How to deal with regrets and anxieties Shugendo-style

It’s hard to focus on anything but the current moment when you’re faced with a snowbank a couple hundred metres long.

It’s not that we’re ignoring our regrets or anxieties. They still exist. However, they can’t take precedence over the current moment, and we don’t let them either.

Yamabushi training constantly is constantly aimed at putting you in the moment. That’s because the current moment is all that exists.

Here, now, self.

One minute you’re focusing your footsteps on some precarious snowy cliff, the next you’re staring at a wall deep in meditation. There is no reading or writing, as these take you out of the moment. Similarly, there are no watches or clocks.

The past doesn’t matter. The past is now but a collection of memories. It adds up to the current moment, but it doesn’t exist.

The future doesn’t exist. Your anxieties about the future are not relevant when you’re focusing on being in the moment.

Focusing on the moment gives you that all important perspective needed to help deal with things that are all in our mind.