Clear Mountain Monastery Project Buddhist Emotional Intelligence: Thirty-Six Moods to Choose From! | Ajahn Kovilo
Mar 1, 2026
Ajahn Kovilo, a senior Theravada Forest monastic who offers Dharma talks and guided practice, explores the Buddha’s map of 36 kinds of feeling boiled down to three paired moods. He contrasts clinging household joy, grief, and neutrality with renunciate joy, upward-turning grief, and liberating equanimity. Short reflections and vivid examples show how these moods unfold across senses and practice.
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The 36 Moods Map As Joy Grief And Equanimity
- The 36 feelings are the mental moods of joy, grief, and equanimity, each split into household (clinging) and renunciate (liberative) types.
- Each of the six moods applies across six sense-doors (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) to total 36.
Household Feelings Versus Renunciate Feelings
- 'Gehasita' (household) feelings are those we cling to and that bind us to samsara; 'Nekkhammasita' (renunciate) feelings orient toward letting go and liberation.
- Ajahn Kovilo emphasizes the root meaning: house as what we hold onto, and renunciation as leading out of bondage.
Train Pleasure Into Impermanence Delight
- Train to transform sensual pleasure by recognizing impermanence rather than destroying pleasure.
- Ajahn Kovilo suggests delighting in the ephemerality of sights, sounds, tastes and the 'phosphene' behind closed eyes as safer, stabilizing joy.