"There are people who can't see the happiness of the present and think that life was more beautiful in the past. Many of us are caught in this way of thinking. The past is no longer there, but we compare it with the present. Even when we were living those moments in the past we didn't really value them at the time, because in the past we also weren't able to live in the present moment.

"There are other people who pursue the past because the past made them suffer. We have all suffered in the past, and those heavy wounds are calling us back: 'Come back to the past. You cannot escape me.' We can become like sheep running back to the past for it to enclose and imprison us, and make us suffer.

"Sometimes when we're sitting with a friend, we can feel abandoned by that friend, because our friend is drowning in the past. He is sitting next to us, but he's not really there. Suppose we find a way to free our friend from the past. We might ask him what he is thinking, or touch him gently in some way to remind him of the present moment. Then our friend may wake up and smile, and be free from the prison of the past.

"Sometimes we don't want to go back into the past, but the past grabs hold of us and pulls us back. We have to look directly into the past, smile at it and say, 'You can no longer oppress me. I am free of you.' The past is just a ghost. We know that the past is a ghost, but we allow the ghost to imprison us.

"Some of us run to pursue the future. But the future is another ghost. Why are we afraid of the future? Fear comes from our worry that this or that will or won't happen tomorrow. But the future is something that is not yet here. The future is never here. Once it's here, it's the present.

"When we live with a ghost we're not living alone, we're living with another. We eat a meal, but we have the ghost sitting alongside us. When we see a friend sitting with a ghost we can say, 'Who are you sitting with?' and perhaps that person will wake up. It's not just the ghosts of the past and the future that like to sit with us. In the present we have infatuations, attachments, feelings of sadness, and projects that take us away from the joy of the present moment. When we live with these things, we are not living alone; we are living with ghosts.

"The ghosts of the past and the future take away a lot of our freedom. We can become their slaves. They follow us and condition our life, and order us about. But if we know how to deal with them, we will never fall under their influence. We only have to smile at them. We only need to breathe and come back to our awareness of the present moment and say, 'Oh, I know you are a ghost.'

"Being aware in the present moment does not preclude our thinking about the past or the future. But we must still dwell in the present moment whenever we look deeply into the past or the future, so that we can be aware of any fear or sadness without being overwhelmed by it. According to the teachings of interbeing, the past makes the present, and the present makes the future. Being in touch with the present, we are already in touch with the past and the future.

"We're caught by the ghosts of the past and the future because we don't know they're ghosts. We think the past is still right here with us, and we dwell in it. But if we can smile to the ghost of the past, and acknowledge that the past was there, but that now it is gone, then we can have the smile of enlightenment. When we smile like that, it shows we have love for ourselves. We know the past and the future are not our enemies. We know how to live in this moment we are in right now. We need to live our daily moments deeply, as they occur. When we live and know that we are living, this is freedom."