The Five Poisons in Buddhism – Transforming Reactivity into Wisdom
This program is offered through Kanzeon.
Five Poisons Buddhism describes how we react to fear, uncertainty, and challenge, and how these same reactions can become a path to liberation.
Working with the Five Poisons in Buddhism
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? 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, are under attack or misunderstood. 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 insight and compassion.
About this Work
These workshops are 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 core wounds, habitual patterns, and how they can open our hearts instead of closing them.
We will begin with an introduction and deeper exploration into the three basic poisons of greed, anger and ignorance and from there continue into the full cycle of all five, learning to recognize, befriend, and transform them.
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Rather than pushing away our reactivity, we learn to recognize it as part of our human experience – and as a path toward greater wisdom, clarity, and compassion.
What to Expect
This topic, the Five Poisons, is profound, filled with endless subtleties and layers of wisdom still to be discovered.
These workshops offer a gentle but direct introduction. There is no quick way to work with these teachings; they ask for honesty, curiosity, and courage.
Again and again, we see how the poisons shape our lives, how they lead us to separate, to harm, and to repeat deeply rooted patterns, especially when we feel fear or threat to our identity.
Instead of reacting from fear, we begin to recognize these patterns as they arise. From there, something shifts. We learn to respond from awareness rather than habit.
This is not a path of fixing ourselves, but of seeing clearly.
Our intention is to keep this exploration simple and alive, creating a space where you can inquire, be met, and deepen your understanding in a grounded and human way.
These Five Poisons workshops are offered online and from the Oregon Coast in Waldport, near Newport. They are open to practitioners who want to explore, emotional patterns, reactivity and awakening in a direct and grounded way.
This workshop is offered through Kanzeon.
If you feel called to join, you can register or reach out for more information.
This work is also offered in private 1:1 coaching sessions through CoreWork by the Sea LLC.
Date & Time
Summer 2026 – dates to come
Cost
Donations/support go to Kanzeon
Location
Zoom On-line
Facilitator
Jigen Sensei
What to bring
Loose clothes for meditation
Notes
Five Poisons Program is offered through Kanzeon (non-profit Zen teaching program). People from other linages or Buddhist path are very welcome to participate. Donations/support go to Kanzeon.
The classes include foundational teachings on the Five Poisons and their connection to the Buddha’s early insights. Each session offers guided meditation and group Big Mind exploration. I keep these gatherings intimate, with a maximum of 6 participants, so there is space for everyone to be heard, seen, and fully engaged.
What other people have said about the workshops:
The Hidden Gem in Suffering
“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.”
“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.”
Reserve your spot
Contact Jigen at email cjuul@me.com