Well, I offer up my belated Holiday thoughts, as we pass another "Birth of a really nice guy who said wise and true things, and then later on got nailed to two pieces of wood for it" Day. I spend my Xmas cleaning, and then later reading by thge light of the fireplace, trying to understand the Buddha a bit better. But my thought delivered now was given to me by Joseph Campbell:

"Two completely opposed mythologies of the destiny and virtue of man, therefore, have come together in the modern world. And they are contributing in discord to whatever new society may be in the process of formation. For, of the tree that grows in the garden where God walks in the cool of the day, the wise men westward of Iran have partaken of the fruit of eternal life. However, the two limbs, we are informed, come together at the center of the garden, where they form a single tree at the base, branching out when they reach a certain height. Likewise, the two mythologies spring from one base in the Near East. And if man should taste of both fruits he would become, we are told, as God himself (Genesis 3:22) -- which is the boon that the meeting of East and West today is offering to us all."

- The Masks of God: Oriental Philosophy