Tend to agree with some points. It’s true, for all religious extremism. That is the form of escapism that usually leaves no space for balance. The search for eternal happiness or higher truth, divine (whatever) might and usually puts a heavy weight of sense of guilt on the seeker after a while. „What should I do?” – the seeker asks herself (/himself). „Be with my family, keep up my hobby, duties or go and practice, search for God?” Even though it might seem that you can do both together, I’ve seen people not being able to choose between the two. Or in a slightly better case they spend their „non-practice” time as a compromise: „I’ll be with my family for now, so they leave me to pratice in the evening”. But religious practice is not a hobby that has a time limit or duration, it intervenes in your life, your attitude, your values. With all things being fragile, dependent, transient why bother with earthly matters? I my view that’s total misunderstanding of any teaching. After all we’ve we have been born as human beings with a reason (call it karma), and we can only find our way of peace on this Earth, with all our sufferings, hopes, sins and love. Religion, such as Buddhism can not be translated into our present. The values of it though – as you write – they can. To your story: after his enlightenment Buddha went back and tought his family of what he experienced. I imagine him like a fanatical alpinist, no matrer of chances of dying on the mountain top, he had an urhe to seek for truth. Yes, you might call it selfish. I do too. But that’s just proves that he was a human too.