Satori: Word of the Day

In Zen Buddhism, satori defines the inner, intuitive experience of enlightenment, perhaps similar to having an epiphany.

Satori is said to be unexplainable, indescribable, and unintelligible by reason and logic.

It is comparable to the experience undergone by Gautama Buddha when he sat under the Bo tree and is the central Zen goal.

It’s a moment of total presence, of no mind and no thought but a flash of insight and awakening of the light of our own consciousness.

I also discovered that In Japanese folklore, Satori are mind-reading monkey-like monsters said to dwell within the mountains of Hida and Mino. That sounds pretty scary to me, so I’ll stick to the other definition of satori as instant enlightenment.

Have you experienced satori?

“Satori is the sudden flashing into consciousness of a new truth hitherto undreamed of. It is a sort of mental catastrophe taking place all at once, after much piling up of matters intellectual and demonstrative. The piling has reached a limit of stability and the whole edifice has come tumbling to the ground, when, behold, a new heaven is open to full survey.”

D.T. SUZUKI, AN INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM