Can one know happiness without feeling sadness or anger?

Question:for you to reach nirvana [or that certain level of inner peace] shouldnt you experience chaos first to know exactly what you're looking for? for one to know what happiness is, shouldnt they have experienced sadness first? can a positive feeling live without a negative one? are the good and bad co-dependent?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: for you to reach nirvana [or that certain level of inner peace] shouldnt you experience chaos first to know exactly what you're looking for? for one to know what happiness is, shouldnt they have experienced sadness first? can a positive feeling live without a negative one? are the good and bad co-dependent?

I don't know if you've ever heard of a book called "Flatland", but it's basically about a bunch of 2d shapes that think there is no third dimension because they cannot perceive it. The reason they cannot perceive the third dimension is because they are all the same height. However, the third dimension still exists, and the shapes could understand it if only they once viewed something of a different height than themselves.

I suppose that you could experience happiness without experiencing sadness, but you really wouldn't know what happiness was.

I believe a positive feeling can live without a negative one and vice-versa. They just might not be understood.

thats true...u cant reach peace without experiancing the opposite...

I have heard some say that both are required for either to exist.
Having said that I am still praying that one ( all) may experience happiness without knowing sorrow or if this is impossible then at the very least the sorrow is tempered with equal happiness.
Just a thought.

Happiness is he fulfilment of ones values though action. You need not suffer to understand or have it.
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A quote -

"In psychological terms, the issue of man's survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of "life or death," but as an issue of "happiness or suffering." Happiness is the successful state of life, suffering is the warning signal of failure, of death. Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is an automatic indicator of his body's welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death—so the emotional mechanism of man's consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.

But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body—the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments."

Nope. "Life is like a box of chocolates".A little bit of this ,a little bit of that.

I think you can reach a great deal of happiness and inner peace with out ever having seen the negative. We are born that way, what happens is we learn to appreciate then direct where to go, as we develop spiritually. To reach enlightenment, we must understand the the effects of misunderstanding the negative experience . At the point of enlightenment there is no negative just the presence of choices that are of good and of better.

If your happy that's good you have to have a mix to gauge if it's good , bad or sad.

Happier than before, sadder than ever. You can't have one without the other. Even less happy will be suffering if it is the only thing you know.

According to the law of opposites, happiness
does not exist as a constant. Happiness is made out of moments of happiness intertwined with moments of sadness or anger. Anything taken for granted tends to metamorphose into habit or boredom, which
are two inescapable items in the recipe of unhappiness.

no, everyone must experience some sort of sadness to know the difference from happiness. nobody has a perfect life.

I think it takes a real life experience to appreciate where you are in life and impress upon you the need not to struggle. most of our struggles in life come from our ego which wants to compel us to stay alive. to anguish over what we have no control over. a real life experience teaches us we are going to eventually die anyway and our ego will cease to exist. once your ego accepts that it's existence isn't eternal. the struggle ceases. you can't make this happen, life will make it happen in some of us, but not all of us. you will grow into it eventually , don't rush it. the struggle is what keeps you growing as a person. you have to feel sadness to know what the opposite is like. to only feel happiness means something is wrong. you wouldn't feel happy if someone you knew died. everything for a reason we do not know. you want answers to a question that everybody wants the answer to. the answer is in your mind and how you think about things. change the way you think and you will change your expectations. which is why you get angry , sad and all other emotions. when someone dies, tell yourself there is never a good time for someone to die, you wouldn't be any more ready tomorrow than you were today for their death. it's all in how you think.

When one is truly experiencing happiness...sadness and anger do not coexist with it.