I’m not a Buddhist, a practitioner of religious origination, so may answeres won’t be any help to you.

We are all Buda’s – potential for Buda consciousness, Christ Consciousness, Philosophers Stone, The Still Point – All same.

Why do you believe there is suffering within our world? – The price of Consciousness/being awake

How does this impact the way you live your life? Life happens; you can say No to it or say Yes it, how you answered will influence your experience and story you create for yourself.

What do you believe happens after you die? Return to the collective unconscious

What do you believe your purpose in life? That for most people such questions will only lead to despair so ought not be asked – Unskillful question – notice that when you ‘feel’ purposeful, like joy, you never ask the question, you just are.

Please explain how being a Buddhist and following their traditions answers the ultimate question of the meaning of life? Life has no purpose/meaning, each of us IS meaning/purpose and we bring it to Life! There is no point in asking the question when YOU are the answer.  Go experience Life.

Recommend the book: Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How – Lewis B. Smedes

“What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our question must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual” – Viktor Frankl

Frankl concludes that the meaning (Purpose) of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death

The search for purpose can only lead to despair. It is like hoping to win the lotto when you never by a ticket and still being disappointed.   Like searching for the glasses your already wearing. You can’t search for something when you are IT.

The world would be a happier place if we just forgot about this idea of purpose.

I have seen to many people get hurt when they don’t respect when someone they care about has asked them not to contact them again. (After having all the usual post break up conversations, drama and such. There are usually at least three such encounters – three strikes and your out.)

If you keep calling and telling her you are getting help and going to change, bla, bla, bla… It might work for a time but the odds are against the relationship working out.

If you feel that you need to change then you must do that for yourself and not place that burden onto her. Perhaps once the work is done you might call her, however you must be prepared to learn that she has moved on.

If in time she should wants to contact you, you must be careful that your ready as its likely you will fall back to old habits.  You can’t step in the same river twice.

A love can still be true even if Life requires a relationship to end.

The only way to stop thinking of someone is to stop thinking of them.  To stop dwelling on all the could of, should of and if only we can imagine.  Thus, the practice of Buddhism to let go of the past. And you will… or you wont

The trick is not to beat yourself up when you do find yourself thinking of her. Just notice the thoughts and let them pass through.

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” -Seneca

“The most painful state of being is remembering a future, particularly the one you’ll never have.” – Kierkegaard

I was just listing to Clarissa Pinkola Estes telling the story of Skeleton woman.  Theater of the imagination

I won’t go into details but the story reminds us that phycological ‘death’ is a necessary part of relationship.  When we enter relationship, the task is to learn and grow and that takes a lot of ‘dying’

If I was asked what is the most important quality two people need to have in relationship I would say the ability to learn, and ability not to panic in those times when you don’t like the person you love.

http://www.apjq.org/en/Lecture%20-%20The%20Skeleton%20Woman%20-%20Final%20version%20-%20Nov%202011.pdf

You might find the following book helpful

How to Be an Adult in Relationships by David Richo

“Most people think of love as a feeling,” says David Richo, “but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.”

Some of my best trips have been driving without a fixed destination open to new discovery. And in the discovery knowing what to explore and perhaps focus intention.

I can very much related to your existential conundrum.  At the end of my search for meaning and purpose I have concluded is a fool’s game. Seeking things like meaning, purpose and happiness is like trying to grasp water or air in a grasping hand. The reason is that such experience exists in there being not as something created.  We do no create happiness but notice it. It is only after noticing happiness that we reverse engender it.  When I did x, y, and z it creates such and such which I experienced as happiness. We think that if I keep doing x, y and z trying to recreate such and such I should always be happy. And we fail, as such doing can only end in failure and depressed. Purpose and meaning are the same. As long as we are seeking we are not finding. (To find we stop in the still point of the moment)

When most people talk about purpose they usually image something grand and because its grand easily recognizable… hopefully applauded by others that will marvel at their purpose. Most purpose and meaning that we will experience belong only to us that no one else might noitice.

In your driving metaphor of driving without a fixed destination you seem to assume that you must identify and ‘know’ your purpose or meaning (Not the same things) before getting into the car and driving anywhere – as only drives with a specific direction can have purpose and meaning?  You may be seeking to define your purpose and meaning before you actually live it, which might be backwards.

That may be the wrong quest/question as the experience (state of being) of meaning and purpose occur in the process of being and then only if ones eyes are open. Even driving without direction can become experiences of meaning and purpose!

Your angst may not be so much about meaning and purpose but in choosing a path and that is not the same as purpose or meaning. The problem seems to be that not just any path will due but that you must “know”  what the ‘right path’is before travailing it, a path that is certain, with certain expectations of purpose and meaning.  Certainty is nice but it tends to turn on you especially for those seeking meaning or purpose. Certainty can close a person off to discovering what is right in front of them.

My advice for what is worth is to refrain the questions your asking yourself and enjoy the drive.  With such openness the drive itself maybe an experience of purpose and meaning and point you to your path.  (which will be the one you were always on)

In my philosophical search for purpose, I end with Camus that all philosophical search ends in the absurd and the choice to laugh or cry. “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” ― Albert Camus

My end to the quest for meaning ends with Joseph Campbell

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”― Joseph Campbell

You are the answer! Even driving without a destination is meaning, is purpose, when eyes are open. Open to wonder, open to bliss….

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”― Joseph Campbell