re: Correlation: Prayer out of schools to increase in mass shootings

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Focusing on the here and now isn’t all there is. If you have kids, you’re trying to do something in the here and now to make their future better. Doing those things well makes a lot of people happy. It isn’t always about instant gratification this way. Besides, planning for the future and making other’s lives better is a good way to enjoy our existence, higher power or not.

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You're both right and you're both wrong. The here-and-now should never be about instant gratification. It's the gratification is more of an Impulse that never satisfies just like reaching for the heavens and thinking about the future never satisfies.

When you can peacefully meditate in any given moment and slow down that moment allow yourself to reach out and feel in the moment, you become happier and more focused. Over time your awareness starts to increase.

Zen Buddhism has it down completely. If there's a way to live on Earth where you want to feel both the sense of purpose and a sense of impermanence and acceptance about that impermanence then that is your direction.