The Whole Shebang #2 by Dean Solon

this is the way it is:  i am living in heaven and in hell, at once.
this is where i am.  in one world.  here, now---heavenhell.
this is the whole shebang.  this is the whole works.  this is the context, is the content:
there is one world.  heavenhell.
the delight and the desolation.  the beauty and the banality.  the soaring and the scarring. 
heavenhell on earth.  our eyes witnessing. our minds perceiving, our hearts understanding:  drama, attachment, falling aside, falling away,
revealing no separation,
no stipulation, no condemnation.
revealing THIS...

this is the way it is:  wild world, wild life, a core place, a center, a conviction, where
peace and love and mercy reside, abide, transmit an experience and expression of
abundance and nothingness.
you have done yoga, you have meditated.  what have you found to be real and true, there?  what have you learned? 
what are you knowing, now?

this is the way it is:  the glory and the genocide.

no matter how much we bring our western sensibilities to buddhism, we cannot escape the predicament, we cannot eradicate the possibility, of what the Buddha has presented to us:  you are not becoming IT;  you are IT.
this is the way it is:  not becoming.
                                         being.
in nearly infinite time and space, where there is not-time, where there is not-space, there is, only, here now....there is being.

the universe is not waiting, this planet earth is not waiting, for us to become something.
the accelerated path is urging, is demanding, is insisting:
now, be something, be someone.
now, be the Buddha-self.

now, be awake.