Buddhism makes my brain hurt

The problem with Buddhism, I find, is that while the face of it is often relatively appealing - the serene temples, the earnest looking monks, the chanting and incense that is not a million miles from old style Catholic or High Church services - the fundamental ideas seem more conducive to nihilism than providing a solid basis for acting ethically.  

I bring this up because my post on the robot priest in a Kyoto temple apparently recites (or talks about?) the Heart Sutra, which is famous.  So, let's look at one translation of it:

Avalokiteshvara,
when practicing the profound perfection of wisdom,
did light up and saw that
five aggregates were of emptiness
and he overcame all suffering and misfortune. 
Sariputra!
 
Form is emptiness
and emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness
and emptiness is not other than form.
So is the same for feeling,
perception, mental formation,
and consciousness.

Sariputra!
The mark of emptiness of all phenomena 
is not of birth, not of death,
not of impurity, not of purity, 
not of increase, not of decrease.
 
Therefore, in emptiness
there is no form, feeling, perception,
mental formation, and consciousness,
no eye, no ear, no nose, 
no tongue, no body, and no mind,
no form, no sound, no odor, 
no taste, no touch, and no mental object,  
no eye sphere, and further no consciousness sphere, 
no ignorance, and also no cessation of ignorance,
further no aging and death,
and also no cessation of aging and death,
no suffering, no origin of suffering, 
no cessation of suffering, 
and no path to enlightenment, 
no wisdom, and also no attainment. 
Since there is no attainment, and
all Bodhisattvas rely on the perfection of wisdom,
there is no obstacle in their mind.
 
Since there is no obstacle in their mind, 
they have no possession of fear,
completely abandon wrong and illusory perception,
and arrive at the ultimate of Nirvāṇa. 


Since all Buddhas in the past, present and future
rely on the perfection of wisdom, 
they attain unsurpassable complete enlightenment.

Therefore, one should know that 
the perfection of wisdom is 
truly the profound mantra, truly the luminous mantra, 
the highest mantra, peerless mantra 
that put an end to all the suffering,
that is true and is not untrue. 

Therefore, proclaim the mantra 
that is the perfection of wisdom.
The mantra is said thus:

Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!


Hmm.

According to this website, this will change my life forever [one has one's doubts about that]:

One thing we can safely say about the Heart Sutra is that it is completely crazy. If we read it, it does not make any sense. Well, maybe the beginning and end make sense, but everything in the middle sounds like a sophisticated form of nonsense, which can be said to be the basic feature of the Prajnaparamita Sutras in general. If we like the word “no,” we might like the sutra because that is the main word it uses—no this, no that, no everything. We could also say that it is a sutra about wisdom, but it is a sutra about crazy wisdom. When we read it, it sounds nuts, but that is actually where the wisdom part comes in. What the Heart Sutra (like all Prajnaparamita Sutras) does is to cut through, deconstruct, and demolish all our usual conceptual frameworks, all our rigid ideas, all our belief systems, all our reference points, including any with regard to our spiritual path. It does so on a very fundamental level, not just in terms of thinking and concepts, but also in terms of our perception, how we see the world, how we hear, how we smell, taste, touch, how we regard and emotionally react to ourselves and others, and so on. This sutra pulls the rug out from underneath our feet and does not leave anything intact that we can think of, nor even a lot of things that we cannot think of. This is called “crazy wisdom.” I guess I should give you a warning here that this sutra is hazardous to your samsaric sanity.

 And more:

Besides being a meditation manual, we could also say that the Heart Sutra is like a big koan. But it is not just one koan, it is like those Russian dolls: there is one big doll on the outside and then there is a smaller one inside that first one, and there are many more smaller ones in each following one. Likewise, all the “nos” in the big koan of the sutra are little koans. Every little phrase with a “no” is a different koan in terms of what the “no” relates to, such as “no eye,” “no ear,” and so on. It is an invitation to contemplate what that means. “No eye,” “no ear” sounds very simple and very straightforward, but if we go into the details, it is not that straightforward at all. In other words, all those different “no” phrases give us different angles or facets of the main theme of the sutra, which is emptiness. Emptiness means that things do not exist as they seem, but are like illusions and like dreams. They do not have a nature or a findable core of their own. Each one of those phrases makes us look at that very same message. The message or the looking are not really different, but we look at it in relation to different things. What does it mean that the eye is empty? What does it mean that visible form is empty? What does it mean that even wisdom, buddhahood, and nirvana are empty?

 Indeed.  

I remain....unconvinced.