What if the states we most want to overcome are not obstacles to awakening, but the places where practice becomes real?

The Five Poisons are anger, desire, jealousy, pride, and ignorance. We tend to judge them, suppress them, act them out, or turn them against ourselves. In this work, we take another approach. We enter the experience directly and discover what is alive within it.

A poison is not something foreign that has entered us. It is energy contracted around fear, protection, identity, and the need for things to be different from how they are. When the contraction is met fully, without rejection and without indulgence, what appeared to be an obstacle can reveal an awakened quality.

Where the process begins

The process often begins before we have a story about what is happening. There is contact, and with contact comes vedanā: the immediate feeling tone of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

When an experience is pleasant, we may reach for it and try to hold on. When it is unpleasant, we may push it away, defend ourselves, or attack. When it is neutral, we may lose interest or become dull. If this first movement is not recognized, it quickly becomes contraction, story, identity, and one of the familiar poisons.

Vedanā gives us an earlier place to practice. We begin with what is actually here: sensation, feeling tone, and the body’s response.

The movement of the practice

Why Big Mind is part of this work

It is possible to understand our patterns very well and still remain caught in them. Analysis can tell us why we are angry or jealous, but it does not necessarily release the energy held in the contraction.

The Big Mind process allows us to enter the experience rather than stand outside it. The voice of anger, desire, jealousy, pride, or confusion is invited to speak directly. What are you protecting? What do you fear? What do you want? What is your awakened function? Nothing is pushed away. As the voice is heard and its intelligence becomes visible, the contraction can begin to relax. The change is not merely conceptual. It can be felt in the body and mind.

The five places of practice

Anger and aversion: The movement that pushes away, hardens, judges, or attacks. We learn to meet its force without suppressing it or allowing it to cause harm.

Desire and craving: The movement that reaches, grasps, and believes fulfillment lies somewhere else. We feel the longing without being ruled by it.

Jealousy and envy: The pain of comparison and the fear that another person’s life diminishes our own. We enter the hurt beneath separation.

Pride: The effort to secure a position above or below another person. We discover what the identity is defending and what remains when it is owned and empowered.

Ignorance and confusion: The tendency to turn away, become dull, or remain unconscious of what is here. We bring attention to the places where we ignore our own experience to discover our awakened, ungraspable infinite nature.

Not self-improvement

This practice is not about becoming a better or more spiritual person. It is not about creating an identity that no longer feels anger, jealousy, pride, desire, or confusion. It is about recognizing how experience contracts into a separate self and discovering that the contraction has never been as solid as it appeared. When it is met with awareness, kindness, and curiosity, it can self-liberate.

From individual insight to relationship

The poisons do not live only inside us. They arise between us: in partnership, family, sangha, work, and community. We blame, withdraw, become compliant, defend our position, or decide that the other person is the problem.

This work asks us to recognize where we separate while remaining capable of discernment and clear action. Taking responsibility for our contraction does not mean denying another person’s behavior or tolerating harm. It means meeting the situation without abandoning ourselves and without reducing the other person to our story about them.

Who this work is for

This teaching is for people who want to bring meditation into the places where they actually become caught. It is especially useful for practitioners who understand awareness but continue to encounter recurring patterns in relationships, emotional life, or community.

 

Upcoming programs

The Five Poisons is offered as an introductory workshop, a multi-session online series, and as the first stage of Deep Sangha Work. In-person offerings may also be held on the Oregon Coast.

To hear about the next program or join the waiting list, contact Jigen Sensei.

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