BUDDHA IN XCALACOOP

Walking the backstreets of nearby Xcalacoop in intense sunlight in which form, color and texture explode like emotions in a symphony, where ordinary things and people are so vividly gentle and transparent they seem like projections of perfection from some other place, my thoughts go like this:

Buddha taught that if one does away with desire, transcendent understanding and compassion arise. The promise of Buddhism lies in attaining peace, quiescence, emptiness...

In contrast, my own Nature-as-Bible spiritual insights based on the Six Miracles of Nature -- something coming out of nothing then lustily evolving life and then thought and then inspired thought, feeling and spiritual insight -- conceive of a Creator urgently, voluptuously and sometimes violently blossoming forth Creation.

Are my own beliefs based on the Six Miracles of Nature so at loggerheads with those of the Buddha, who so often has seemed exactly right to me?

In Xcalacoop's gaudy, raucous, gentle, gracious, beautiful backstreets somehow it occurs to me that the question is useless. The point is that as Buddha's placid approach leads to transcendent insight and boundless compassion, so do the teachings of the Six Miracles of Nature.

They are two paths that seem to go in opposite directions, yet they arrive at the same destination. Moreover, there's this:

On Xcalacoop's backstreets birds sing, wind blows, kids' kites soar, clouds drift above, dance music blares from radios, dogs smile, pigs pee in their pens, and somehow this is what it all says to me:

Not Buddha, not the Six Miracles, but the things themselves, right now... are the things themselves, right now, and nothing more really is necessary.