Hi everyone smile
Gawd, it feels like ages since I've posted - I apologise for that; everything's getting hectic with organising for traipsing off to uni soon XD

Anyway; I recently bought myself another Dalai Llama book, as really books are the only way i can get to grips with Buddhist methods and principles from monks/experienced practicioners (with teh exception of here of course). I got 'the path to nirvana', and I'm really having trouble with it. Everything seems so complicated and analytical - and this is a thing i've found in a lot of Buddhist teachings. there seems to be very little way of simplfying things, and I get drowned in all the facts. I know it's menat to be a scientific process of eliminationa dn discovery, but it's getting me down a bit.

Basically my problem is that whereever I look there is no step-by-step process of learning about Buddhism. Like such ideas as the emptiness of all things etc - I get so caught up in just trying to understand what the teachers actually mean that I feel i lose the real meaning behind the tecahing. I get stuck on the genreally anxiety that in reality everything is next-to meaningless (which i know in my heart of hearts not to be true), but because my mind is so confused on that subject, I can't advanmce to the point where it's ok for everything to be 'empty' - i can't find what the knoweledge of emptiness actually means for the way i look at the world or the way the world works and life works. All it seems to do is suck out a bit of hope.
I suppose it's hard for westerners especially since as a general rule they're brought up with the monotheistic all powerful "everyone is very important, unchanging and special" God. So to shake that off only seems to leave a void.

Yet equally i find a lot of hope in the interconnectivity of all things - a beauty in it- but 'emptiness' as a whole still reamins a hard hurdle to cross.

And that's not even starting on teh lack of guides to meditation, or how to move step-by-step through each realisation, as any new student of Buddhism i'm sure would be expected to do. there's not really any websites to help.

I know i'm just moaning really, and I'm sorry for that. But sicne Buddhism has become important to me - i can see the results of its teaching in its students and it's a really positive thing I've never seen in teh students of otehr religions - I wnat to do the best i can. I want to feel good about it, and at the moment i'm getting frustrated with my inability to grasp something important within it, which I can't seem to get a hold of.

Any advice?