the mind could heat his hands and prayer could make rain. If one uses a mistaken understanding of “form is emptiness; emptiness is form” to believe that mind alone can do anything, one loses the foundation of Buddhism. We must distinguish a positive attitude from the illusion of omnipotence.

Observe, Question, and Think

The three things I repeatedly call the beginning and end of Buddhism are observation, questioning, and thought. A person who closely observes how the brain and mind work will not say, “I can move my mind exactly as I wish.” Sometimes we provide a shock, sometimes repeat a new habit, and sometimes recognize an arising response merely as a conditioned response and change gradually.

A command not to think about the past does not erase the past. First see the memory arising. Recognize that a brain altered through experience is replaying it as a response to a stimulus. Then question why the response occurs and think in terms of dependent arising about what conditions made it and how it might be resolved.

Were Feces Dirty from the Beginning?

I asked whether the smell of feces is inherently dirty to everyone. Does a newborn arrive already knowing the concept “feces are dirty”? At first a child does not know the cultural meaning of filth even when smelling it. Adults repeat “dirty,” and as the child learns hygiene, expressions, and language, the feeling itself becomes embodied. My son laughed at the mere mention of feces until he was three or four.

This does not tell us to believe that feces are clean. It tells us to see what has conditioned us and how. Standards of filth, rightness, goodness, success, and failure are also entered through repetition and experience. If we mistake an already conditioned response for absolute truth, the response drags us around.

See Self-Binding and the Effects of Positivity Together

A viewer said that one could train to turn the mind off and on like a switch, and discussion turned to autosuggestion and positive thinking. I did not declare them automatically bad. As the placebo effect shows, a positive expectation can exert a real effect on the body. It is also clear that living only inside negative thought is not healthy.

Yet we must understand even this as part of the response mechanism of mind and body. If positivity creates a new illusion—“I control everything”—we have not escaped self-binding. It is very difficult to notice that we have tied ourselves with a rope of our own making. I still observe myself producing emotions and judgments according to stimuli and what I have learned.

A Frog in a Well That Knows It Is a Frog in a Well

One may study vast amounts of Buddhism and philosophy and write fine literature, yet still fall into severe suffering or give up on life if one has not deeply understood one’s own reactions. The quantity of knowledge is not the depth of self-understanding. We must look at “What am I? What are these thoughts in my head, and what has conditioned me?”

I used the rough expression “an elementary school kid who knows he is an elementary school kid.” Only if I know I am a frog in a well will I avoid commanding another person to become a god; I will also avoid leaving that person to live without questioning. Someone who knows personal limits can help another notice their own.

I am merely a human being, an animal, and a living creature. I die if I cannot breathe and cannot levitate my body even one inch through mental force. I exist through dependent arising. Understanding this changes how I relate to people and how I try to help. I cease believing, as I once did, “If I just speak, everyone will understand.”

Why Prod Someone Who Says They Have Awakened?

When a viewer implied that there were many arahants around them, I sincerely asked for an introduction. In a world full of people who speak nonsense whenever they open their mouths and still claim awakening, I would like to question and test a real arahant and become friends. I do not dislike the declaration of awakening itself. I want to see whether understanding and life correspond to it.

Hyangbong Sunim said there is no rebirth, that we must live in this moment, and criticized customs that separate monastics from ordinary people as a status hierarchy and demand prostrations. I acknowledged those strengths and the ways he had broken an old frame. But I criticized him for still having much he did not know and for lacking enough skepticism to question the frame that conditioned him and what he believed he knew.

By contrast, I spoke very harshly of Jinje as a fraud, recalling that when I visited and asked whether his mind was quiet, he became angry and demanded to know why I was trying to measure him. I believed that turning awakening into authority and occupying a high institutional position under that authority harmed Buddhism. My criticism of Hyangbong was not the same kind of attack on the whole person; it acknowledged good parts while identifying specific shortcomings.

The Slogan “Live Now” Does Not Change a Life by Itself

I was not attempting to explain every verse of the Sermon on the Mount in this broadcast. There is enough material in one sentence for a complete video. I wanted to show why “leave yesterday in yesterday and do not worry about tomorrow” is difficult in actual life. Saying “Every encounter comes only once, so live now,” then scolding a person for being unable to do so, is not an explanation.

Worry cannot add an hour to life. Then why do we keep worrying? The next question cannot arise unless we observe ourselves. We must ask how the head and mind, and the images and concepts inside us, operate.

Jealous Suspicion, Betrayal, Sexual Wounds, and a Billiards Final

Suspicion that a spouse is unfaithful, a past betrayal, the memory of sexual harm, military experience, or anxiety over tomorrow’s task can make a person incapable of doing anything today. A billiards player who performs well every day may suddenly play terribly in a final with one hundred million won at stake. The skill has not vanished overnight; the meaning of the situation changes how mind and body operate.

We must first see whether we felt anger, injustice, depression, or joy today. Unless we examine where the emotion rose from, memorizing the phrase “live in the present” cannot bring it into real life. There are many slogans telling us to live now, but without the question “Why can I not live now?” there is no awakening.

Roh Moo-hyun’s Death and What Grips a Person

A viewer offered the humorous response that if a spouse cheats, one can blow out candles, dance, and wish the couple well. Something can be nothing to a person who regards it as unimportant, but drive someone mad if it feels like their whole life. Pathological jealousy shows this kind of mental grip.

I said that I liked former president Roh Moo-hyun for his humane and democratic qualities. This did not mean that I approved all his policies or state administration. I wished that a former president who seemed less driven by private profit and more human might remain alive and exercise a positive influence, but he died suddenly. If we assume it was suicide, I said, we must ask what had become so painfully lodged in his mind.

A person attached to money is caught by money; a person attached to honor is caught by honor; a person attached to sex and relationships is caught there. The central question is, “What catches me?” How does my head work, and what has conditioned it? Applying this inquiry to the reality of today’s life and changing that life is the Buddhism I wanted to discuss.

No One Else Can Practice Buddhism for You

Another person’s words can become a condition through which we hear a question. Yet each of us must ultimately understand how responses arise inwardly and proceed into action. Only then can we step out of the reaction called “me,” not in the sense of complete transcendence, but moment by moment. We see, “Ah, this is how I operate.”

The Process of Anger When Someone Questions Your Awakening

If someone bluntly asks, “Are you really awakened?” we may erupt in anger. Where does the anger come from? What inside me did the stimulus touch, and how did it burst out as emotion and speech? Looking into the entire process from the instant of being touched to the instant of expression is Buddhism from beginning to end.

A person attached to the image of being awakened receives a question as an attack. The person declares complete freedom yet does not see the self that wavers at one sentence. A question need not be a technique for humiliation; it can expose where a self-image is hiding.

My Life Was a Paradise of Trauma

Asked whether I had sexual trauma, I answered that not only sex but poverty, short stature, a face I considered ugly, and failed businesses made my life a “paradise of trauma.” I did not claim that all of it had now disappeared. The difference was understanding, “I am living in trauma.”

Many people instead imagine that they have escaped everything. Denying that they are animals and merely human, they try to become transcendent beings. A man is a human being with genitals; a woman is a human being with breasts; all are living beings dependent on conditions. Buddhism is not the act of transcending humanity, floating in the air, or becoming a god who reads another person’s mind.

We cannot fully know even one other mind. How then can we help others while failing to observe ourselves? A showy performance—striking a staff, blinking once, and announcing “I have conveyed everything”—does not help. We must understand as deeply as possible how we ourselves respond and share that understanding through conversation.

Why I Chose a Spicy Live Broadcast Instead of Polished Platitudes

A viewer said that the broadcast had become another source of fun and that they wanted to keep watching. I laughed that everyone had their own work and no one could watch forever. Meeting in this broadcast is also dependent arising; sometimes we meet inside mutual illusions and still affect one another. My words may hurt or stimulate viewers, or they may decide that I have not awakened at all.

I said that I did not want to converse only in flattering moral lessons and perfectly arranged words. If I see something else inside one sentence from a viewer, I answer roughly to provide a stimulus. The taste may be too spicy, and the language has the less polished quality of a live broadcast. Yet the conversation comes alive when viewers bring out their own stories.

Rough speech does not automatically become truth. I too am conditioned and can be wrong. The spicy expression is not a way to establish authority but a way to provoke a question. The purpose of this broadcast is not to make people believe me but to make them turn and look at their own minds.

The Illusion That One Zen Exchange Can Transmit Awakening

As I was about to end, I found an earlier video in which I had criticized Hyangbong Sunim and played part of it. Korean Buddhism contains a notion that a person must answer a question immediately and without hesitation to prove awakening. I criticized this culture of Zen exchanges as a cliff that may actually block Buddhists and monastics from becoming buddhas.

What Happens If You Take One More Step from the Top of a Hundred-Foot Pole?

In Hyangbong Sunim’s video, a monk visited and asked, “What happens if you advance one more step from the top of a hundred-foot pole?” Anyone who has studied a little Buddhism may know this koan. Hyangbong answered in the style of a Zen exchange and tried to convey something instantly. I questioned the form and the assumption behind it.

The belief that everything must be transmitted in one blow through a Zen exchange is itself a frame. When a stranger brings an unfamiliar question, it is an exaggeration to imagine that a short, clever response can reveal that person’s life and conditioning. If questioner and respondent share a code and understand each other through a long relationship, one sentence may serve as a shock. But a special condition cannot be made into a universal method of transmission.

Critical Thought Is Not the Prejudice of Automatic Denial

A viewer said that distrusting and denying one’s intuition could also be prejudice. I answered that critical thought is not automatic denial; it examines the grounds and content that can be criticized. I asked people to watch my video telling them to discard Zen exchanges and see which claims and examples I actually criticized.

When someone said a teacher could use a Zen exchange to test a student, I asked why it had to be a Zen exchange. If I conversed with viewers only through such riddles, would the meaning reach them? Even being a direct disciple of Jesus or the Buddha does not guarantee right conduct or accurate transmission. We must see actual understanding rather than relying on lineage and the word “direct.”

I Criticize Words That Damage Buddhism, Not Because I Hate the Person

My criticism of Hyangbong Sunim did not rest on one clip. I watched several videos and heard him repeatedly declare that he was awakened and that anyone could bring a question and he would demonstrate that awakening. Such a declaration may come from fraud, or at least from an experience strong enough to make a person speak that way. I do not forbid the declaration itself. I look at whether the person remains inside that experience and believes it is the whole.

One can remain in meditation, a Rajneesh-like experience, or a single doctrine and mistake it for the entirety of Buddhism. If a person stops at what was gained without knowing that they remain a frog in a well, confidence in awakening becomes another delusion. I had heard many people say admirable things, but still had not met someone who gave me the sense of deep awakening. That was why I repeatedly said I would like to meet one.

I Did Not Criticize Hyangbong in the Same Way as Jinje

I acknowledged that Hyangbong’s words and life contained good things and that he was admirable as a human being. I criticized not his entire character but points I considered mistaken in Buddhist understanding, such as his faith in Zen exchanges and insufficient skepticism. Words and actions reveal the conditioning of a person; I said that I perceive that pattern and then explain it through logic.

I judged Jinje very differently. I cursed him as a fraud who used awakening as the authority of power and lineage and sat in a position of institutional prestige. I continue to criticize Seongcheol’s fixation on meditation not to torment a dead individual but because false perceptions surrounding him still sicken Korean Buddhism. The claims of living people must likewise be judged by their social effects.

Laughter When I Learned I Was Watched Alongside Cheongong and Hongik Hakdang

I also attacked Hongik Hakdang very harshly, saying that it was problematic from alpha to omega and that people should stay away. A viewer then said they watched Cheongong, Hongik Hakdang, and my broadcast. I burst out laughing, saying I had suddenly awakened to the fact that I was being placed in the same category as Cheongong. It was a moment in which the information environment and standpoint from which the viewer heard me suddenly became visible.

Wolin Seonwon also came up at the end, but it was too late and I postponed it until another day. The brief laughter repeated the argument of the entire broadcast. I do not transmit meaning through my intention alone. The listener’s experience, previously watched channels, expectations, and standards may group my words into an entirely different meaning. We must therefore stop assuming that we have transmitted something and continue checking one another’s conditions.

See the Self of Today Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

The Sermon on the Mount says to leave tomorrow’s worry to tomorrow and let a past day’s trouble be sufficient for that day. Yet I recall an event from ten, twenty, or thirty years ago as though it happened yesterday, and I worry today about a year from now, ten days from now, and tomorrow. Why? Before asking someone else to answer, we must direct this question fiercely toward ourselves.

Do not stop at commanding yourself not to recall the past or memorizing positive statements. Observe the emotion and bodily response arising now, question why it arises, and think about the relations and conditions that created it. Only through this process can “do not worry about tomorrow” enter actual life.

We may not completely eliminate today’s suffering within today. Trauma and conditioned reactions cannot be erased at will. What matters is not lying that we have transcended them but seeing, “This is how I respond.” As that understanding accumulates, we can gradually loosen the force that automatically drags us into past and future.

Worry cannot add even an hour to life, but the command not to worry cannot stop the mind. Observe what moves inside you today, ask why it moves, and think about the conditions that made it. That process itself is the Buddhism of living today.