A Musing on the Two Faces of Union
They both embodied grace—Buddha to the self, Jesus to the all.
Between them, the human spirit remembers how to breathe again.
I once believed reason was how we reached truth.
Now I see—it’s what prepares us to receive it.
Reverence begins where reason bows.
Across history, two stories stand like mirrors facing each other—
Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama.
One born into hunger, the other into plenty.
One descended into the world to touch what was broken.
The other left the world to see what was whole.
Between them, the human polarity completes itself.
Jesus and the Bread of Enough
Jesus lived among need.
He entered the ache of the world—not to escape it but to redeem its weight.
Every act of healing, every meal shared, every tear wiped clean
was a quiet refusal to let scarcity define existence.
His miracles were not interruptions of nature but restorations of it—
moments when love undid the illusion of lack.
In him, enough became a verb—something made real by presence.
His teaching was simple: adequacy is not achieved, it is shared.
To love another is to multiply the loaves.
To forgive is to feed the soul.
The Word became flesh so we would remember—divinity touches dust.
Siddhartha and the Breath of Enough
Siddhartha Gautama lived among want.
Born into privilege, he saw that pleasure could be another prison.
He walked away from inheritance, from indulgence, from identity itself.
Beneath the Bodhi tree, he did not gain something new; he remembered what cannot be taken.
Enlightenment was not the possession of light, but the absence of grasping.
In him, enough became a breath—something realized by release.
Each inhale a remembering of life; each exhale, a letting go of self.
To awaken is to breathe without clinging.
To see clearly is to be breathed by being itself.
The human form, he showed, is not a cage but a conduit—
emptiness breathing form so we would remember: humanity holds heaven.
The Thread Between Them
Between adequacy and sufficiency lies the human tension we call life.
One side asks, Have I done enough?
The other asks, Am I enough?
For years, I lived at one pole—striving to meet the world’s needs, proving my worth through usefulness.
Then I swung toward the other—seeking peace by detaching from what once defined me.
Reverence came only when I stopped swinging.
When I began to see both as true.
Adequacy without sufficiency exhausts.
Sufficiency without adequacy isolates.
Union holds both—the open hand and the open heart.
Jesus reminds me that the divine kneels.
Siddhartha reminds me that stillness rises.
Reason led me to compare them.
Reverence taught me to bow before both.
Both were sparks that never went out—
lights still waking us from the noise and distraction of this age.
Every time love overcomes fear, or awareness stills the mind,
we move once more from spark to still.
The Reverence of Becoming
Somewhere between the palm and the Bodhi tree,
the human soul learns this quiet truth—
enoughness is not balance; it is belonging.
It is the place where hunger meets stillness,
where giving and letting go become one act of grace.