Satori - Enlightenment - Experience of Divine Reality

This strange concept is called "satori," which can be translated as "enlightenment." "Satori is the raison d'être of Zen, without which Zen is not Zen," says Suzuki. It shouldn't be too difficult for the Western mind to grasp what a mystic understands by "enlightenment," or what is called that in religious parlance. However, satori refers to a special kind of enlightenment that is practically impossible for Europeans to grasp.

To illustrate this, I would like to refer the reader to the enlightenment of Hyakujo (724–814 AD) and the Confucian poet and statesman Kozankoku, described by Suzuki. The following may serve as another example: Once, a monk went to Gensha and wanted to know where the entrance to the path of truth was. Gensha asked him, "Do you hear the murmuring of the stream?" "Yes, I do," replied the monk. "There is the entrance," the master instructed him. I will limit myself to these few examples, which aptly illustrate the opacity of satori experiences. Even if we approach one example after another, it remains extremely unclear how enlightenment comes about and what it consists of—in other words, how or by what one becomes enlightened.

Zen is anything but a philosophy in the Western sense - Religiosity

Zen is anything but a philosophy in the Western sense. Rudolf Otto shares this opinion, writing in his preface to Ohazama's book on Zen that Nukariya "imported the magical world of oriental ideas into our Western philosophical categories" and confused them with them. If one appeals to psychophysical parallelism, that most wooden of all doctrines, to explain this mystical intuition of non-duality and unity, as well as coincidentia oppositorum, one finds oneself completely outside the realm of koan, kwatsu, and satori.

It is far better to immerse oneself deeply in the exotic darkness of Zen anecdotes from the very beginning, always being aware that satori is a mystery beyond words, as the Zen masters wish. Between anecdote and mystical enlightenment, there is a gap in our thinking that can only be bridged at best, but never practically achieved. One has the feeling of discovering a true mystery, not a merely imagined or feigned one. It is not mystification and hocus-pocus, but an experience that leaves the experiencer speechless.

Zen is a Blossom

Zen is indeed one of the most wonderful blossoms of the Eastern mind—a mind fertilized by the immense world of Buddhist thought. Anyone who has truly striven to understand Buddhist teachings—even if only by abandoning certain Western prejudices—will sense treacherous depths beneath the bizarre surface of individual satori experiences, or sense troubling difficulties that Western religion and philosophy have so far thought they could ignore. If they are philosophers, they are exclusively concerned with the kind of understanding that has nothing to do with life.

And if they are Christians, they naturally have nothing to do with pagans (“God, I thank you that I am not like other people”). Within these Western confines, there is no satori—that is a purely Oriental affair. But is that really so? Is there no satori at all? If one reads the Zen texts carefully, one cannot help but get the impression that satori, however bizarre it may be, is a natural phenomenon, something so simple that one cannot see the forest for the trees, and attempts to explain it inevitably lead to the very thing that plunges others into the greatest confusion. Nukariya is therefore right when he says that any attempt to explain or analyze the content of Zen or enlightenment is futile.

Satori - Breakthrough of a Consciousness Limited to the Ego Form into the Non-ego-like Self

Then the person says: "Behold! Poor fool that I was, I thought it was me, but behold! It is and was in truth God!" This tells us much about the "content of enlightenment." The emergence of satori is interpreted and formulated as the breakthrough of a consciousness limited to the Ego Form into the Non-ego-like Self.

This perspective is not only in harmony with the essence of Zen, but also with Meister Eckhart's mysticism: "When I flowed forth from God, all things cried out: 'God is!' This cannot make me blessed, for by doing so I acknowledge myself as a creature. But in the breakthrough, I stand empty in the will of God, empty also of God's will and all His works, indeed even of God Himself – then I am more than all creatures, then I am neither God nor creature: I am what I was, and that is what I will remain, now and forever! Then I receive a surge that elevates me above all angels.

The Unmoved Mover

Through this surge, I become so rich that God, despite all that He is as God and all His divine works, cannot satisfy me; for in this breakthrough, I receive what God and I have in common. I am what I was; I neither increase nor decrease, for I am the unmoved mover who moves all things." Here, God can no longer find a place in man, for man has regained, through his emptiness, what he eternally was and will forever remain. Here, the Master may actually be describing a satori experience, a transcendence of the ego by the Self endowed with "Buddha nature," or divine universality.

Salvation - Enlightenment

Of course, we can never determine with certainty whether a person is truly "enlightened" or "saved," or whether they are merely imagining it. We have no criteria to guide us. Moreover, we know well enough that imagined pain is often far more excruciating than so-called real pain, as it is accompanied by a subtle moral suffering caused by a dull sense of secret self-recrimination. In this sense, therefore, it is not an "actual fact" but rather psychic reality, i.e., the psychic process known as satori. Every psychic process is an image and an "imagination"; otherwise, consciousness could not exist and the event would lack phenomenality.

The imagination itself is a psychic process, which is why it is completely irrelevant whether enlightenment is described as "real" or "imagined." In any case, those who have enlightenment, or claim to have it, believe they are enlightened. What others think about it doesn't determine his experience at all. Even if he were lying, his lie would still be a psychological fact. Even if all reports of religious experiences were nothing but deliberate fabrications and falsifications, one could still write a very interesting psychological treatise on the frequency of such lies, with the same scientific objectivity with which one describes the psychopathology of delusional ideas.

The fact that there is a religious movement in which many brilliant minds have participated over many centuries is reason enough to at least make a serious attempt to scientifically understand such processes.

Man must be free - be without ideas, detached

He also says, like the yogi: "Man must be free and without ideas, detached from all attachments and empty of all creatures." "He must be unaffected by joy and sorrow, gain and loss, rise and fall, concern for others, pleasure and fear, and must not be bound to any creature." This is the "unity" of his being, and this means being "turned inward." Being turned inward means "a person is turned inward, into his own heart, to understand and feel the inner workings and words of God."

This new state of consciousness, which arises from religious practice, is characterized by the fact that external things no longer affect an ego-bound consciousness, thus creating mutual bonds, but rather that an empty consciousness is subject to another influence. This "other" influence is no longer perceived as one's own activity, but as that of a non-ego, whose object is consciousness. It is as if the subjectivity of the self had been overrun or taken over by another subject that takes its place.

This is a well-known religious experience, already articulated by St. Paul. Undoubtedly, a new state of consciousness is being described here, distinguished from the previous state by a profound process of religious transformation. One could object that consciousness itself has not changed, but only the awareness of something, as if one had turned the page of a book and now saw a different picture with the same eyes. I fear this is nothing more than an arbitrary interpretation, for it does not correspond to the facts.

Transformation Process

Classical philosophy supports this process to a great extent, although this can be said less and less of modern philosophy. Schopenhauer is still classical – with reservations – but Nietzsche's Zarathustra is no longer philosophy at all: it is a dramatic process of transformation that has completely engulfed the intellect. It is no longer about thought, but in the highest sense about the thinker of thought – and this is evident on every page of the book. A new human being, a completely transformed human being, is to emerge, one who has shattered the shell of the old and who not only looks upon a new heaven and a new earth, but has created them.

Angelus Silesius expresses it somewhat more modestly than Zarathustra: "My body is a shell in which a chick lies enclosed; incubated by the spirit of eternity, it awaits its hatching... Satori, in the Christian sphere, corresponds to an experience of religious transformation." Since there are different degrees and types of such an experience, it may not be superfluous to define more precisely the category that most closely approximates the Zen experience.

This is undoubtedly the mystical experience, which differs from other types in that its preliminary stages consist in "letting go," in "emptying oneself of images and ideas," in contrast to those religious experiences that, like the exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, are based on the practice of visualizing sacred images. I would include transformation through faith and prayer, as well as through collective experience in Protestantism, in this latter category, since a very specific expectation plays the decisive role here, and by no means "emptiness" or "freedom."

Koan - Paradox

These are presented to the student by the teacher for meditation. A classic example is the Wu anecdote. A monk once asked the master, "Does a dog also have Buddha nature?" To which the master replied, "Wu!" As Suzuki notes, this "Wu" simply means "woof woof" – evidently exactly how the dog itself would have answered such a question. At first glance, it seems as if posing such a question as an object of meditation would anticipate or prejudge the final outcome and thus determine the content of the experience, just as in Jesuit exercises or certain yoga meditations, the content is determined by the task posed by the teacher.

However, the koans are so diverse, so ambiguous, and above all, so infinitely paradoxical that even an expert would be completely in the dark as to what might be considered a suitable solution. Moreover, the descriptions of the final outcome are so unclear that in no single case can a rational connection between the koan and the enlightenment experience be discerned. Since no logical sequence can be demonstrated, it remains to be assumed that the koan method does not in the slightest restrict the freedom of the psychic process, and that the final result therefore arises exclusively from the individual disposition of the student.

The complete destruction of the rational intellect, which is the goal of the training, leads to an almost complete lack of conscious preconditions. These are excluded as far as possible, but not unconscious preconditions—that is, the existing but unrecognized psychic disposition, which is anything but empty or tabula rasa.

Divine Spectacle

If humans have already succeeded in constructing the world from the few individual elements that can be perceived simultaneously, what divine spectacle would be presented to them if they could perceive many more simultaneously and clearly? This question only applies to perceptions that are possible for us. If we now add the unconscious contents—that is, contents that are not yet or no longer consciously perceptible—and then try to imagine a complete vision, this exceeds even the wildest imagination.

In any conscious form, it is, of course, completely unimaginable, but in the unconscious, it is a fact, since everything subconscious carries within it the omnipresent possibility of being perceived and represented in consciousness. The unconscious is an unimaginable totality of all subconscious psychic factors, a "total vision" in potentia. It represents the overall disposition from which consciousness picks out tiny fragments from time to time. If consciousness is emptied of its contents as much as possible, it falls into a state of unconsciousness, at least temporarily.

In Zen, this shift usually results from energy being withdrawn from the conscious contents and transferred either to the idea of ​​"emptiness" or to the koan. Since both must be static, the sequence of images is suspended, and with it the energy that sustains awareness. The energy thus saved flows into the unconscious, amplifying its natural charge to the point of bursting. This increases the readiness of the unconscious contents to break through into consciousness. However, since emptying and shutting down consciousness is no easy task, special, unlimited training is required to build up the maximum tension that leads to the final breakthrough of the unconscious contents.

The unconscious is the matrix of all metaphysical statements, all mythology

The unconscious is the matrix of all metaphysical statements, all mythology, all philosophy (as long as it is not merely critical), and all expressions of life based on psychological premises. Every intervention in the unconscious is a response to a specific conscious situation, and this response arises from the totality of existing possible ideas, i.e., from the total disposition, which, as explained above, is a simultaneous image in potential psychic existence. The splitting into individual units, its one-sided and fragmentary character, is the essence of consciousness. The response of the disposition always has a total character, since it reflects a nature that has not been divided by any discriminating consciousness.

Hence its overwhelming effect. It is the unexpected, all-encompassing, completely illuminating response, which acts all the more as illumination and revelation because consciousness has become trapped in a hopeless impasse. So when the Zen practitioner, after many years of the most strenuous practice and the most painstaking destruction of rational understanding, receives an answer—the only true one—from nature itself, everything said about satori becomes understandable. As one can see for oneself, it is the naturalness of the answer that strikes one most about Zen anecdotes.

Yes, one can accept with a kind of old-fashioned, mischievous satisfaction the story of the enlightened disciple who slapped his master as a reward. And how much wisdom is contained in the master's "Wu," the answer to the question about the dog's Buddha nature! However, one must always keep in mind that there are very many people who cannot distinguish between a metaphysical joke and nonsense, and just as many who are so convinced of their own wisdom that they have never met anyone but fools in their lives.

Psychotherapy

The only movement in our civilization that has, or should have, some understanding of these aspirations is psychotherapy. It is therefore no coincidence that a psychotherapist is writing this foreword. Psychotherapy is essentially a dialectical relationship between doctor and patient. It is an encounter, a confrontation between two psychic wholes, in which knowledge serves only as a tool. The goal is transformation—not a predetermined, but an indeterminable change, the sole criterion of which is the disappearance of the ego.

No effort on the part of the doctor can force this experience. At most, he can pave the way for the patient and help him achieve an attitude that offers the least resistance to the decisive experience. If knowledge plays a not insignificant role in our Western approach, this is comparable to the importance of the traditional spiritual atmosphere of Buddhism in Zen.

Zen and its technique could only have emerged on the basis of Buddhist culture, which it presupposes in every respect. You can't destroy a rationalistic intellect that never existed—no Zen practitioner has ever been the product of ignorance and lack of culture. Therefore, it often happens among us that a conscious self and a cultivated understanding must first be created through analysis before one can even consider abolishing the self or rationalism.

Furthermore, psychotherapy doesn't involve people who, like Zen monks, are willing to make any sacrifice for the truth, but very often the most stubborn of all Europeans. Therefore, the tasks of psychotherapy are much more diverse, and the individual phases of the long process are much more contradictory, than in Zen.

Tibetan Book of the Dead

One must read the Bardo Thödol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, backward, as I have suggested, to find an Eastern parallel to the torments and catastrophes of the Western "path of liberation" to wholeness. That is what this is about—not good intentions, skillful imitations, or intellectual acrobatics. And this is precisely what the psychotherapist is confronted with, in vague hints or in larger or smaller fragments, once they have freed themselves from hasty and short-sighted doctrines. If they follow their quasi-biological credo, they will always try to reduce what they have learned to the banal and familiar, to a rationalistic denominator that satisfies only those who are content with illusions.

But the greatest of all illusions is that everything can ever satisfy everyone. This illusion lies behind everything unbearable in life and, above all, progress, and is one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome. If the psychotherapist can take a break from his helpful activities for a little reflection, or if he is accidentally forced to see through his own illusions, it may dawn on him how hollow and shallow, how hostile to life, all rationalistic reductions are when they encounter something living and growing. If he pursues this further, he will soon gain an idea of ​​what it means to "open wide the gate at which man has ever recoiled."

I certainly don't want to give the impression that I am making recommendations or offering advice. But when discussing Zen in the West, I consider it my duty to show Europeans where our entrance to this "longest road" leading to satori lies, and the difficulties beset this path, which only a few of our greats have trodden—beacons perhaps on high mountains, illuminating the distant future. It would be a fatal mistake to assume that satori or samadhi can be found anywhere below these heights.

Neurosis - Psychosis

People then resort to pathological vocabulary and console themselves with the terminology of neurosis and psychosis, or whisper about the "creative secret." But what can a person "create" if they don't happen to be a poet? This misunderstanding has recently led quite a few to call themselves "artists"—of their own accord—as if art had nothing to do with skill. But those who have nothing to create at all may be creating themselves. Zen shows how much "becoming whole" means to the East.

Studying the riddles of Zen may perhaps strengthen the backbone of the faint-hearted European or smooth out their psychic shortsightedness with a pair of glasses, so that from their "damned hole in the wall," they can at least catch a fleeting glimpse of the world of psychic experience, which until now has been shrouded in fog. It can't hurt, because those who are too timid are effectively protected from further falsification and anything of significance by the helpful idea of ​​"autosuggestion." However, I would like to warn the attentive and compassionate reader not to underestimate the spiritual depth of the East or to consider Zen superficial and cheap.