[NickGrass]

On one level I completely get the idea that everything is illusion (like a hologram or dream) - I like the concepts of no-self - emptiness - no-thing. That all emotions are dukkha. Everything is connected.

Actually, DF, the idea that it is all an illusion isn't quite what the Buddha taught. His angle on things is that we "see things through our own eyes" (as well as our other senses), and that the fact of our perspective, if not taken into account, can blind us to how things really are. A simple example is if we see an angry person, we might tend to view them as a threat and fail to see that their anger is suffering and that it has a cause that might be dealt with and maybe remedied in a better fashion than our going to battle stations out of out perception of "threat". The Buddha's take here is a practical matter, rather than a metaphysical speculations. Makes things a lot easier to understand.

The business about "emptiness" is also much simpler than so many make it out to be: What the Buddha said was that "all things are empty of self or anything pertaining to a self". This is an indictment of notions of self-view, status and ownership. It's like the ideas, "you can't take it with you when you go", and "things are just things", along with a reminder that we see ourselves differently from how other see us, and that our view of ourselves (and of others as well) tends to change radically from one set of circumstances to another. It is also an indictment of selfishness, self-centeredness, self-absorption, etc. Again, it is practical rather than metaphysical.

Sometimes I get stuck on the concepts of emptiness and illusion and the living of this human form in this lifetime.

Easy to become unstuck when you see things how the Buddha taught them, without the burden of metaphysical speculations that came into "Buddhism" long after the man we call "Buddha' passed.

And welcome to the group :-)