Wow, haven’t posted here in a long time. On to the topic.
I often come here in search of some acceptance as well as advice. To those of you who have expressed their frustration, i feel your “pain”. I don’t know much about buddhists, short of having accepted Zen as my spiritual path. But I would like to make 2 points here, one is, buddha never said to turn away from the world and desires and emotions etc. That would be ascetism, which is one of the reasons behind buddha search for truth (which resulted in him becoming a buddha of course). My culture is full of ascetics. Emotion is natural, anger, love, depression. All of that, the only way to deal with them is to remember that, that they are a part of nature, and should be allowed to run their course. Of course, it is natural to seek comfort in a time of sadness etc, thats all part of it.
Don’t cut yourself off from everything, everything is there for a reason. Simply realise what TRUE happiness entail, (i.e. not to be found in money or material goods etc). The buddha himself actually lived a comfortable life, a very meager normal life (c.f: the original defenition of epicureanism).
The problem is, as an epicurean, its frustrating, the world humans have created requires you to discard rage, and always smile, never let it out, always be agressive etc. We have all experianced how fake people are in the modern world.
Anyways, I’ll wrap this up b4 i ramble on.
-Tj