Perfect Zen - Aug 9 2026

 

Perfect Zen

Aug 9 2026



It’s true, we live in the perpetual present;

most everything has changed

but it’s still “now”

and will always be.

How paradoxical

to combine those two words,

since nothing is forever

and now

too fleeting to measure.

A perpetual present

when time stops,

the past has been lost,

and the future

is merely theoretical. 

Because isn’t it always so?

Nonexistent,

except for what you fear

or wish for.

I marvel at such stillness.

Breathe out, and forget your last breath.

Close your eyes, and let the sun stop

just where it is

earth no longer spin.

Assume the position

and hold yourself there,

an inanimate object

undistracted by thought

or rumination.

Distil down time

smaller and smaller

to the fundamental particle

you fully inhabit,

indivisible

and infinitely small.

Where no now becomes then,

no future beckons,

and there’s no reckoning

or ultimate end.

The perfect Zen

of unfettered existence. 

I saw those two words, and immediately thought that while life feels that way, it would also have to be timeless for “perpetual present” to be true. 

And don’t those two concepts contradict: “perpetual” implying something infinite, while “now” is indivisibly small?

I suppose the only true perpetual present would be one in which you completely forget the past: when it would feel as if there was only a single “now”, not a continuous string of different ones. There’s a movie about this, and for the protagonist it’s more nightmarish and trapped than sublimely content and enlightened.

While life is a succession of “now”s, it’s only in the momentary one that you’re truly present. So, in a sense, there really is a perpetual now. Except that the “now” is always different and the only constant is you:  a pearl necklace of “now”s in which you are the string. 

Anyway, I started to noodle around with the phrase, almost immediately abandoned the effort — too bloodless a poem, the phrase stopped seeming as interesting, and I’ve already written to many about the passage of time — then eventually revisited and revised until I came up with this. I’ll leave it to you to decide if this poem was worth pursuing.

You could see it as having something to do with meditation. Which is not something I do; and when I’ve briefly tried, don’t do well. They call it “mindfulness”. But “mindlessness” seems more accurate to me for the state of detachment meditation ideally achieves.