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It is typical to understand many Zen masters as teaching that we should aim to be above such things as emotions.  Taking everything in one’s stride, finding the balanced path between extremes.  Neither getting over excited or happy, nor angry and frustrated.

After looking at such teaching for many years now I believe that the point of such teaching has two reason.  First is to learn a great measure of control over one’s emotions.  If you can learn to practice archery with an aim on feeling neither elated if you hit the target, nor disappointed if you miss, you’ll certainly keep your head in a real battle; staying focused and calm, shooting carefully with perhaps a cavalry charge coming straight at you.  The second teaching I believe is that it is in the attempt, you discover the realisation that, while some control is possible, you can’t and shouldn’t try, because in fact the suppression of your emotions is impossible.  In much the same way that trying to not think of something is impossible.  You can choose one thought instead of another and, as in some forms of meditation, you can keep a tight focus like holding a spring closed until the tension gets too much and it explodes in all directions and none.  But you can’t pick one thing and focus on not thinking it.  So with emotions, you can deliberately supress or replace one with another.  While you can’t, for example, focus on fear to stop fear, you can however choose to interpret the physiological experience as excitement instead.  Notice that if this control is not done deliberately, your mind can do it in very unhealthy ways.  The suppression of an emotion without choosing a healthy way for that energy to be expressed is like keeping the lid on a pressure cooker indefinitely; no one wants to be around when that finally blows.  The emotional energy of a suppressed emotion need to be vented either deliberately in an emotion of your choice or will be vented in random way, sometimes with surprising and shocking results.

No, no and a hundred times no. Have them all, emotions are literally the spice of life.  We are emotional beings and without them we are flat, depressed and life becomes meaningless.  What is the point without them?  If you ask anyone what they hope, strive or aim for, they will end up saying something like, happiness, harmony, peace, empowerment, satisfaction or love.  Even a goal like contentment, which sounds very low key and not at all that exciting, is in fact an emotional experience and can be a very intense emotional experience.  Living life to the full means experiencing all the emotions.  Learning to let go of persistent negative emotions, those that cling like a bad smell, and learning to choose a different, healthier direction for emotions as the form.  That is true freedom.  It is freedom from the negative emotions of the past and freedom to enjoy this moment without fear of the future.

Balance means having great love and great grief, great anger and great joy, great excitement and great contentment.  All of these are appropriate in their own place and time.  Balance is not about being in the center, flat, feeling nothing strongly.  That would be inhuman.  Balance is the sun on the side of a mountain, followed by the shade of the storm.  It is loving so strongly that the grief of loss is almost unbearable.  It is feeling the joy of feasting with friends so much that the suffering and want of others causes you rage and fury.

Balance is flowing with the constant cycles in life, being able to fully enter into each phase, completing the transitions from one to another without getting stuck in any.

There are laws of motion in every area of life.  Inertia and momentum are fundamental.  It takes a lot of effort to get something started but once it’s in motion it takes a lot less to keep it going, but often a lot to stop it.  It takes an aeroplane a huge amount of energy to get going, to overcome its inertia, but once it reaches its cruising speed if the engines were switched off, its momentum, in many cases, would enable it to continue for many miles.  It might take a lot of effort to get the qualifications and get into that ideal job, but once your career takes off, you can ease up a bit and, like a rolling ball, a light touch will keep it going.  However, what if you grow to dislike it; can you just change?  What about a relationship that’s been going for years?  A family tradition, a life style, an attitude, or a prejudice?  These things too have their own momentum.  The laws of motion don’t make moral judgments.  Whether good or bad, they still apply.  A strong relationship will just power through difficulties and come out the other side, but one that has lost its momentum over years of neglect will come up against a bump and stall.  It might not fall apart; that would take some new energy to push in a different direction; the adhesion itself has a momentum; the same principle applies.
Creating enough emotional momentum to take action is no exception to this principle.  Violent actions and particularly the physiological changes that accompany them take time to happen; to overcome the inertia and generate some momentum.  You’ve seen the pigeon dance that a couple of guys do (chest out, arms wide, head bobbing) while they ratchet up their physiology into violent mode.  When they ‘feel’ they are, for a moment, in a position to win (this could be a chemical reading of the relative levels of testosterone etc. or a psychological assessment of the relative levels of confidence) the attack is launched.  Putting a stick in someone’s spokes while they are winding up, or getting their momentum up to take off speed, is a skill that can be learned.  I’ve seen people nose dive on that particular runway when their opponent has given them a confident smile.  The problem comes when the other guy knows he’s going to attack and has built up momentum, but takes you by surprise.  To survive a surprise attack, you will have to learn how to be more aware and have some instant, instinctive reaction, as fast as blinking, that will save you.  Once your initial reaction has saved you it will only take a few seconds for your own physiology and momentum to catch up.  This is something you will learn in your Kung Fu training.

Unless you happen to be in the vacuum of space, the initial effort to get something going will need to be supplemented.  You can keep the progress up if you keep putting a little effort in consistently.  The push at the start might be enough for a while, but eventually it (any endeavour) will grind to a halt and if you let the thing stop it will take another huge push again to restart it, but keep up a steady slight effort and it will keep moving.  Your business, your relationship, your health, your studies, whatever, this law applies.