What is A Kensho Experience?

Zendancer: Yes, it is what some of us have called a "woo-woo" experience, but that type of experience (or event) is quite common in Zen, and I can think of numerous Zen Masters who have described them. They almost always result in what Zen people call "passing through the gateless gate." Reefs has written about kensho events, and, like me, he thinks that they add something extra to one's insight into the true nature of reality. In fact, I think kensho is defined in the Rinzai tradition as "seeing into one's true nature."

Unfortunately, Zen writers have not adequately described the difference between satori and kensho. Reefs and I both assumed that satori is seeing through the illusion of selfhood and kensho is the equivalent of a CC. Hakuin claimed in his autobiography that he had had more than a hundred kenshos, some big and some small, but he and other ZM's have, to the best of my knowledge, never clearly delineated, or made the distinction that we often make between realizations and experiences. Hakuin also claimed to have had two satoris, the second of which was the most powerful event in his life. If seeing through the illusion of selfhood is equivalent to satori, then how could there be a second satori? His claim about two satoris makes me think that he was describing kenshos, or that his definition of satori is NOT equivalent to seeing through the illusion of selfhood.

A kensho event is usually triggered by some sensory event. In the Buddha's case it was seeing the planet Venus rise in the morning sky. One ZM got the whole shebang when he heard a pebble strike a bamboo fence. ZM Seung Sahn had a huge kensho upon hearing a temple gong reverberate in a valley below him. One ZM had a big kensho when he smelled peach blossoms. The kensho I had was triggered by the ringing of a telephone. Katsuki Sekida's kensho was triggered when he repeated a passage from a book he had read the day before. Helen Courtois's kensho began while staring at a small desk in her bedroom.

After Hakuin's first kensho, he thought that he had become enlightened, but his master just laughed at him. After a second kensho, his master kicked him off the porch of the monastery into the mud and laughed at him again. After his third kensho, his master no longer made fun of him, but it was something like ten more years before Hakuin attained what he called "the essence of Zen."

It's unfortunate that most ZM's have not described in detail exactly what happened to them along the pathless path.

Zazeniac: I think in the Zen tradition there is a caveat about creating expectations least it become fodder for the mind to reach for.

Zendancer: Yes. That's why Zen people talk about meditating "with no gaining idea." Fortunately, no one here has any gaining ideas.

Zendancer: Haha! Yes, I'm always telling people to forget the word "if." Things unfolded exactly how they unfolded, but it was the CC that changed everything for this character. Afterwards, I felt just like Kabir who said, "I saw the infinite for 15 seconds and became a servant for life."

Post by zendancer on Aug 6, 2009 at 11:14am
Hello. I'm new to this website and haven't quite figured out if this is the correct place to post an introduction. I'll write a short intro here, and if I need to move it somewhere else, maybe someone can tell me what to do.

I accidentally found this site while searching for the name of a hundred-year-old spiritual teacher I heard about this week. When I saw Shawn's name, I recognized it from the TAT forum newslettters. Here's the short version of my story:

At the age of twenty I became consumed by a long list of questions--all the standard questions, plus many others from my scientific studies (Is there a God? Who am I? Why am I here? How did life arise in a lifeless universe? What is a photon or an electron, really? What could explain the observer paradoxes in modern physics and other sciences?, etc). I spent the next ten years studying and thinking, but never found a single answer to any of my questions. It seemed that the more I learned the less I seemed to know.

At the age of thirty, I discovered Zen and eastern religions and began reading and thinking about all of the issues I encountered there. After ten more years, I still hadn't found any answers, but I had added hundreds of new questions to my list (What is samadhi? What is enlightenment? What is the sound of one hand clapping? etc).

At the age of forty I grew incredibly frustrated because I hadn't found any answers and because I began to realize that I might die before finding any answers. I felt like a rat in a trap. Then, I got lucky. I read about a simple breath awareness exercise and began using it in an effort to gain some mental silence. After five months of meditation, I fell into a deep samadhi three nights in a row followed on the fourth day by a mind-blowing enlightenment experience. I had an out-of-body experience and discovered the answers to several of my questions.

For the next fifteen years I went on silent retreats and long solo hikes in the mountains, and gradually all of my questions were answered, except one. After having numerous unity-conscious experiences, I always seemed to come back to a "me in here" looking at "a world out there." I wondered how it was possible to stay in a unity conscious state of mind forever. On Aug 17, 1999, while hiking on Mt. Audubon in Colorado, my last question was answered and I was finally free! What a relief! What I discovered that day in 1999 is that who I thought I was--a separate entity with the name of "Bob"-- had never existed. The whole thing had been a huge illusion. I finally knew who and what I am. In retrospect, my entire thirty-five- year search turned out to be a huge joke, and the joke was on me. These days I live an ordinary life and offer advice to other people who are searching for the truth. My advice is best summed up in Psalms 46:10--"Be still and know that I am God," or the words of Gangaji, Papaji, Ramana, etc--"Stop and be still." The intellect is useless for finding the truth; a far deeper function of mind is required. Cheers. spiritualteachers.proboards.com/post/2137

ZD: Yes, the non-locality of perception can't be understood without the reference for it. In my case the thought appeared, "Who is perceiving this?" and I discovered that I could not remember my own name. I had no idea who or what was perceiving because there was only a state of oneness rather than the usual divided-mind state of the observer and the observed.


I have friends in TAT who discount Segal as someone who suffered from a pathological personality disassociation syndrome, but her book rings true to me, and I feel confident that she accurately described what happened to her. Her book made a profound impression upon me, and she hammered home the fact that there is no SVP so strongly that it took away "my" future. After reading her book 7 times, it suddenly dawned on me that whatever I was looking for could not be located in the future of a personal "me" because the personal "me" was an illusion. Whatever it was had to be here and now. That realization was profound, but it remained intellectual until a year or so later when "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was finally understood what she was pointing to. Her story is definitely one of the most interesting accounts in ND literature.