I. Q&A

1. Why “happiness is a problem"?

Because life is a form of suffering. Life is full of pain and loss and we should let go of trying to resist them. Dissatisfactionand unease are the necessary components to creating consistent happiness.

2. Why the author invented “Disappointment Panda”? What is it for?

Disappointment Panda would be the hero that none of us would want but all of us would need. The Disappointment Panda could tell us the most unpleasant truths to us which are important and useful to our lives.

3. What is the role that emotions play in our life? why they are overrated?

Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial changes. However, we should not rely on our emotions, because emotion only are part of the equation of our lives. Emotions could give us suggestions, but we should not making decisions based on emotinal intuition. In a word, emotion is our helper, not our master. 

4. Why you don’t have chiseled abs? (If you do have, how did you make it?)

Well, the point is I have imagined one day I could be a little more thin, but I never fully think about what pain and struggle I should sustain. I tried to do some exercises one or two week, then I found it too hard to keep it. Maybe I like exercises, but I like the outcomes more and I am not really enjoy the exercises.

II. Words and expression

1.  He’d be the proverbial vegetables to our mental diet of junk food.

proverbial    众所周知的 

proverbial vegetables    结合后面的mental diet，在这里的意思为健康的精神食粮

2. Pain, in all of its forms, is our body’s most effective means of spurring action.

“无论是何种形式的痛苦，都是刺激我们付诸行动的最有效的方式。”

3. In fact, research has found that our brains don’t register  much  difference  between physical pain and psychological pain.

register  登记、注册、记录

在这里表示我们的大脑对于生理和心理的痛苦并没有明确的区别。

4. And this is what’s so dangerous about a society that coddles itself more and  more  from  the  inevitable discomforts of life.

coddle  to treat someone in a way that is too kind and gentle and that protects them from pain or difficulty

coddle 这个词非常有趣，还有“用文火煮”的意思，由此联想到了温水煮青蛙

5. Like physical pain, our psychological pain is an indication of something out of equilibrium, some

limitation that has been exceeded.

equilibrium    a balance between different people, groups, or forces that compete with each other, so that none is stronger than the others and a situation is not likely to change suddenly

这个词在表示“均衡、平衡”时比balance的含义更为广泛，还表示心情与情绪的安宁、平静。

III. Thoughts

第二章以释迦牟尼修行的故事开篇，结合第一章的the Feedback Loop from Hell，可以发现Manson的观点受到了佛教的启发。比如，他在文中用"Life is suffering"概括了佛教轮回皆苦的观点。有趣的是，在读到这一部分时，我发现Manson所理解的佛教思想显然是大乘佛教的“中道”，世间皆苦，但若要离苦得乐，并非是出离尘世，而是“不离世间觉”。在第二章里，Manson告诉我们，要认识到快乐并不是虚无缥缈的东西，而是在于解决一个又一个问题，而痛苦也并非是绝对的痛苦，它们恰是我们做出行动与改变的契机所在，这种观点，和禅宗的观照角度十分相似。禅宗的话头与公案妙处在于破除我执，打破常规的观念，从这个层面来看，Manson可以说是颠覆了我们对于happiness、pain、enmotion的看法，这正是它非常吸引人的地方。