Do you really find the Dhamma inspiring?

[ricebowl]

Sometimes a kind of standard, man on the street existentialist view of life seems more cheerfful in comparison. You live, you have some pleasures, you learn to deal with some inevitable pain the best you can and you die.

At least you aren't dealing with a mental map of learning to have a zeal for stamping out the pleasures in life.

Am I missing something appealing in the Buddhist cosmology to look forward to?

Thig 5.4
PTS: Thig 82-86
Nanda: Nanda's Vision
translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
© 1994

"Sick, putrid, unclean:
look, Nanda, at this physical heap.
Through contemplation of the foul,
develop your mind,
make it one, well-centered.

As this [your body], so that.
As that, so this.
It gives off a foul stench,
the delight of fools."

Considering it thus,
untiring, both day & night,
I, with my own discernment
dissecting it,
saw.

And as I, heedful,
examined it aptly,
this body — as it actually is —
was seen inside & out.

Then was I disenchanted with the body
& dispassionate within:
Heedful, detached,
calmed was I.

Unbound.

"Nanda: Nanda's Vision" (Thig 5.4), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, 8 August 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html . Retrieved on 20 September 2013.

[beeblebrox]

I think that's a bit funny. What is the body made of? It's only made of things that are already found on the earth...

It's only certain configurations of these that some people would claim are disgusting, and that some people would claim are beautiful. It's lame, actually... where's the sense in that?

I don't think the Dhamma is really inspiring in itself, technically. It's only what people make of it... I think it's what they do with it that makes it amazing, or not so amazing. It could go either way... or not at all.

How will you be when you encounter something (or become stuck with it) and many people say that it's uninspiring, or disgusting?

[Samma]

Inspiring as in "to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence"? Well only rarely, might read something and be struck with the importance of it, feel energized, and want to practice. Rather than inspiration being so important, consider the two terms bellow.

"The power of this aspiration depends on two emotions, called in Pali samvega and pasada. Very few of us have heard of them, but they're the emotions most basic to the Buddhist tradition."
samvega - "oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it's normally lived"
pasada -"clarity and serene confidence." It's what keeps samvega from turning into despair." (Thanissaro)

Here is one section I read over and over...maybe it will do something for you?
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html

[befriend]

there is what some might call a taste of nibbana right here right now. let go of wanting a pleasure, wanting a pleasant mental state, wanting to be somewhere in the future, and let go of not wanting to be where you are. all thoughts will fall away and you will enjoy a peaceful content abiding.