Buddhism:End of suffering& Plato's cave

I have repeated Buddhism and Plato several times but the ideas are impossible to explain with only a couple of sentences. Of course, a lot of people read Plato's The Republic. But I 'd like to point out something I think I didn't explain enough.

First, the purpose of life in Buddhism is to end suffering. But we are bound to 'The wheel of life cycle' which Buddhism already explained. To do this, there are 'Four ways to noble truth' and 'eight path' to do this.

1. All of life is marked by suffering.
2. Suffering is caused by desire and attachment.
3. Suffering can be stopped.
4. The way to end suffering is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path.

Second, the way to end the life suffering is through freeing oneself from the place which you belong and giving it up any attachment from secular things. I used this idea to express my works. The ways to freeing myself, I used the physical transformation and fusion with the nature.

I tried to connect Plato's cave idea to Buddhism in my final work. In the big painting I did, I created the modern cave like what Plato's cave. The allegorical setup for the shadow and light are about the idea from Republic, but the direction of the figure is from Buddhism. And the leprosy of legs shows the suffering in Buddhism.

The cave idea is about seeing our own shadow inside of our own world. We all sit toward the inside of our cave and have our own opinions (what shadow creates). But we can't turn our head to see the sunlight(knowledge) or next to the shadow because we are bound to our own presumptions accumulated for long years. This idea is similar to the stereotypes in psychological makeup which sets in early age of our lives.

To check out the interesting story of Plato and Buddhism, I found these websites.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/images/PlatoCave.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/PlatosCave.htm&h=309&w=567&sz=49&tbnid=xsFqUa-ZYsNgyM:&tbnh=73&tbnw=134&prev=/images%3Fq%3DPlato%252Bcave&usg=__jc_5BrhqLQNgHFJ58he6Uu6qqlg=&ei=hhMZS4PhIYG1tgfZtoHXAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=4&ct=image&ved=0CBQQ9QEwAw

http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/beliefs/human.htm