Think man, live: Cogito ergo sum.

In the 1980’s Buddhism was “a must” for the fashion-conscious in the West. It was the groovy cult to embrace; the saffron robe being such a cute garment. Since then, Buddha’s fashionistas have declined in number. Nirvana is now out of reach with chants and sexual abstinence all but forgotten by Western followers of Buddhism in old Europe and America where it once flourished in the soft humus of endemic bigotry.  Today, just a small group of nostalgic harcores remain. 
Fashion-generated Buddhists of today miss the flowery ambivalent feeling of purity and worldly detachment (never earnest) as they survive in the dirt of asphyxiating cities. Most of this movement’s declared adepts were and still are, fraudulent, for our western society is geared to the violent Abrahamic religions. The practice of contemplation/meditation, translates as “weakness” in the west,  not in tune with “the survival of the fittest” ethos and liberal ideologies. 
The ones that remain, floating around our cities, are vegetarians. At any restaurant they make it known. Smug to be different from the pack, they can’t help in our modern society avoiding animal proteins hidden furtively even in their ice-cream and they know it well.
Recently in Onanistan  [nothing to do with Hussein Obama's country] I came across the phenomenon of a local adept who does not know actually where his allegiance lays; with a platonic deity, a vengeful god or with an obese fashionable flabby tummy Buddha?  I can’t help but wonder what makes people, (supposedly intelligent people), embrace another faith; in this instance, trading the sclerotic Christian Orthodoxy for the soft-bellied ethics of a Buddha? In the present case it might simply be in the gene pool of this country to emulate India just like their forefather of the 4th century B.C.E did with the Indian gynosophist whose knowledge the Great Hellenes recycled with the success we all know. 
Buddhism has its incompatibilities. It is ludicrous to pretend to abide by Buddha’s code of conduct while being a closet gay or a traveling salesman, even in Onanistan. Why this deliberate ignorance of the rational? Why to forsake reason? Why want to escape the harsh real world of pain and pleasures by yielding to a myth? Why not enjoy to the utmost, dynamically [which precludes Epicurian  passive conception of pleasure in the absence of pain] the life we have been given in order to trade it for the promise of Nought, of Nirvana, it sounds as unexciting as a Christian Paradise. “Paradise” - we all have visited it already, before birth, remember? Wasn’t it fun when we were not. Think man, live: Cogito ergo sum.
 

No need to read Julian Barbour or listen to Roger Penrose to get the message on the still uncharted dimensions of Time enclosing destiny. Our paths in life do not lead to Nirvana unless Nirvana is a question of semantic confusion. My Nirvana being past-present-future, in an inclusive package to be manipulated like a colourless Rubrick cube. Our times are ubiquitous in Time; it is a very interesting intricate maze featuring tears and joys. In its multidimensionality our paths are curved like a le Goff painting or closer to felicity like Carla Bruni’s curves today; ephemeral, swift passing flashcards of our present, curving our curriculum vitae onto the next card already passed. The pack of cards is us in life and death; it interacts with all the other packs ad vitam aeternam. The cards are dealt. It’s written already, “Mektoub” says an obscurantic blood-thirsty faith which at least got this one right. Just live your instants through, take the right turn when you must. I can’t wish you good luck; it is irrelevant, its irrelevance foretold already.
I am today in Oz land. Buddhism awaited for me in the cards most unexpectedly. Not to convert me to everlasting serenity but to satisfy my senses and offer a hypothetical return on investment at Sotheby’s. 
Tucked away in a back yard two wooden Luohan figures From Yunnan province, of the early Quing dynasty, escaped from The Bamboo Temples, smiled at me beatifically.
These carved tree trunks waited for centuries for the French man dressed in shouting colours to take them for a walk, to give them a more dignified pedestal, to give them a push off their serenity. They have had enough in Nirvana.
They, in a muted confession, told me that they wouldn’t mind to visit an auction room  for a hefty improvement in their worth, for they felt quite under-appreciated since they had left China. Even in Nirvana vanity survives.