The body only exists in the present moment; it doesn’t wander off into the past or the future. This might seem like an insignificant truism; however, when we start to look at our lives closely, we find that much of our difficulty and distress arises from dwelling on re-creations of the past – either positive or negative – or on hopes and worries about the future.

Despite the fact that, to the thinking mind, the past and the future seem like vast and solid realities…the closer we look at the experience of our life as it actually is, the more we see the past and future as hollow fabrications. They are mere memories and anticipations; it is rather the present that is vast and all-encompassing, and full of useful possibilities…. If we are trying to inhabit an imagined future or a reconstructed past, how can we possibly attune to the orchestra of life in the here-and-now?

Ajahn Amaro, “The Body of Truth” in Michael Stone (ed) Freeing the Body.