What Are Emotional Koans 2.0?
Our angst becomes our liberation.
~ Jun Po Roshi
We’re on a journey with no end in sight. This journey is one that will take us into the heart of our emotional intelligence and, if we listen carefully, expand our connection with all humanity with the wisdom of Buddhist teachings. My teacher, Jun Po Roshi, created Mondo Zen Facilitation as a means to transcend habitual reactions into caring and compassionate responses. Jun Po Roshi emphasized that emotions provide valuable information, just as the five senses provide us with information about our world. However, emotions are not the same as seeing, sensing, healing, etc. Yes, emotions arise in response to external circumstances, yet somehow, they are different. We’re learning a lot in neuroscience about how human emotions are constructed. With this new understanding, we can begin to explore our practices with an eye for how to broaden the opportunity afforded by attending to our emotional responses with compassion and wisdom.
Jun Po Roshi was particularly concerned by how emotional reactivity, manifesting as anger, shame, and disconnection, led to unnecessary suffering. With the help of somatic psychology, Jun Po Roshi focused on bodily sensations as the source code from which emotions arise. This approach has been adopted by many Buddhist authors, such as Bruce Tift and Reggie Ray, to name just a few. With the awareness of our somatic ‘contraction, one has the opportunity to ‘listen’ to the emotional expression without the habitual mental response. Thus was born the Emotional Koan of Mondo Zen Facilitation.
Jun Po Roshi’s Mondo Facilitation provided a needed addition to the traditional koan collections of the Mumunkon, Blue Cliff Record, and Book of Serenity. Yet, looking back over the 20 years of development of Mondo Zen Facilitation, Jun Po Roshi did not take a comprehensive view of our emotional landscape. Given the revolution in our emotional understanding based in the theory of constructed emotions by Lisa Feldman Barrett, our emotional koan 2.0 project is using the four families of emotions as articulated by Carla McLaren in The Language of Emotion. McLaren’s broader emotional framework provides a more comprehensive understanding of emotions as sources of information. Briefly, these four families are:
1. Anger Family: This family Includes anger, boredom, shame, guilt, and hatred, which all have to do with how psychological boundaries are managed and maintained from both the inside and the outside. Anger is presented as a temporary emotional state, while hatred is an entrenched identity. Traditional Buddhist teachings often merge anger and hatred as part of the three poisons.
2. Fear Family: This includes fear, anxiety, worry, confusion, jealousy, envy, and panic. Fear is useful as an intuitive tool, sharpening the mind and preparing one for action. It poses essential questions: "What am I sensing?" and "What action should be taken?"
3. Sadness Family: Encompasses sadness, grief, situational depression, and suicidal urges. These emotions signal the need for release, recovery, and integration. The primary questions are: "What must be released?" and "What must be rejuvenated?"
4. Happiness Family: This family contains happiness, contentment, and joy. While traditionally valued in meditative states, attachment to these emotions can become a hindrance. Understanding happiness as a source of amusement and possibility allows for a more balanced integration.
The eleventh Koan of Mondo Zen, “What are the deeper feelings that lie beneath violent anger, shame, and disconnection?” focuses primarily on anger, shame, and disconnection and its underlying emotions—fear, sadness, and deep caring. One can see the four families coming into play here, however, Mondo Facilitation continues to view emotions as superficial versus deep, and positive versus negative. With McLaren’s teaching in mind, Emotional Koan 2.0 recognizes that there are not good or bad emotions, just emotions that need to be heard and channeled in a healthy manner. A potential new emotional koan might be “What is the information offered in anger, shame, or apathy(or any of the four families)? How might one respond with compassion?
The Twelfth Koan of Mondo Zen challenges individuals to reconsider emotional agency: "Can anyone or anything make you violently angry, shame you or make you disconnected/dissociate?” The implication is that emotional responses are not externally imposed but arise from internal processes. Emotional Koan 2.0 provides a more robust framework for self-awareness and transformation, broadening the inquiry to all emotional families – Fear, Sadness, and Joy.
With the opportunity to learn to recognize emotional nuance and make better sense of the information that our emotional contractions offer us, the opportunity for a more robust path to awakening in the household or marketplace is gained. Traditional Chan or Zen Koans were created when Chan/Zen culture was primarily in the monastery. In such a controlled environment with limited interactions with others and regular periods of zazen, much of the koan work is done in mind, and Mondo dialogue with a priest or Roshi. The 21st-century Zen practitioner is likely a householder, with only so much time to meditate on a daily basis. Attending emotional reactivity offers a powerful opportunity to witness the workings of one’s mind in real time with colleagues, family, and friends. The way of the Bodhisattva is to respond to the interpersonal dynamics of daily living with the wisdom and compassion of awakened might. We all have this opportunity each and every day.
Jun Po Roshi’s Emotional Awareness Intervention Koans offers an innovative novel approach to thirteen hundred years of koan practice, one rooted in the wisdom of our current epoch. Our work is to honor these innovations while extending the opportunity to awaken with all emotions. As the Four Awakened Vows of Hollow Bones Zen reminds us, “However deep and elusive my shadow states are, I vow to experience and enlighten them all. However vast and difficult true teachings are, I vow to embody and master them all.” With Jun Po Roshi and Karla McLaren’s true teachings, we are developing a tailored approach to emotional self-inquiry and koan work. This broader approach aligns with modern psychological insights and traditional Zen teachings, ensuring a more comprehensive integration of emotional wisdom into spiritual practice.
Emotions are telephone calls bringing us information. Answer this phone when it rings. Do not refuse to answer the phone (depression).36 Do not drag the phone around jumping up and down shouting “the phone is ringing” (anxiety).37 Do not hit someone with the phone (anger) or blame yourself for its ringing (shame). Do not run away from the phone or get so intoxicated, busy, or stressed that you cannot hear it ringing (disconnection, denial). Answer the phone! Experience your deeper feelings, get the essential message that is informed by each feeling itself, then hang up the phone. Understand and choose your response. Stop mindlessly, unconsciously reacting to the phone’s ringing. Use your new insight and respond mindfully when the phone rings.
- Jun Po Roshi, Mondo Zen Facilitation Training Manual 20th Anniversary Edition