Leave everything. Everything. Empty yourself. What remains? This means entering the realm of the subconscious, challenging the one and only, greatest opponent of them all: the human mind. Your mind. This is the supreme challenge, the very tip of the mountain that every man or woman in this world should aspire to reach. Having reached that level of self-awareness that enables you to aspire to Buddahood means renouncing to your individuality as you know it. Why? Because the mind has to reach the true essence of the self, the never-changing atman which is the opposite of our materialistic, superficial, ever-changing bodily self. One of the greatest teachings (one among the many great teachings) of ancient indian (vedantic) philosophy is that human consciousness is characterised by the existence of oppositions (good and evil, night and day, etc.) THE TRUE PURPOSE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE IS TO UNLOCK THE POTENTIAL WHICH RESIDES IN THE MIND, which can be done when the mind reaches the soul, ATMAN. This is the only way by which one can escape the circle of births and re-births that keeps the soul in this world. Until the soul is not ready to reach Nirvana, it will keep on coming back.  The only way to reach the only real purpose of life, or state of liberation, or salvation, is to renounce to everything. Remember the song "imagine", by John Lennon?

Imagine no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.

I mean, do you guys realize how ahead of his time this guy was? He was describing the future of humanity. Because the realization of John Lennon's dream is the only way the human race can escape the circle of death brought by the craving of the material. Our aspirations have to be towards the reign of the mind, of self-awareness, away from the our material bodily state. Of course this is an incredibly tough path to follow, but we must achieve it. And what is the biggest obstacle to achieving that state of self-awareness of the human mind in today's society?

I will tell you what it is: it is the pre-confectioned happiness which is force-fed and sold to people in the Western society. It is the reason why traditional capitalism doesn't work. It's MTV, its Cristiano Ronaldo, its Nesquick, its the cheap Homer Simpson-faced flip flops that are being produced by slaves in the Laogai's in China and then are imported by the big western corporations and sold to western consumers. Its the brainwashing that we receive every day, on the tube when we go to work, on the tube when we get back home, on the tv when we turn it on, on youtube when we watch a video, on the sides of our Facebook wall where we are updated every second about what shoes our friend just bought, or just how waisted our other friend got at the party on Friday night. Disinformation. That is what they rely on to keep us stupid. Bombarding us with disinformation.

In a capitalist society the powerful and the decision-making individual (i.e. corporations' shareholders and government officials) wants to retain learns from a young age that his only aspirations are related to the material (become wealthier),

The capitalist (or oligarchs) in a capitalist society, by appropriating social status to the average consumer,  creates and shapes the individual. Social engineering. This shit has been going down for a looooong time now. But more on that in future posts.