(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best zen spirituality books

I have not meditated in several years, but there was a time where I was doing zazen multiple times a week. There are certainly a lot of books out there that could be helpful guides: Zen Meditation in Plain English and An Introduction to Zen Buddhism would be good for the philosophy and practice, but my favorite book to recommend is Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and the Truth About Reality by Brad Warner. That last one is a brilliant treatise on Zen philosophy as it pertains to a modern, Western life.

The toughest part about meditation is getting the mind to do the right thing. As you said, it's about being more mindful of the moment that is happening while letting go of the past and not concerning yourself with the future. Generally, most practices center around counting breaths, focusing on the sensation of breathing, and generally getting the brain to shut off all of the extraneous things that are bumping around in there. For BPD sufferers, that would be all of the negative thoughts floating around, making their lives tougher.

Imagine that your mind is actually a little person manning a big control room with thousands of monitors. Each monitor shows a memory, a future plan, current sense data, emotions, etc.; basically everything that makes you, you is up on those screens. Zazen is about learning how to temporarily shut these monitors off at will, either individually, by category, or wholesale. The ideal is to shut all of them off and just be left with the mind alone (this is the idea behind the Buddhist notion of "watching one's own mind". When your mind is not distracted by past memories, by future plans, by sense data, by emotions, it is in it's most pure state: Emptiness. This is not to be confused with little-e "emptiness" but is a Buddhist concept unto itself.

It's tough to get to that point and it requires lots of practice. There will be many times when you are counting breaths and thinking about how stupid the whole thing is, or how you have to run errands later that day, or how your back hurts, or how that one time your friend called you fat in middle school and it really hurt. This is ok! It's normal! That's what your brain does all day every day, you can't expect it to not do that just because you are meditating. When thoughts and distractions arise, let them. Observe them. Then let them fall away and start counting your breaths again. With lots of practice, you will eventually get to the point where you can let all the excesses of your mind fall away and achieve relaxation, knowledge and mastery of the mind, and plenty of other benefits.

Anyway, these are just some scattered thoughts. Just start reading about it! The Brad Warner book is a great place to start because it summarizes lots of Buddhist philosophy in a really palatable way. Good luck!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Great_Classical_Novels

These are great reads, particularly Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Water Margin. There is a modern martial arts film called Chi Bi, or Red Cliff that you might have heard about that is based on RotTK. That book is about 2,000 pages long, but there is an abridged 500 page one that is pretty good. One of the characters in that book, Zhuge Liang, also known as Konming, is one of the best military strategists who has ever lived. He wrote a commentary based on the book The Art of War, which a lot of martial artists read.

You should definitely check out The Art of War by Sun Tzu and
Mastering the Art of War by Zhuge Liang http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Art-Shambhala-Dragon-Editions/dp/0877735131

Another good book is 100 Unorthodox strategies http://www.amazon.com/One-Hundred-Unorthodox-Strategies-Tactics/dp/0813328616/

It contains many stories about famous battles in ancient China and how various warlords tricked or outmaneuvered others in battle in very creative ways.

There is also a series of comic books translated from the Chinese that deliver certain ancient texts or biographies of ancient China in a great format http://www.amazon.com/Confucius-Speaks-Tsai-Chih-Chung/dp/0385480342

The author is Tsai Chih Chung and he has written over 100 of these books.

The literature of ancient China is useful because it was highly influential on Chinese and indirectly Japanese martial arts. Principles of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism can be found in martial arts philosophy.

Some books, like the 4 classics I mentioned above, were so widely written that there are huge elements found in every aspect of the modern day. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is sort of how the English view Robbin Hood and King Arthur. It basically defines their culture. The glaring example of how Journey to the West has modern influence is that the popular Japanese Anime Dragon Ball Z is loosely based on a Japanese version of the same story.

Water Margin is notable because certain forms of kung fu described in that book are still practiced today like Poking Foot Kung Fu also known as Water Margin Bandit Style https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq8GIdVumFo

Hi Steve!

I would recommend reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki who was a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the West. I would also recommend The Mind of Clover by Robert Aitken which is an excellent guide on Zen Buddhist ethics (and important part of the practice).

If you haven't already started, I would recommend you pick up a regular zazen habit, sitting daily even for just five minutes if that's all you can manage. Sitting zazen is the most important thing in the Sōtō school and Master Dogen could not recommend it enough!

Books are good but practice is much better!

Beyond that, I'm a big fan of all of Brad Warner's books. He has a great approach to Zen, I think, and makes understanding some of its more obscure and hard-to-penetrate ideas easier to digest.

And of course you can always come here and ask as my questions as you like!

I too am an atheist Buddhist. I congratulate you on wanting to learn more about Buddhism, as it may help you become mindful by looking inward. I would not look at it as a way to give you a moral guide which to follow, but as a path to expanding your critical thinking and focus. I think you will find as you grow in your understanding of who you are and your relationship with the world around you, you will derive your own answers.

I'd give you a list of books I have found helpful, but they might not be helpful to you. If you come across something that makes sense to you and seems like you could incorporate it to better yourself, good. Question everything. If something comes across as wrong to you, feel free to reject it.

You know how to live. Just BE.

Best answers I read here are "You want principles to live by? Go do your dishes." and "OP would stand to gain a lot by completely ignoring my post and vacuuming the carpet." Those are true Kōans if I ever heard them!

Edit: If you really want a couple book suggestions though, I found Alan Watt's The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are and Zen Master Seun Sahn's Dropping Ashes on the Buddha to be quite good.

Nice, man. I wish for you to persevere in your practice. Just like you I've studied and now practice Zen, Buddhism, and some of the Taoism.

I should look into the set of authors you've written. If you have time look into it, some of the books I found most inspiring in my practice are:

Zen mind, Beginner's Mind
Not always so
The two above are for inspiration and breathtaking take on the spirit of practice, the once below are for the practical and daily aspects of the practice:
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - Supremely useful!
Mindfulness in Plain English - Of course "Beyond Mindfulness" is equally as impressive, just goes into a greater detail on what to expect, and how to achieve higher jhanas.

I see your dilemma. One often cited quote from Goenka (who studied with U Ba Khin) is that to find water it is advisable to dig one deep well rather than several shallow ones. It's definitely not bad advice, but it is definitely not a law. If you check out the great book Realizing Awakened Consciousness it is not uncommon for Buddhist teachers to have trajectories that developed across different traditions, even non-Buddhist ones.

From what you have written, I'm going to make a wild guess that you already crossed what is called the Arising & Passing Away stage in a traditional Buddhist map often referred to as the Progress of Insight. Have you heard anything on this direction?

If I'm right about this, working within a system that emphasizes the development of Right Concentration would be my recommendation. This is not to say that body scanning does not allow for its development. There are people that reportedly used it to achieve stream entry such as /u/duffstoic and here (scroll way down). This later reference starts with the detailed report of someone who devoted years to the technique and found, in his case, not sufficient to enter the stream.

This is all to say that there's no right technique and this is really a case of hit or miss and experimentation. This is actually a great practice. To what degree am I clinging to something already known, with results that may be just around the corner? To what degree am I clinging to experience something new, with results that can be extraordinarily surprising and fast?

Very fruitful ground for investigation. In any case, we are here to help!

I found buddhism very helpful in terms of philosphical outlooks on life. There is a great deal of logic behind it, in terms of how to view life and be at peace.

If you check Amazon, they have many buddhist texts for free in the kindle format. These are books written by buddhist priests and foundations, which promote buddhism.

One I loved just for simple common sense thoughts is Buddha in Blue Jeans. The author promotes sitting and being thoughtful for a few minutes a day and reflecting on life.

Agree in part. Some of the above are legit but, like you, I have no use for dumbed-down new age nonsense. When I was first starting out, I had such a great fear of being misled that I made an effort to find the ancient writings that were considered beneficial enough to survive the centuries. Reading ancient texts was a lot more fun and less difficult than I had anticipated. I particularly enjoyed Dogen's Shobogenzo, Hakuin and Ikkyu. I also enjoyed reading some of the old sutras. The Lankavatara Sutra and the Shurangama Sutra were both fairly easy to read and very clear. There's a lot of New Age BS out there, just as you say, so, with a few exceptions, ancient wisdoms that are still as relevant today as before, are the most reliable.

" How I became a Buddhist "

People talked about it - I heard the Beats were interested in Zen.

I was hitchhiking across the country on the path of the Beats, on Route 66, and I saw - up in a tree, like high up in a tree, like someone very agile got way up there so no one could steal it- a home made sign, black letters on plywood painted white:

O KEROUAC AND CASADY

DID YA THINK WE WERE READY

DID YA THINK WE COULD FORGET

LOUD SWIFT RUMBLINGS ON ROUTE 66

SPECTRAL VISIONS FADING LIKE WHITE LINES

MY EYES ARE ON FIRE STILL

So I'm like... Beats... Zen... wussup

I tried Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and it was, for me, like trying to suck coffee through one of those tiny hollow plastic stirring sticks.

Then I read Kapleau Roshi's The Three Pillars of Zen. It was like putting the cup to my lips. He was still alive back then, so I went to see him.

He looked at me like I was an asshole. So far, so good.

+++++++++

epilogue:

I ran into a senior monk, head of a monastery, a few months ago. I looked at him. He looked at me. I said "may I ask you a question?"


He smiled and looked at me closer. "Yes".

"can you tell my level of joriki by looking at me ?"

Looks at me even closer. Searches my eyes.

"You have accumulated spiritual virtue from previous lives. Very good."

Ha. If that asshole Kapleau could see me now.

I would bow to him with palms together.

Relate to you for a sec, was an atheist during high school, I'm a die hard rationalist, I have to have things be broken down into science terms. So with an open mind I studied ontology, phenomenology, metaphysics, biophotonics, theology, etc....until I could see the rationalization of what all the spirit culture stuff was about, haha. Now I'm writing books about the spiritual sciences.

​

Spirit is the animating life principle that gives vitality. Think of an athlete who has great spirit. You don't think about him in a mystic way in that example. Spirituality is learning how to increase your life force, that raw energy that makes you want to live life. As you do so it naturally enhances your capacity to develop empathy, thus healing society by taking care of yourself.

I'd like to mention one need not play with the pitter patter of New Age culture nor Ancient Knowledge to cultivate awareness of spirit. It can help, but it is not necessary. If you look at spirituality to start as merely a good way to begin elevating your psyche before you know it you will be down the rabbit hole enough to understand what the fuss is all about.

​

For more info check out my website https://www.enrichyourjourney.org/ I also do 1 minute daily meditation videos on my instagram @enrichyourjourney

If you're really interested I also just launched a guided meditation journal that only requires 10minutes of "work" a day to start exploring your awakening journey and finding innerpeace. https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Masters-Guide-Nirvana-Awakening-ebook/dp/B07GMSKVDK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537576565&sr=1-1&keywords=Zen+Master%27s+Guide+To+Nirvana

​

Hope you find what you are looking for OP

There are several popular 'flavors' of Buddhism, but unfortunately I have not read any general overview books covering all of the sects. Most of my generalized knowledge has come from podcasts like Buddhist Geeks and Zencast. Gil Fronsdal and Jack Kornfield are both enjoyable to listen to.

But back to books!

The most accessible Zen book I've read was Nishijima's To Meet The Real Dragon. Other overviews like Alan Watt's What Is Zen and Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind are good but a little obtuse.

And while I can't give it a general recommendation because the writing style isn't for everyone, I really enjoyed Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up.

Of those mentioned, I would go with To Meet the Real Dragon unless you prefer a much more informal style -- then I would pick Hardcore Zen.

The two books complement each other nicely. Also, I quite like Alan Watts on this "the environment moves you" thing:


>[On letting go and living in the present, unprepared,] people immediately say, however, “Now wait a minute. That’s all very well, but I want to be sure that under such-and-such circumstances and in such-and-such eventualities I will be able to deal with it. It’s all very well to live in the present when I am sitting comfortably in a warm room reading this, or meditating, but what am I going to do if all hell breaks loose? What if there’s an earthquake, or if I get sick, or my best friends get sick, or some catastrophe happens? How will I deal with that? Don’t I have to prepare myself to deal with those things?”

>“Shouldn’t I get into some sort of psychological training, so that when disasters come I won’t be thrown?”

>That, you would ordinarily think, is the way to proceed — but it doesn’t work very well. It is much better to say, “sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof,” and to trust yourself to react appropriately when the catastrophe happens. Whatever happens, you’ll probably have to improvise, and failure of nerve is really failure to trust yourself. You have a great endowment of brain, muscle, sensitivity, intelligence — trust it to react to circumstances as they arise.

>Zen deals with this. Studying Zen will change the way you react to circumstances as they arise. Wait and see how you deal with whatever circumstances come your way, because the you that will deal with them will not be simply your conscious intelligence or conscious attention. In that moment it will be all of you, and that is beyond the control of the will, because the will is only a fragment having certain limited functions.

>I know that this sounds impractical to some of you, or perhaps revolutionary, or perhaps not even possible, but it is simply living in the present. It requires a certain kind of poise: If you make exact plans to deal with the future and things don’t happen at all as you expected, you are apt to become thoroughly disappointed and disoriented. But if your plans are flexible and adaptable, and if you’re here when things happen, you always stay balanced.

>As in movement or martial arts, keep your center of gravity between your feet, and don’t cross your feet, because the moment you do you are off balance. Stay always in the center position, and stay always here. Then it doesn’t matter which direction the attack comes from; it doesn’t matter what happens at all.

>If you expect something to come in a certain way, you position yourself to get ready for it. If it comes another way, by the time you reposition your energy, it is too late. So stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.

> -- What is Zen?, Alan Watts

And that's all my book references done for the day! :-)

Sounds like a lot like intellectualised spirituality; something I went through around your age. I experienced the very same crisis you're describing. This conflict between what is, and what could be which seems to obvious and clear to you.

There's an idolisation or romanticised version of spirituality and a huge frustration around trying to live into that, as reality is a lot messier.

There's a whole lot going on in your experience that I can address if you wish, but honestly, just don't worry about too much, as the famous quote goes, "This too shall pass". I've learned to make this my mantra in times like yours, as when they hit, they hit hard and seeing any other perspective is almost impossible.

I can offer you a helpful guidepost on your journey that helped me sort a lot of these conflicts within me: https://www.amazon.ca/Rude-Awakening-Perils-Pitfalls-Spiritual-ebook/dp/B008AJZ3BY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1473999212&sr=8-2

Disclaimer: It's not a light read, nor is this a "feel good" book. However, it will definitely awaken you further to see things more clearly if that's what you choose.

There's absolutely some sexism and patriarchy mixed up in Buddhism thru the ages. The best trailhead of info about it that I've found is Grace Schireson's "Zen Women".

Our book group spent a couple months with that book when it first came out and it very much changed how we approach some things. It was truly a fabulous start to an exploration of the role of women in our Sangha as a whole, and in our little particular corner of Buddhism in specific. Others have mentioned some great resources as well, but Schireson's book is fantastic and I think would be of some value to your struggle.

Zen Women - amazon link.

As an intro to Zen, I highly recommend Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh; it’s a very easy-to-read introduction to the ideas of Zen Buddhism. Another nice intro by Thich Nhat Hanh is his book The Heart of Understanding, a commentary on the Prajñaparamita Heart Sutra. The second book repeats some of the same material (I think that Being Peace is a bit more comprehensive), but both are very approachable and easy to read.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Suzuki-Roshi is also an excellent book, but it’s very dense and difficult to get through. The Thich Nhat Hanh books I recommended are much easier because they’re compilations of his talks; I think of Zen Mind more like a textbook.

All the religions in their proper conception aim for the Eternal Present. You don't need to look to people on the fringes of western Christianity to find parallels, just look to the East. This stuff has been there from the beginning. We have a tradition of meditation which is foundational in the Church known as hesychasm. The book to look into about this stuff is called the Philokalia, and perhaps this video on Mt. Athos will also be useful as an introduction. Hesychasm has many parallels with Buddhist meditation, including stilling the mind, breathing exercises, and freeing oneself of desires and passions. The goal is completely different, but methodology and theory behind it is, by many accounts, very similar.

"Knowing one is right" is generally frowned upon in the Church as it relates to other people. We have no theology for outside of the Church, and the Church is not a salvation club. It is true we say that salvation is only through the Church, but we have a completely different conception of ecclesiology than in the West. Being saved has less to do with being an actual member of the Church and more to do with one's orientation towards the world. The Church is not just a group of like minded people, but a group of people who serve a living entity (the Holy Spirit), which acts in the world in ways unknown to us. In this sense, salvation (Theosis) is available to everyone who has ever lived, Christian or not.

Also, as far as the West is concerned, I would count Swedenborg as a better parallel with Buddhism than Eckhart. DT Suzuki called Swedenborg the Buddha of the North

Thanks for the call. Watson is fine for ZZ but reads a little stiff to me; Brook Ziporyn has a newer version, as does Victor Mair ("Wandering on the Way") and Livia Kohn. Thomas Merton was not a translator but he has a contemplative (a Trappist monk with a strong interest in Eastern religion); I like his "The Way of Chuang Tzu" a lot. Also, his abridgement does not just cling to the Inner Chapters but finds gems throughout the more rambly parts of the book.

Mitchell? Yeesh. Doesn't speak Chinese for one thing - he just read a few translations and -- based on his training in Zen Buddhism -- used what he calls his "umbilical connection to Lao Tzu" -- a figure most scholars consider mythical -- to figure out what was really meant. He actually told the LA Times that

>"Not knowing Chinese allowed me to cut through the text"

Here's one thing Mitchell said on PBS NewsHour (Nov. 11, 2011):

>"I once got some flak from orthodox Taoists who became very irate that my version of the "Tao Te Ching" was not a translation, that I would take off at certain points and throw the original out the window and do variations on the original theme. It wasn't a translation, so I had that privilege, I felt. But this did not make them happy."

Award-winning translator David Hinton did an careful analysis for The Nation in 2009. Here's what he found:

>"by my rough estimation, in the course of translating the (TTC)...(approximately 985 lines) Mitchell has rewritten about 150 lines so radically that they bear virtually no relation to the original, has ELIMINATED about 250 lines, and about 170 lines HAVE BEEN INVENTED OUT OF THIN AIR (emphasis added)...Sometimes the inventions replace lines Mitchell has deleted, sometimes they are simply added to what was already there. In either case they correspond to nothing whatsoever in the text...I suppose Mitchell's crowning moment comes in Chapter 50, where lines of his own invention are crowned with commentary by Zen master Sahn Seung."

In other words, he put stuff that his own personal Zen master wrote into his "Daodejing" and passed it off as his "translation" of Laozi. That's not just bad, that's unethical. Especially since Mitchell wrote a book with Sahn (who later died) called "Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn."

Some good books about Zen, if you're interested in learning more:

Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality Great book, written by a modern Zen 'master.' Colloquial, not translated and thus easy for us westerners to understand.

Not Always So, Shunryu Suzuki

Moon In A Dewdrop, Dogen This guy is the real shit. Lived hundreds of years ago. You can go as deep as you want into this guy's writings, many levels of meaning (or none?). More metaphorical/figurative than the others, very poetic.

When/if you read this stuff, don't worry about understanding everything sentence. It's easy to get caught in the trap of reading and re-reading sentences and paragraphs to try to understand, but in doing so you miss out on the flow/stream of consciousness of the works. Just read it through, eventually the ideas will start to become clear.

>Not a single one of you people at this meeting is unenlightened. Right now, you're all sitting before me as Buddhas. Each of you received the Buddha-mind from your mothers when you were born, and nothing else. This inherited Buddha-mind is beyond any doubt unborn, with a marvelously bright illuminative wisdom. In the Unborn, all things are perfectly resolved.

http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/bankei_zen_master.html

http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/UnbornWaddell.pdf

http://www.dharmanet.org/Bankei.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankei_Y%C5%8Dtaku

http://www.amazon.com/Unborn-Teachings-Master-Bankei-1622-1693/dp/0865475954

I Just read Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner, currently working on Sit Down and Shut Up, also by Werner. After I finish the other two books in the series, I'll settle down with Shobogenzo. I'm just getting into Zen, it looks amazing!

Oh, no need to apologize anyway. There's just a lot of... backstory.

You'll need to couple source material like the below with the above historical scholarship if you want to come to a full understanding.

As for some primary sources:

Tang dynasty teachers who were students of Mazu (one of the most influential Zen teachers ever)

Dazhu (although, relevant)

Huangbo

Baizhang (this text is prohibitively expensive on Amazon, so look in local libraries.)

Song dynasty teachers

Yuanwu (1, 2)

Hongzhi (1, 2) (note, take Taigen dan Leighton's introduction to Cultivating the Empty Field with a grain of salt, as he's a shitty scholar. He basically just misrepresents Hongzhi and Dahui's relationship. See Schlutter's How Zen Became Zen for more details.)

Song dynasty kanhua Chan teachers (kanhua is the main approach to Zen in both Rinzai and Seon)

Dahui (Yuanwu's student)

Wumen

A Japanese Zen teacher

Bankei (1, 2)

A Korean Zen teacher

Daehaeng (1, 2, 3)

___

Note that this leaves out huge swathes of the literature, including all of the literature associated with the East Mountain teaching, the Northern school, the Oxhead school, Soto, most of Rinzai, Obaku, most of Seon, etc. Of course, some people with more fixed and essentialist ideas of what "Zen" is object to the idea that some of these other schools/lineages are actually "Zen". Use your own head. (I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong; I'm just saying that once you feel comfortable with the basics, start to think critically about Zen and your own study of it, including e.g. how you would decide which teachings to follow, and why.)

There's no roster of "Zen masters^TM " anywhere, so the above is a bit of a random mix of my own choosing.

While reading, note what people say and ask yourself questions -- where do they agree? Where do they disagree? If they disagree, should that be reconciled or not, and why?

Some more pointed questions to ask for each book: What can one do to reach awakening? What ways to reach awakening are preferred over others? What practices and doctrines are criticized? Is there any cultivation necessary at any point along the path? If yes, what is to be cultivated? If the teacher is talking about the teachings of earlier masters, are those teachers being represented accurately, or are extrinsic frameworks being laid onto them to fit the later teacher's presentation of Zen? If you had to sum up the teacher's teaching in a slogan, what would it be?

Really, the main thing is that you can think critically about what you're reading, but the above reading list and approach would give you a really solid foundation for the things people tend to talk about on this forum.

There's actually a lot of punk buddhist books out there. Kind of surprised by it myself.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002V0WU9G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Edit: more relevant information

Links to the two people mentioned early on in the first video for their research:

Jeffrey Martin's website

Here is an amazon link to Robert Boyle's book.

Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802130526/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_I8vADbNPASY4J

Try that book sometime

Being Peace by T.N. Hanh

This one maybe?

https://www.amazon.com/Dropping-Ashes-Buddha-Teachings-Master/dp/0802130526

Huangbo:
1
2

Linji: 1 (this is the copy that I have, after discussing it here it sounded better) 2

Bankei: 1 2

etc.

Edit: My university professor translated the xinxinming (based off of lok to's translation) and chunks of the platform sutra (original work i believe), and i've got a copy of that. he suggests for further reading on the platform sutra to read 1 2 3 (as well as zen doctrine of no mind! ha!)

Exactly. I'm currently reading Not Always So and Shunryu Suzuki talks a lot about never trying to block feelings or emotions. If you ever feel like the way you think is being forced to fit around a Buddhist mentality, then it has been misunderstood.

Also, if you never felt unhappy, then where would there be room for the happy moments to arise? Not to sound pretentious or cliche, but without light, darkness would cease to exist. It's important that we feel sad and experience pain. It's suffering that Buddhism is aiming to end. Long term dissatisfaction.