[vinceguidry]

Americans are in the habit of treating all goals as achievable in a systematic manner and to break down all obstacles into simply more things to learn and apply. With materialistic and worldly goals this works very well.

However by ignoring the soft needs of self in favor of the hard needs of ego, one applies the above methodology right up until their psyche falls apart because there's nothing left holding it together. The ouroboros runs out of tail to eat.

And Buddhist tenets, as understood by Westerners, don't help. Anatta, the doctrine of no-self, does not mean you can just ignore the needs of your psyche! It means your self is illusory, constantly changing. Illusions, have rules! They're durable, they don't just go away because you naively decided they don't matter anymore.