Is "Satori" Enlightenment?

GROWING UP MARA with Mara Schaeffer, Dhr. Seven, and Amber Dorrian, Wisdom Quarterly

Q: Is satori enlightenment? 

A: I was just listening to Joseph Goldstein talk about this yesterday in his outstanding "Abiding in Mindfulness" series. (I'm up to Talk 39.) He says they're pretty much the same thing.

• But of course they are technically different: Satori is an "epiphany" in Zen, whereas kensho is the deeper realization. Buddhist enlightenment means bodhi (fully awakening from the illusion of existence independent of the Five Aggregates of Clinging); this is a permanently liberating insight not the commonly mentioned realization of "oneness" (nonduality).

Mara: Same thing, more or less.

• No, very different. This may seem like quibbling. This may be quibbling. But it is the central disagreement between the two main Buddhist schools today, the more orthodox Theravada and the more reformed Mahayana. (There are no "Hinayana" schools still in existence, the last one being the ancient Sarvastivada).

Mara: People call Theravada a Hinayana ("Smaller Vehicle") school. I guess that's a mistake. But Mahayana is the true way, what the Buddha implicitly meant even though he didn't say it.

 

"Buddhism" (the Buddha Dharma) was reabsorbed by Brahmin priests into their religion. Vedic Brahminical teachings had quite a different view of "enlightenment" (samadhi) and "liberation" (moksha). The sense of oneness with Brahman (GODHEAD), the universe, or every living being everywhere is NOT enlightenment. 

  

Melting into the universe (reversing our sense of separation), merging with the "great reality behind the illusion" (which is one description of Brahman) is NOT enlightenment. The Buddha corrected that view and explained to the Brahmins on many occasions that they were mistaken. Those are wonderful spiritual things and surely worthy of attaining, but they are not the final enlightenment the Buddha was talking about. They are not what the historical Buddha called nirvana, the ultimate.

  

Some Brahmins listened and directly saw what the Buddha was talking about. But Brahmanism co-opted Buddhism, subsumed it into their outlook, and incorporated the Buddha into their pantheon as yet another god-man, merely an incarnation of Vishnu out to deceive people away from the Truth. 

   

(One hears today how great it is that Hinduism and Buddhism get along so well, each revering the Buddha. The fact is, Hinduism lessens then essentially disregards the Buddha, who opposed the ultimate authority of the sacred Vedas and many other Brahminical teachings).

 

Brahmins developed Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. Theravada held on as closely as it could to what the historical actually Buddha taught -- how he went against the stream of convention -- avoiding the assumptions and additions of the Brahmins.

  

"Just sitting" (zazen) is only one part of Zen training (Elheiji Zen monastery, Japan/Art.com)

   
Many Mahayanists today seem to have no idea that this happened, and they sound like Hindus using slightly different terms for the same things. That's beautiful. But that's not Shakaymuni Buddha Gautama's Dharma (teaching, message, dispensation). 

   

Moreover, this Brahmin Mahayana-Hindu philosophy went on to serve as the basis for Christianity. (Christianity pulls from traditions all over the world, taking everything Pagan that ever stood in its way and making it its own).

   

If the Buddha had just arisen to agree with Brahmins, to support the Vedas, to be an incarnation (avatar) of the God trinity, Buddhism would be Hinduism. As alike as they seem, they diverge radically as to what constitutes enlightenment (bodhi) and liberation (nirvana).

   

The Brahmins always assumed that rebirth with the God Brahma, or more impersonally merging with the godhead Brahman, is the ultimate.

   

These are not enlightenment

The Buddha showed that all else fell short of ultimate liberation: rebirth of any kind, life in heaven(s), psychic powers, being God, oneness with all, concentration (kinds of samadhi), bliss, and epiphanies all fall short of stream entry (the first stage of Buddhist enlightenment) and the ultimate, nirvana.

  

Much meditative bliss may arise, but Four Signs keep one on track: aging, sickness, death...

   
The absorptions (jhanas) -- as important as they are to the goal -- do not lead to enlightenment. They lead to rebirth in those exalted states Brahmanism would call "nirvana" or liberation. All rebirths are impermanent; they are not-self; they are unsatisfactory (dukkha, disappointing).

   

The end of suffering through Buddhist enlightenment is final. It is nonclinging by liberation of the heart/mind to all that it clings to. What does it cling to most? It clings to the Five Aggregates of Clinging -- body, feelings, perceptions, formations such as volition, and consciousness. 

   

Ancient Brahmins and modern Hindus believe consciousness is the true self, the immortal or permanent soul, the unchanging "witness," the watcher, the knower behind the knowing. But Shakyamuni Buddha went to great pains to show that this was NOT the case. Consciousness is an impersonal aggregate, a heap, a constituent group, a transient process. It is not any kind of "self" that can actually be clung to.

Mara: How does one go beyond satori to actual Buddhist enlightenment?

• Stages of Buddhist enlightenment progressively eradicate the ten fetters (samyojana) that bind one to samsara, the otherwise endless round of rebirth and disappointment. Traditionally Buddhism speaks of four stages. Actually the texts divide them in different ways for different reasons. The best explanation is found in the ancient commentarial The Path of Freedom (Vimutti Magga). Abhidharma scholars looked at these stages in different ways.

Mara: Is satori one of them?

   

A series of epiphanies may make one very wise, conventionally speaking, but one would be no closer to actual enlightenment and final nirvana if the fetters were not being uprooted. If Zen Buddhism means such an uprooting, then satori would be a stage. But that is not how satori is used. Kensho could be. But let's look at the fetters to be uprooted.

   

The first and most difficult fetter to uproot is at the very heart of the problem -- the one it never seriously occurs to us to actually question: "self view" (sakkaya ditthi), the sense that we are some unchanging self or soul (atta) independently willing, worrying, and having the experience, the homunculus behind the knowing, the "little man" in our head looking out of the eyes and working a control panel.

  

Mara: Goldstein -- the founder of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts [whom Wisdom Quarterly believes to be at least a stream enterer, along with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, trained as they were in the Burmese and Thai Theravada tradition and by Dipa Ma in India] -- discussed the question, "Does enlightenment happen all at once in a 'flash of insight' or gradually over time?"
  
He says that some masters hold to one view, and equally reputable masters hold to the other view. Both are correct.

• Yes. It happens one way for some, the other for others. Yet on reflection it is always gradual, that is, based on causes and conditions that were cultivated over time, sometimes many lives. How then is the other true? If efforts in previous lives come to fruition with no effort in this life, enlightenment will seem sudden and unprompted -- "a flash of insight."

Mara: Adyashanti talks about this also in his "The Nature of Enlightenment" series.
   
Satori
My experience? A person has that one profound mystical experience that hits like a lightning bolt and totally rearranges the psyche [personality, heart, mind, spirit, "soul"]. 
  
One experiences a shattering of the individual ego as one realizes a transcendental self existing not only within the personal self but in all beings everywhere.

• This is exactly the popular view Brahminism/Hinduism clings to, which the Buddha rejected as a definition of enlightenment or liberation. Brahmin priests and Jain ascetics (brahmanas and shramanas) -- those temple priests who hold the Vedas as the ultimate authority and those wandering ascetics who, like the Buddha, reject them -- hold the wrong view that consciousness is the soul, the self, the thing to be identified with, the shared essence connecting everyone.
• The Buddha understood that ALL constituents of soul or self (atta) are actually impersonal (an-atta, "not-self"). 
• Clinging to Brahman (GOD, Godhead, the Universe, the All) or consciousness is not enlightenment, not liberation from rebirth and suffering.
• However sublime the experience or subtle the defilement, it shows that one has NOT broken through to the first and foremost liberating insight taught by the historical Buddha.
• This is probably why Mahayana Buddhism sees such a de-emphasis on the historical Buddha (Shakyamuni) and an emphasis on a pantheon of "Buddhas" -- just like the pantheon of Hindu "gods" it reflects -- with one True Buddha (like True Brahman). Instead of the avatars Brahmanism/Hinduism reveres and awaits, bodhisattvas become the focus of Mahayana.

Mara: I don't know much about the Hindu view.

• Few Mahayana Buddhists do. They talk like Hindus without realizing it, and they call that Hinduism they're talking about all the time "Buddhism" without realizing it.

Mara: Give IT any name you like. As one's meditation practice grows, there continue to be flashes of insight, chutes and ladders of expansion, loss, and growth within the new perspective over the years. This is the spirit [prana, spiritus, subtle energy, chi, breath, fine-material] path.
  
As one's dreamwork practice grows, the Dream-maker within becomes an active source of visionary insight and understanding. With brilliantly articulated images that are amazing in their depth and wisdom, one learns to work with them daily and translate them into meaning.
   
This is the soul path. For me, both practices are essential for wholeness, the head and the heart, like two eyes, each complementing the other, one looking inside and one outside to see one panoramic world extending beyond the limits of the seen, rich, and complex in depth, breadth, and height. 

• That yogic experience of Brahman (union), samadhi, and nonduality must be nice that you speak this way. Hooray! It formed the basis of the Indus River Civilization that a buddha eventually arose in. (See "A Higher Teaching").