Satori (Zen)

Satori is the psychological result and aim of the practice of zazen meditation (described separately). This practice induces a special form of objective awareness of self associated with an experience of joy emanating from a mind which has transcended all relative joys and sorrows.

Experience is no longer mediated through concepts (which is the reason for the tendency to give illogical responses to requests for definitions of satori). In addition, the satori experience has a paradoxical quality, such as a feeling of oneness, which is inexpressible in a language posited on a subject-object dichotomy in a conventional space-time framework. The existence of a separate self is viewed as a fiction through the satori experience, which is an intuitive perception of the real self as the true author of the individual's behaviour and at the same time a part of the whole flux of the universe. Experience is felt to take place directly through the real self unmediated by conscious thought, and without consciousness of the process. The individual is content to permit his behaviour to bring out a self which cannot be fully conceptualized, trusting the self sufficiently to suspend conscious reflective control over it.

Satori may be experienced for shorter or longer times, depending on the length of training and the responsiveness of the individual to it. Brief experiences in exceptional situations may be developed so that the experience is achieved in a wider variety of conditions. Brief moments of satori or experiences of satori which could still be made more profound are, in Zen, referred to as [kensho]

. Enlightenment, a nearly impossible ideal, is considered to be the constant experience of satori.