Reddit reviews Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen

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.

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.

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.