Zen Afternoon

Butterflies, trees, a slight breeze, and the distant roar of jet planes; this is the Zen of a Miami afternoon. There is a sense of being connected to all things when contemplating a cloudless sky in the center of a metropolis. Miami is particularly good for this type of contemplation, because no matter how much time passes, minutes, hours or years, there is a similarity, a tone, a unique sense of "now" connected with this place.

As I sit in my living room on this 6th of May 2009, I am transported back to my grandmother's porch just two miles south of here, but 30 years in the past. The same sky, the same trees and butterflies, even the same distant roar of jet planes. It would seem that nothing has changed. But, of course, almost everything has changed, even myself. It's enough to give one a taste of the eternal.

This afternoon, my awareness arises concurrently with the breeze against the trees outside. Although I can capture this moment forever in word and picture, it is forever fleeting and gone, forever arising and new. Like the traffic passing by on Okeechobee road, there are starts and pauses, noises and silence. Each moment is a snapshot between changes of the signal.

Every change results in the arising of a new pattern. However, no matter how much change there is, there is always a sense of place, here, and of time, now. Here and now, whether in 1979 or 2009, it is all the same: a May Afternoon in Miami.