Satori

Have you ever been thinking about something over and over and over and suddenly had a flash of insight where all the pieces come together and you feel like you really, truly understand it down to its toenails?  The Japanese have a word for that experience: satori.  It comes in a flash and sometimes is gone just as quickly.  You can have a little, temporary satori or a big, life-changing satori.  If you study a subject deeply, you can get the former fairly often.  The latter comes very seldom.  But it does come.

In some Zen schools, there is a tradition of taking a student to the edge of understanding, then striking with a staff as a distraction.  The student’s mind is jarred loose from its moorings, and views everything from a completely new angle. This new way of looking at things is so novel, so all-encompassing, that the student can’t find the words to explain it.  It’s sometimes said that any time students can explain it, they haven’t yet understood it.

Other schools use koans, a simple story or puzzle with no “right” answer, to do the same thing.  The mind becomes full, worrying over first one, then another logical answer until a spark of inspiration strikes.  A Buddhist monk in Turkey gave me the traditional koan of the ox and the window.

In my youth (and arrogance) I thought it would be easy.  I’d done koans before.  In the end, I gnawed on that bone for decades.  I was sitting in mediation one day, working my koan, when a huge wave passed over me.  At first I thought I was having a heart attack, because I felt something in my chest break open.  Then my heart swelled until it filled the universe.  Suddenly I could see how everything I knew fit together:  martial arts, astrophysics, life, consciousness — everything.  I was filled with an understanding greater than anything I could describe.  My whole body shook, my chest ached, and I wept with joy.  I’d found my way.  I’d solved my koan.