The Zen Map of Awakening

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Stephen Mugen Snyder, Sensei presents the Zen Map of Awakening from his book Demystifying Awakening.

Transcript

First Awakening or Kensho

So the first awakening experience in the way that I frame the map of Zen awakening is kensho, which just means seeing one’s true nature. Or seeing things as they are. Something like that. Many people will start with experiencing kensho in a very momentary basis, or a very flash experience, and this builds over time. Part of it is we’re developing trust in putting down the sense of self, experiencing absence-of-self. We’re learning to let go and make contact with the love of the Absolute. The pure love that’s there. We’re learning all these things. We’re learning nothing bad is happening, it’s safe. So our sense of survival instinct gets more and more relaxed and understands that it’s not going to mean that this body or mind die. There’s going to be a de-emphasis of those but they’re not going to permanently go away.

Three Components of an Awakening Experience

For me as a Zen teacher a student has to demonstrate the three components: (1) I mentioned earlier absence of self, (2) recognition of true identity, and (3) the universal love or the Oneness. The majority of people that have kensho experiences, they have the experience of the unmanifest, that’s the entry, the portal. So the no-self, the absence of self, opens into the unmanifest Absolute. And at some point the love and presence quality of the manifest Absolute is experienced too. So the whole of the Absolute is experienced. A smaller percentage of people enter through the love, through the unity, through the presence side. It does happen but it’s just not a high percentage of people. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it being experienced that way, I just don’t see it that often.

So when we have the experience of kensho part of what happens in the absence-of-self is our self-identity becomes transparent. We can’t see it. We can’t experience it in the moment that our awareness and consciousness are deeply experiencing the Absolute. So there isn’t a sense I’m doing this, there isn’t a me driving it, or organizing it. There’s no personality involvement. Again this is happening with consciousness and awareness.

Depth of an Awakening

Sometimes in the Zen tradition we’ll talk about depth of kensho, or depth of awakening. That’s really pointing to how long the sense of self is suspended before it re-engages or begins to re-engage. I mentioned some kensho can be a moment or two. The more the more deep experience would probably, the sense of self, the absence of self, would be present for weeks, if not months, before the sense of self begins to reassert itself with any strength. We’re going to be changed by the kensho experience. So when the sense of self arises again it’s not quite the same. Some dysfunction, some misunderstandings we hold will fall away because we’ve experienced the truth, we know that particular opinion wasn’t accurate, that perspective wasn’t accurate. So that’s what we talk about the depth.

Satori and the 51% Rule

Within awakening I also use a term “the 51% rule”. Let me first mention, I identify three significant stages of awakening. Kensho is initial awakening. In Japanese Zen any awakening can be called kensho it’s just a a term meaning awakening. A deeper awakening in the map that I present and teach is called satori and the difference between kensho and satori is the 51% rule. An initial awakening can be a satori awakening that does happen in a small percentage of people who experience kensho. The 51% rule means that how much of conscious has realized itself as the Absolute. Meaning, the Absolute awakens to itself in an awakening experience. So how much of the individual consciousness does that awakening land in. It can be really any percentage but it seems to be that once it’s the majority of consciousness is awake, then what happens is the foundation the sense of this is fundamentally who I am shifts from the sense of self the normal sense of self that everyone in the world holds, it shifts to true nature it shifts to the qualities of the Absolute in you.

So in your consciousness it’s like there are these gems. I’ve talked about them being like holograms where if the right concentration energy is directed to these gems then they can reveal the whole of the Absolute. But we’re not in contact with the wholeness of the Absolute, the fullness of it as a base inner sense. So we can touch in, we can feel the qualities of the Absolute, in our experience in our sense of self. It’s sort of tied up into that. So that would be the the satori experience when the foundation shifts, and it never shifts back as long as one maintains meditation practice that foundation remains.

Daigo-tettei, Self-Identity, and the Core Wound

There’s one level that’s a little deeper than the satori. The third significant awakening in the Zen map is called daigo-tettei which means final or full awakening. I always say when I give that definition that it isn’t really final in the sense that there’s no further awakenings or realizations to happen. Those continue forever, as long as one is practicing the awakenings can continue. There’s no end to the mystery that can be revealed in the Absolute. In the daigo-tettei two significant events happen with that realization.

In the normal framing of the development of the identity, the map that I use for that, the development of the sense of self, is one where the infant is born into a dual-unity, into a oneness of presence. It doesn’t see an experience itself as a distinct being. It believes it’s part of the whole the caregiver and the baby from the babies the infants perspective are one. Over time the baby recognizes that need comes from within, pain is felt within, hunger, a need for affection, those are all from within. The baby begins to see the solution the satisfaction of these needs comes from outside, from another. So the baby concludes I don’t have the solutions. I can’t satisfy these needs, these hungers, these hurts, I need the other. So that begins differentiating the baby into an individual sense of self. Also the baby turns away from the presence of the Absolute to invest in the caregiver. My survival depends upon the these people. I have to keep them connected to me.

So this begins the sense of self and it’s developed based on thoughts, thought patterns. I talked about the preferences, likes and dislikes. That’s part of how we form identity and also how we’re mirrored by caregivers in school, social situations. That just paints who we are to us. Then we begin to maintain it. When somebody sees all the things we feel are good in us then we feel seen, they get us. If someone mirrors us inaccurately then we think they don’t get us. They’re not someone who I want to be close with. They don’t understand me. So we perpetuate the self-identity as we move through life. When the baby turns away from the unity, with presence of the Absolute, each of us blames ourselves something is wrong with me or I wouldn’t have been kicked out of presence. I would still be intimate with presence. But we were the ones that chose to turn to the birth family, the caregivers, invest in them. So we turned away and we blame the Absolute. It kicked me out because I’m flawed, because I have this problem, this worthlessness within. What I call the core wound. The personality is constructed on the core wound, to hide it. To distract others attention away from the sense of valuelessness, worthlessness, unlovability, bad, broken, unfixable, all of that.

So in the daigo-tettei realization, in the process of the kensho and satori experiences, we do a lot of personal work because the realization highlights whatever is not matching, whatever is incongruent with the realization, with the understanding from the realization. So we’re constantly working our personal material. Refining, refining who we are. Becoming a better and better vessel for the Absolute. That’s when the daigo-tettei realization can happen, when we’re ready to resolve the core wound. When we’re ready to go into it, to find out what’s true about it, and to drop what’s false. In the daigo-tettei realization, the reason it’s called the final enlightenment, is because the sense of self falls away and doesn’t return.

I only know a handful of people, maybe five or six, that have had this experience. I’ve had a couple students have the experience and I have a couple that are working on this realization, it’s approaching. So it is happening, it’s just very rare, because you have to work through a lot of the personal material, and many people aren’t willing to work, and move into that deep vulnerability. The question maybe I am worthless, maybe I am broken unfixable, that’s what we have to be willing to witness, by working this material. And so those are the three realizations on the in the map of the Zen tradition.

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