I love it. Thank you for being honest with your readers about the questions you have on your mind.
Just like everyone is born a Buddha, everyone has nirvana within themselves already. Getting lost along the way is not only easy, it is close to impossible not getting lost along the way. We do have to crawl back every so often to stay in touch with our own Buddha, our own nirvana. But don't worry for not-having it: the essence stays with you forever.
Here is one part of advice: do not do your best trying to find yourself. If you didn't wake up in the same body this morning as you have since you were born, then, yes, go look for yourself. Otherwise, stop looking. You're there already.
Thank you for pointing out the sincere problems of our world. Overpopulation by humans comes to mind as a real problem. Suicide is not a good Buddhist solution to overpopulation, but birth control is. The pill got invented in the 1960s (1950s?), and look how slow we've been adopting it. We should have a world population today pretty much like we had in the 1970s, but we don't.
The reason is control.
The reason is control of the wrong kind.
Let me add some Catholic guilt to the story here because each of us is guilty of not having paid closer attention to the larger reality of our planet and the role we play as individuals with our choices based on what is good for the individual, or what appears to be good for the individual, or what happened to the individual by happenstance. We are not very good making decisions as an individual that is good for the larger community and the planet at large. But we can learn. Today is a good day.
So, stop undermining or praising Buddhism, and focus on today's needs because that is where your heart already is.
Our world needs new leadership. The old ways need not be thrown away, but we have to reinvent how we are organizing ourselves.
The individual is already empowered. Whatever the individual does helps decide the overall outcome.
But... the individual is small compared to the overall outcome, so we do need to communicate to one another, too, how we can improve ourselves collectively.
There are many ways to do that, and I hope you can find your way. Each of us has a way. Each of us can contribute (and doing nothing is one of the actions we can take : - ).
My way, and this is just an example, is to show that there are two forms of democracy: one is actually pretty mean and the other is benevolent but sometimes a bit weak. I hope to change the overall world by educating folks there is not a single form of democracy, but two. I want to liberate the folks that live in the wrong democracy.
* In winner-take-all, the ground rule is competition, and while this is an okay position to start out with, it is horrible if, for the sake of competition, forests are chopped down, large groups of people live in squalor, and folks are meaner than they need to be. There are plenty resources (still) for the entire world population, so we need not be this frantic, economically. Mother Nature would actually improve if we slowed down, economically.
* In equal representation, the ground rule is the voter and his or her political choice. That is a far better start already. There is still a clash, but at least everyone sits at the table of decision making. It means that the 40-hour workweek can, for instance, become a 28-hour workweek (nations with proportional voting and no president work fewer hours than other people), more vacation time, better health care, more human-based decisions.
By eliminating winner-take-all from this world, the world will become a better calmer place. Elimination can be done the German way where the US system was adopted but modified. Very smart of them.
But if we keep both systems, then the nicer system ends up competing with the competition system of winner-take-all, because in winner-take-all the race to the bottom is included and often decides the win.
We do not need strong leadership. We need good managers. We need a ground rule that is based on human values and on earthly values. The divine values are inherent, so they will come out all by themselves when we start with human and earthly values.
Good luck accepting your nirvana is already with you and that it can snow under by other things at times.
Yes, peace, I like it. Let's imagine what we can do when there is peace in the world and work on making it so.
Here is an article, if you like to meditate on the divine within yourself:
What God Used to Create Creation
https://fred-rick.medium.com/what-god-used-to-create-creation-8f4e2c1e85e9
