O Worldly men! How fatal is your delusion! Inevitably your body will crumble to dust, yet carelessly, unheedingly, ye live on.

Satanism has certainly instilled in me a preference and insight into the philosophy of living in the now to the greatest possible extent. I look at this statement purportedly made by the Buddha and I immediately think that the person that is able to make this observation should clearly see the wisdom of carpe diem. We do not live under a delusion, we know that the world is constantly changing, that those things that please us will inevitably turn out to be nothing but shadows and dust, atoms and void. But that is enough for us. There are those, and perhaps in some respects I am a member of this group, that would prefer to get the most out of the here and now. Some don’t see the value in abstaining from life in pursuit of something that doesn’t seem like more than an empty promise.

Perhaps Satanism reawakened some previous militant atheism and doubt in my life but I can’t help but think that the Buddha was the one being deluded here. Why shoot for something past the stars when we can sit and enjoy the view instead? What evidence is there for this enlightenment, this Nirvana? I used to think that the promise of Buddhism sounded so much more appealing than any of the other yarns which religion has so far spun.

But now I am realizing my misjudgment- they are all yarns, they are all just stories. What makes Nirvana and enlightenment any more plausible or possible than any other form of the afterlife? I have always thought that the idea of Heaven was fanciful, hopeful, and romantic. But I have never thought it to be true, I have never thought that there was some mythical place out there where we all vacate to once we have shuffled off. But with Buddhism, it was the first time I heard of an afterlife as a place where we no longer have desires, where we find what truly sustains us and makes us happy. Not just a bigger and better version of what we already experience.

As a guy that spends a lot of time fussing over what he needs to feel happy and adequate, this formulation of the goal of Buddhism has always piqued my interest. But since my recent brush with unforgiving rationalism in Satanism, I cannot shake the obvious parallels with other stories that I think are just that- improbable stories we use to consul ourselves. A reward for being obedient and obstinate.

It seems Christopher Hitchens just won’t get out of my mind. “We are afraid of the dark,” he says. “And we are afraid of dieing.” So we craft stories to help us cope with passing away from that which we truly live for- Material. Substance. Life.

To Mr. Hitchens’ list I would add one more- we are afraid of losing that which makes us happy. We leave all those things behind which we used to enjoy in favor of that which supersedes this world in peace, fulfillment, and happiness.

But inevitably I think it is something which, sadly, is not there. It is a “gentle lie”. This is why we who live in the here and now aren’t the ones being deluded. We know how little time we have, how fast it can pass us by, and how everything is doomed to change. We try to make the most of it, and if we were all just a bit more responsible with our personal and environmental ethics we would make this great trip last a bit longer.

Though this ceaseless quest to find fulfillment in impermanent things does seem to create lots, if not all of, our suffering. It still seems that it requires just as much faith as any of the other religions we practice, and I don’t think I have any left after last month. I hope I don’t sound too cynical, Buddhism does make a very intriguing and intuitive point.

I just don’t think I have the strength to leave behind what I love, and that seems to be essentially what the Buddha did, and what would be required to understand Buddhism.