The Hidden Gem in the FIVE Poisons – 2026 SPRING Series
Beyond Insight – Meeting the Hidden Patterns That Keep Us Stuck
The Five Poisons: Transforming Reactivity into Wisdom
The world is turning – and it’s turning hard. Confusion, chaos, and uncertainty seem to ripple through every part of our shared experience. So, it’s natural to feel fear, loss of control, and even a threat to who we are and what we value.
How do we respond when our sense of stability is shaken?
How do we meet the feelings of anger, grief, and helplessness that arise?
ge that describes it to be:
How can we stay open, awake, and compassionate — even in the midst of turmoil?
In Buddhist teachings, our instinctive reactions to fear and threat are described as The Five Poisons:
Greed, Anger, Ignorance, Jealousy, and Pride.
These energies arise when we feel our being – or our world – is under attack. They divide us, both from others and from our own deeper wisdom.
Yet within each poison lies a hidden gem – a potential for awakening. When we meet these energies with awareness, they can transform from reactive patterns into powerful insight and compassion.
About the Series
This workshop series is an invitation to explore The Five Poisons as living energies within ourselves and the world. Through meditation, reflection, and Bigmind, we’ll discover how these reactive energies relate and are used to protect our vulnerabilities, habitual patterns, and core wounds – and how they can open our hearts instead of closing them.
We will begin with a short introduction for those who were unable to the first part of our journey on Ignorance. From there, we’ll continue into the full cycle of all five poisons, learning to recognize, befriend, and transform them.
Practical Details
Dates: January 2026 – dates to come
Format: Guided teachings, meditation, and group Bigmind exploration
Facilitators: Jigen Sensei & MAry ellen Roshi
Location: to be announced
Registration: Contact Jigen at email cjuul@me.com
A Path of Transformation
Rather than pushing away our reactivity, we’ll learn to recognize it as part of our human experience — and as a path toward greater wisdom, clarity, and compassion.
Join us in this shared inquiry into the heart of our humanity.
Start time: 10:00 MST/9:00 PST
End time: 11:30 MST/10:30 PST
This is a small-group series and tends to fill quickly.
If you feel called to join us, let us know you’re interested by emailing cjuul@me.com and we’ll make sure you’re among the first to receive an invitation when registration opens.
What other people have said about the workshops:
The Hidden Gem in Suffering
“Facilitation was brilliant. Really appreciated how everyone was not just encouraged but expected to participate. Felt like a transformative conversation, a solitary “big mind” working together. The open mike could have been messy, but due to the size of the group, or the quality of the participants, or just plain magic, it worked really well.”
“The workshop was powerful and eye-opening. Exploring ignorance in depth gave me clarity, and hearing others’ experiences made me feel connected. I left with a deeper awareness of how anger and greed operate — both in myself and in the world — and a renewed sense of how to meet them with practice.”
“This series was rich and meaningful from the very start. The gentle opening-built trust, and the skilled facilitation encouraged genuine participation.
I loved the clarification that ignorance is the fundamental mistake from which the other poisons become magnified. Attraction and aversion become greed and anger from the mistaken sense of me and mine, mine, mine.”