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Hello everyone,

It has been only three days since i joined this forum and here i am asking questions again, i am so sorry for that but as you know the beginning is always hard. I already started reading books and listening to audio files provided by other members, i also started practicing meditation (not very successful though).

I will try to organize my thoughts in three main points:

1- Have any of you experienced fear at the beginning? have you felt that its too risky to become buddhist? Let us have a look at what sort of things you have to give up to become a buddhist:

A- To abandon my ego: maybe the ego can cause suffering and can be troublesome somtimes, but it still mine and i have been identifying myself with it my whole life, and what is the substitution: something incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it! and there is no guarantee that i will ever get there (or it may take me many lifes!)

B- To give up passion: according to existentialists, being passionate about something is the only way to have a subjective meaning to your life in a meaningless world.

C- To liberate myself from desires: how dry and boring my life could be without desires?

So is it too risky to become a buddhist (considering things that you have to give up)? have you guys expeirenced this sort of fears? what is the best way to control them?

2- One of the most interesting concepts in psychology is "cognitive dissonance" which is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. To have better understanding please read the following story:

"Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves"

Could that be the case with buddhism (renouncing material stuff when you cannot attain them)? does that explain why buddhism flourished in poor countries and started to decline when economies in asia started to boom?

Buddhism asks us to drop our ego, so is it possible that the dropper is the ego (in a more subtle/cunning/harder-to-detect way)? is buddhism another way for the ego to strengthen itself (so instead of calling people poor/lazy/failures we call them modest/ content/spiritually rich which is quite fulfiling for the ego)!

3- (this question might sound strange to some) last night i was watching Tv and then i started to look at my nephews playing around, chasing each other and laughing out loud! then i started to wonder why kids (generally speaking) happier than adults! isnt it because they do what buddhism tells us to do? they live in the present moment (they dont think much about past and future), they dont have complex ego and they are quite simple and happy , then i started to think about newly born babies who dont have ego at all, they dont think at all yet they are conscious beings, they see things as they are without interpretation, judgement and they dont take things personal. As such, is it safe to assume that we are all born somehow enlightened untill adults/society spoil us?

Finally, once again i apologize if my posts are a bit long, but i dont have any buddhist temples or buddhist communities in my country and i have been looking for so long untill i found this forum.

Cheers