Once a few seekers came to an old Zen master.
"Master," one of them asked, "what do you do to be happy and content? I would also like to be as happy as you."
The old man answered with a mild smile: “If I lie, then I lie. If I'm getting up, I'm getting up. When I walk, I walk and when I eat, I eat."
The questioners looked around with some embarrassment. One blurted out, “Please don’t mock us. Whatever you say, we do too. We sleep, eat and walk. But we are not happy. So what's your secret?"
The answer was the same: “If I lie, then I lie. If I'm getting up, I'm getting up. When I walk, I walk and when I eat, I eat."
Considering the restlessness and displeasure of the seekers, the master added after a while: “Surely you also lie down and you also walk and you eat. But while you're lying down, you're already thinking about getting up. As you get up you think about where you are going and as you walk you wonder what you are going to eat. So your thoughts are constantly somewhere else and not where you are right now. The intersection between past and future is where real life takes place. Immerse yourself in this unmeasurable moment and you have the chance to be truly happy and content."
based on a Zen Buddhist parable