Questions Questions

Are we born on the face of the earth for our own enjoyment, or to carry out some duties or to let fate and god take their own turn, or to just while away our time, or to create our own paradises or our own hells? What is that enjoyment we are seeking which is the ultimate joy? Self esteem, ego, pride or self actualisation? Do we necessarily need to etch our names in the books of history for times to remember us? Whose names are we going to put in? Is this name which we are using - with this flesh, bones, muscles and the face we are using as a guise - the real us? If yes, then how is this going to help us become a part of history if all this is not going to stay forever? How are we going to enjoy history remembering us if we are not around to see that happening? If this is not us then who are we? What really qualifies us as an individual? Our consciousness? Our soul? Or our brain and the electricity in it? Are we humans in some way immortal and omnipresent and continuing forever in some form or other? Or are we just a tiny passing phase in the history of the earth and the universe? All this intellect we have, all this thought process and shredding of issues so analytically really something unique in the scheme of the universe? Or is it a primitive form of brain functioning when seen from some other's point of view? Do we need to know where we came from or do we just try to stay alive and exist? Why do we want to exist? To be immortal? Why are we afraid of dying, terminated? What happens to 'us' after death? Will I ever find a solution to these questions, or I too, like thinkers of the past, have to live with a compromise solution? Is physically, mentally, spiritually possible to find when all this began and where all this will end, without making any compromises, hallucinations or self fulfilling prophesies? Did Buddha really find out something or was it just another compromise solution rationally justifiable to ordinary men? Do ordinary men need to find an answer to these questions or should they simply take life as it comes?