That's an interesting answer. In effect, you're equating Buddhism with an extreme form of empiricism. If the future is a fantasy, though, how could Buddhists plan for anything? Do Buddhists not think about the future at all? The behaviour of someone who doesn't credit the concepts of time or causality--which imply a future state or a goal--would be very strange. I've written about how I'd expect a Buddha to seem bizarre in society, and that's often how enlightened characters are portrayed in movies.

The Dalai Lama quotation is perfect. That's the shocking level of unattachment. A Buddhist doesn't care so much about anything. No preferences, no delusions, no compromise with mental fantasies, including rational conceptions of time, causality, and goal-seeking.

I take it that if you asked a Buddhist why he's eating, he'd say it's because he's hungry. And if you'd ask why he's hungry, he'd say that's just the internal sensation that's passing through his body at that moment. He wouldn't give credit to an evolutionary explanation of the purpose of hunger. That kind of theoretical understanding would be irrelevant to the Buddhist practice.

I notice that when you justify Buddhist compassion, you distinguish between "parts" of the self/world. So it's not so monistic after all. Is it self-evident that a single person should love all the parts of himself? What if the person is bad and feels guilty, so he loathes himself?

But what would be the basis of any such moral or ethical evaluation in Buddhism? The one world would be the whole of reality, and its changes would be matters of fact. Does the Buddhist really have to think those changes are good rather than bad? Would that evaluation be based on pride? Surely not for a Buddhist! So the compassion seems to me gratuitous or something like a selling point. You insist it makes sense in Buddhist practice, and I don't practice Buddhism so we can leave it at that.