All the Zen stuff about live in the "now" maybe is equivalent to "only suffer right now's suffering; don't make up more 'suffering'."

The unpleasant "thoughts" are the issue. Those are the ones we're supposed to ignore. Those are the problematic ones. Those are "worries". You can have as many as you want because you can project into the ways things can go in the future in an infinite number of ways. All of which is literally pointless.

If you want some challenging thinking to do, ask: what should I be thinking about.

If you have a knee ache, that's part of your "now" suffering allotment. If you have a friend who seems mad at you about something or you might not be able to rely on this money over here... you can quickly be convinced that feeling worried about that is pointless.

But to an extent, you already feel just a bit about it, which gets all your brain chemicals going. Which generates all kinds of feelings that may themselves amplify.

Your allotment of things to worry about now is tiny:

• That branch might fall on me.
• I'm really really hungry.
• There might be a tiger.

All those checked off as not a problem? If so you can carry on with your day.