Meditation: "Naming a Breeze"

For some reason, this thought came to me this morning during my meditation: Wouldn’t it be silly if we decided to give names to parts of a spring breeze? I imagined going out to Wilcox Park and watching the wind blow through the trees and saying, “Well, I’ll name the breeze in the upper part of the oak tree Jimmy, and I’ll name the breeze in the lower part Marie, and now the breeze in the lower part has changed, so I’ll have to rename it and ....” It would obviously be a nightmare, an utterly impossible task. The breeze in the park is not a distinct entity, but is part of something vast, part of the great wind that’s blowing through Westerly, which is part of the grand, unified weather pattern that’s constantly passing across the earth. Only a fool would seriously think he could isolate and study individual breezes. I began to wonder, then, whether it might be equally foolish to take seriously our isolating and naming of any so-called separate, individual parts of the single, harmonious universe. It’s strange, for instance, that the name “Hamilton Salsich” is used to actually identify me, as though all I am is a relatively tiny, distinct, unattached “piece” of the universe. In a very real way, that’s as silly as sitting on the hilltop in the park and saying, “Oh, there goes Julia” as a small breeze passes across my shirt. The truth is that the person referred to as “Hamilton Salsich” is not separate, not isolated, not solitary, but is always an inseparable and indivisible part of the infinite universe. I think and feel and do things because the universe thinks and feels and does things. The great system of winds blows across the earth, moving the breeze in the oak tree in the park, and the vast arrangement of the universe (sometimes referred to as “God”) dances in its eternal and harmonious way, moving the life called “Hamilton Salsich”. Don't get me wrong -- I like my name. I use it to make things convenient for me, but I realize, all the while, that it’s just a utilitarian label for something that can never be detached, explained, and named.