To Kensho or Not to Kensho…

That is the Question

On the Importance (or Unimportance) of Spiritual “Experiences” such as Kensho and Satori in Budo Zen and Zen-Influenced Budo

Are Experiences of Spiritual “Awakening” Important?  Should They be Purposely Cultivated?  Can Kensho be Achieved—as Some Budoka Claim—Through the Training of Budo Alone?

     After writing the following, I have been hesitant to post it.  I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.  Nonetheless, I decided that I would go ahead and do so.  If you practice Zen, Budo, or both—or you have enjoyed reading my past essays on the subjects—then perhaps you will find something in it that is of interest.  It is, at times, deeply personal, as well, which had something to do with my hesitation in making it public.  I’m also unsure as to whether or not it conveys my thoughts adequately on the subjects it addresses, but if it helps even one reader, then that’s good enough.

     If you are looking forward to more of my articles on lifting and bodybuilding, I am also currently working on an in-depth article on my son Garrett’s high-volume, high-frequency training style.  That will probably be my next post.

     Some traditions of Budo Zen put a lot of emphasis on “kensho” or “satori.”  This is particularly true within the Rinzai tradition of Japanese Zen.  The Soto school, however, seems to almost completely dismiss the importance of such experiences.  Are these experiences beneficial or not?  Should we not only place importance on them but actively seek them out?  Or, even if we do have them, should we—paraphrasing Kodo Sawaki Roshi—consider them “nothing special” and simply move forward in our training?

     For anyone unfamiliar with these terms coined from Zen, kensho translates as “seeing into one’s nature” and satori as “to comprehend” and both imply an experience or encounter with “Ultimate Reality” or in strictly Mahayana terms one’s “Buddha Nature.”  (From a Christian standpoint, they would be markedly similar to Meister Eckhart’s “breakthrough” of the Godhead, or God-beyond-God.)  Traditionally, they were used interchangeably by most Zen schools, though in the West, kensho is sometimes viewed as a “lesser” experience, a “glimpse” into the nature of things, whereas satori implies a deeper understanding of that experience.  For the sake of clarity in this essay, I will treat them as one and the same.

     First off, I don’t think this topic can really be addressed or should even be discussed by anyone who has not actually had an experience of kensho.  Otherwise, it’s just dry intellectualism, the very thing that Zen has always railed against.  Of course, by writing that, I am telling you that, yes, I have had my own kensho experiences on more than one occasion.  However, this shouldn’t be seen—and I certainly don’t want you to see it—as something “special” and I’m sure as hell not implying that I am somehow “enlightened.”  Having written that, I must admit that the two experiences that I will write about here completely changed my life.  My first kensho happened when I was a young teenager.  The second a little over twenty years ago—an experience so profound that “changed my life” doesn’t even begin to cover it.  It completely derailed me and because of it, I have not really been the same person since.  Ultimately, it also caused the dissolution of my marriage among other relationships.  It also, in no way whatsoever, made me “happier.”  If you think an experience of “awakening to your true nature” is going to make you happy or lead to some kind of everlasting bliss, look somewhere else.  A six-pack of beer would be a better choice.  Also, because these kenshos happened so long ago, I’m capable of looking back on them with a degree of hindsight and hopefully something approaching wisdom.  Before I began writing this essay, I got on the internet and searched for “kensho.”  What I came across was some dimwit on YouTube discussing a “kensho” that he had experienced a few days before, and now he was telling the world about it, along with probably hawking some products or something—I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.  A cursory glance at other videos, blogs, and pages presented similar accounts.  I doubt most of those jokers have been practicing “Zen” for more than a couple of years.  (I put Zen in quotes, since I don’t think an authentic teacher would claim such things—most of them were, more than likely, your average New Age folks trying to mesh together a bunch of different religions.  In addition to Zen, they probably love quoting Rumi and discussing Sufism, talk about “releasing their chakras”, study horoscopes and crystals, and like to discuss Christian and Hindu mystics such as the aforementioned Eckhart and the 20th century Advaita sage Ramana Maharshi.  Now, that is also not to write that I am opposed to the perennial philosophy, sometimes referred to as Traditionalism, as I’m somewhat of a Christian neo-perennialist myself.  But I digress—let’s put that discussion on the back shelf for the time being.)  Zen, like any of the traditional styles of Budo, isn’t something that you should teach without decades of experience under your belt.  A decade at the minimum.  Even then, you need to have trained—once again, just as with martial arts—at a “good” zendo, one that comes from an authentic lineage and still teaches it the way that it has always been taught in Japan, China, Korea, or Vietnam, the countries where Zen has always been prominent.  Just as there are a lot of “McDojos” in today’s world of karate schools—if you’re unfamiliar with the term, I won’t get around to what makes for a McDojo; you know it when you see it; you can always look up “Bullshido” on Google or YouTube and you’ll quickly understand—there are also plenty of what you might call “McZendos” (heck, a term I may have just coined).  They are folks teaching “Zen” like the YouTube dude mentioned above or even “authentic” zendos that come from legitimate teaching lineages but now teach watered-down “mindfulness” methods.  Some of these places give “Dharma talks” where the Buddha and the Zen patriarchs and ancestors aren’t mentioned a single time, though you do get a lot of liberal politics where you get told that the Buddha would have voted for Democrats and that we need to all support open border policies or whatnot.*  For the record, I’m not against Democrats or certain “liberal” stances—I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and would be considered too liberal by some folks and far too conservative by others; I generally vote Libertarian, if anyone actually cares, which I hope they don’t.  I just don’t want to hear about that stuff in my zendo anymore than I want to hear about it in the dojo where I train.  Instead, in Budo I want a teacher who can show me proper technique and pass down the style to me in an authentic way.  What his politics are, well, I could care less.  In Zen, can she teach me how to sit and, eventually, how to awaken to my True Nature?  Which brings us back around to the experience of kensho.  In order to know our Original Face before our mother and father were born, should we try to experience satori?  Should we strive for kensho?  Lastly, can training in Budo alone bring about such experiences?  After all, it sure would be nice to achieve kensho while punching someone in the face rather than having to sit for hours on end on your meditation cushion.  Before I can answer that, let me now discuss my own experiences.

     Training in the dojo of my youth, I had one primary sensei and a number of others who had been practicing for decades themselves and would regularly teach class.  There was one teacher in particular and if he taught on any given night, then you could be sure that we were going to sit zazen at the end of our training session.  With the other teachers, zazen could be hit or miss.  Nonetheless, if you went several nights of the week as I did, you were bound to sit zazen at least twice in one week.  We did not sit for very long—often no more than 10 to 15 minutes.  The kind of zazen that I was taught—I had no understanding of Zen “styles” when I was thirteen years old—was shikantaza or “just sitting”, a practice most common to Soto-style Zen.  But the manner in which we practiced it was quite “ascetic” and “masculine”—samurai shikantaza, if you will.  It was similar to how Roshi Philip Kapleau described shikantaza in his monumental work The Three Pillars of Zen: “It is the mind of somebody facing death. Let us imagine that you are engaged in a duel of swordsmanship of the kind that used to take place in ancient Japan. As you face your opponent, you are unceasingly watchful, set, ready. Were you to relax your vigilance even momentarily, you would be cut down instantly… This state cannot be maintained for very long—in fact, you ought not to do shikantaza for more than a half an hour at each sitting… If you are truly doing shikantaza, in half an hour you will be sweating, even in winter in an unheated room, because of the heat generated by the intense concentration… Compared with an unskilled swordsman a master uses his sword effortlessly. But this was not always the case, for there was a time when he had to strain himself to the utmost, owing to his imperfect technique, to preserve his life. It is no different when doing shikantaza.”  By the way, I do not think that Kapleau is correct here.  That is most certainly not the way that shikantaza is practiced by the majority of Zennists.  The idea that your shikantaza should be so intense that you’re sweating by the end of a 30-minute session is almost laughable to me now.  The longer you sit, the more relaxed you should be, not vice-versa.  Nonetheless, that is exactly the way that I was taught it as a boy.  The goal in my karate dojo was to “empty our minds” and bring about a state of mushin or “no thought,” “no mind.”  You can see its appeal to a serious karateka whose hero was Mas Oyama—which, of course, would be me as a teenager.  Even though I don’t believe that is an ideal way to sit zazen, it did bring about my first kensho, so perhaps there is something to it, and it might be better than a form of “just sitting” that doesn’t attempt to achieve anything.

     On that impactful night of my early youth—although I can’t remember the year, I can remember that it was during the summer—it was hot and cloudless.  And it must have been one of those summers where it seems as if almost numberless cicadas emerge from their 17-year slumbers.  Their distinct chirping filled that summer’s muggy night air.

    My mother drove me home that night from the dojo; that’s how I know I wasn’t yet 16—I think I was either 13 or 14.  On the ride, the thought of the short zazen filled my mind.  There had been something different about it, although whatever that “something” was, my young mind could not quite pinpoint.

    When we got home, I was still covered in sweat from the workout, and the brief, but intense, shikantaza.  I had removed my belt on the ride, but my gi, because of the sweat, still clung to me.  I took off my uwagi (traditional name for a gi jacket) as soon as I walked in the door, but left on my white gi pants (my shitabaki) and, for some reason, just couldn’t get the evening’s zazen out of my mind.

    My mother began to do housework, and my father, as I recall, was listening to his record player, most likely ‘60s British rock, probably the Beatles.  But I wanted silence, as if my mind was still immersed in zazen’s silence, and it needed my body to follow suit, so I stepped out onto our back porch and sat down in a folding chair.

    My sweaty exhaustion, the humid mugginess, the crystal clear starlit night, the incessant hum of the cicadas, and my sensei’s admonition that evening to achieve one-pointed mushin coalesced into—for lack of a better word—an explosion where my mind became both infinitely vast and indelibly calm at the same time.  Then it was as if my entire body followed suit.

    I had never experienced anything like it.  Somehow my young mind knew it had just encountered the truth (or a truth) about reality, but also knew it had no way to put it into words.  It lingered with me for days, weeks, and even months.  I never had the experience again as a teenager, and eventually stopped really caring about the “spiritual” side of the martial arts.  Not completely, mind you.  I was always interested in Asian philosophy and the spiritual side of martial practice but I was far more interested in girls, partying, and other nonsense that adolescent boys and “men” care about.  But that experience never really left me, either.  There would be times that I would think about it and wonder what in the world it actually meant?

     Fast forward almost two decades.  It was 2005.  I was in a difficult marriage and struggling with some mental health issues, though I wouldn’t have admitted either at the time.  I had renewed my Zen practice not for any “religious” or philosophical reasons but because I was hoping to find some relief from my suffering.

     I was working on a koan, or more specifically a hwadu, though I’m not going to write here what it was.  I don’t think that really matters, and I don’t want you to somehow think that if you take up the same koan, you will somehow attain a similar satori.  It could have been the mu koan, or “the sound of one hand,” or “the oak tree in the garden,” or even “who am I?”  I don’t think it would have mattered which one I had chosen, I believe the same thing would have happened.  It was as if my mind was simply “ripe” for it to occur.  I wasn’t sitting in meditation or even really “trying” at all.  It was, again, summertime, or perhaps late spring, as I was lying in front of a box fan attempting to cool off from a workout.  I took up the koan and then it happened.  In what seemed instantaneous, my “body and mind fell away” and I was left without any sense of “me” or a “self” whatsoever.  Everything was perfect.  Utter and complete stillness and bliss.  I thought, perhaps, that the experience would soon go away, but it didn’t.  It stayed with me without any change at all for hours, then days, then weeks, and then months.  I did not know what to make of it.

     Before this 2nd kensho, I didn’t really care about “religion.”  As mentioned, I was practicing Zen again just to relieve stress, anxiety, and the difficulties of my life.  I considered myself a Christian, too.  But now I wasn’t sure what to believe.  I also didn’t know if it really was a “Zen” experience.  It felt as if I had encountered God (God is not something Zen is concerned with), and that God was all—me, the world, my family, my dog, plants and rocks, and the entire cosmos.  In an attempt to discover more, I threw myself into reading and studying everything that I could from every single religion on earth.  I knew from reading Zen books that it seemed to align with what Eastern religions always called “enlightenment.”  I read Hindu books—discovering that the word “Hindu” really encompasses a multitude of different religions and philosophies—along with Sufi, Sikh, and, of course, a lot of Buddhist texts.  I eventually returned to Christianity, as well.  It took me a number of years before I realized that—to use some Japanese philosophical terms—I was not the kind of person who could rely, at least not entirely, upon jiriki or “self-power.”  I needed tariki, “Other-power.”  I had to rely upon a power beyond the self.  Call it God, call it a Higher Power, call it what you will.  For me, it was and is, Christ, the Logos, the incarnation made flesh of the Tao, of Brahman, of the All-in-All.*+

     How did I come to that realization?  Well, it took me years and years of mistakes.  After that very powerful kensho, I often “used it” in a manner that is called “spiritual bypassing.”  Even though the experience did eventually leave me, I could “drop into it” at will, whenever I wanted.  I used it to avoid my personal problems and issues.  I got divorced, married again, then divorced again.  I had affairs. I developed a severe opioid addiction.  I eventually became severely depressed and even contemplated suicide on more than one occasion.  (Brief interlude: I have now been entirely sober for several years and no longer suffer from crippling depression, much less suicidal ideation, but that took more than just spiritual practice.  I went to a rehab center, practiced a 12-step model of recovery, and received the therapy that I needed.  It’s also something that I will always have to work on.  Part of my problem was that I was a highly functional addict.  I worked hard, trained hard, wrote a lot during those years, and was quite productive—I was also, obviously, very “spiritual”.  Functional addicts often don’t think they have a problem.)  No matter how many spiritual “experiences” that I had—including some undeniably deep contemplative states—I was in no way a “better” person.  I had, in the end, used my spirituality as a way to avoid the personal and psychological problems that I was not willing to face head on.  I won’t get into all of those details here—it would take multiple essays or a book of its own—but a kensho, or multiple kenshos, alone is not enough to become a fully alive human being.  You must also practice ethical and moral principles.  You must practice love, compassion (including self-compassion), joy, and equanimity.  To put it in Christian terms, you must strictly follow the 10 Commandments—I desecrated all of the commandments from seven ways to sundown.  “Faith without works is dead,” so to speak.  To put it in strictly Buddhist terms, kensho is part of “right meditation” and that is only one of the spokes on the wheel of the Noble Eightfold Path.  Before right meditation, and right samadhi, comes right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, and right effort.  Those are, in many ways, more important.  It’s why they come first.

     Okay, now that I have briefly discussed two of my experiences of kensho, let’s return to our first two questions.  Is it important to actually strive to have the experience of kensho?  And should kensho/satori be intentionally cultivated?  We will save the final question—can Budo practice alone cultivate kensho?—after contemplating the first two questions, as they will offer some insight for the third.

     Before discussing the importance or not of kensho and satori, let me reiterate:  The most important part of any spiritual practice you take up is the ethical/moral foundation.  At the very minimum, you must take serious the 5 precepts.  Although these are the groundwork of all forms of Buddhism—Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana—there is nothing “Buddhist” about them.  It doesn’t matter what religion you are, or if you have no religion or are even an outright atheist, your meditation—or even prayer—will not “work” unless you abide by them.  If you are unfamiliar with them, they are:

1. Refrain from taking life: Do not kill or hurt any living being, including animals.

2. Refrain from taking what is not given: Do not steal, cheat, or take things without permission.

3. Refrain from sexual misconduct: Avoid harmful, unfaithful, or exploitative sexual behavior.

4. Refrain from false speech: Do not lie, gossip, use harsh words, or deceive others.

5. Refrain from intoxicants: Avoid alcohol and drugs that cloud the mind and reduce mindfulness.**

     Although these seem straightforward, they have more depth to them than most realize.  For example, I wrote above that I disobeyed all of the Commandments, including “thou shalt not kill.”  I did not literally kill anyone, but I did, even if only in my thoughts, wish ill-will upon others, and have anger in my heart towards other people, especially those who caused me emotional harm.  If you will take these 5 precepts seriously, looking over your thoughts and actions on a daily basis without any degree of “whitewashing” them, you will discover that you do transgress these precepts.  In our modern world, sexual misconduct is one that is most certainly whitewashed.  If you have lustful thoughts towards another, you are in danger of transgressing it, simple as that.  Of course, thoughts in and of themselves are not “bad.”  You have to actually act upon those thoughts, but if you cultivate the thoughts long enough, then eventually you will act upon them.  And even the thoughts alone can inhibit you from going deep in your meditative practice.

     This might seem odd for anyone who hasn’t seriously practiced meditation, but you will never go truly deep in your meditation without also being deeply ethical.  Deep ethics equals deep meditation.  Shallow ethics equals shallow meditation.  Here’s the thing, though.  You can have a deep kensho experience without being ethical.  My earlier life was a testament to this.  But it won’t take root and be truly transformative without occurring alongside an ethical life.  All you have to do is look at the number of high-profile Buddhist teachers in this century—primarily Zen and Tibetan—who turned out to be serial sexual predators.  Often, their students—even those who were victims of their predation—would say that, despite their behavior, these teachers had a presence and a “power” to them that couldn’t be denied, one that was capable of transforming others’ consciousnesses while in their proximity.  Two things can be true at the same time, by the way.

     So, the first important factor is that a practitioner must take ethical and moral behavior seriously when practicing Zen, whether kensho is strived for or not.  But it’s possibly even more important if stress is placed on the importance of having an experience of awakening.  We don’t need more “Buddhist masters” who go around having sex with half their female students—or male, for that matter; I’m pretty sure Chogyam Trungpa jumped into bed with anyone who got within his proximity.  It’s also not just sexual ethics that are important, though that does get most of the attention-grabbing headlines.

     Okay, even when ethics and morals are taken seriously, I see two problems in modern Zen.  (We will stick with Zen, since that is what I am familiar with the most, though these might apply to other schools and other religions entirely.)  First, in some Zen schools, the focus is almost entirely on having an “experience” of kensho.  This keeps Zen largely an intellectual experience that is “in the head,” whereas just as much attention needs to be placed on the bodily experiences, as well.  You may have read statements from ancient Zen masters where they said something to the extent that Zen must “pervade the bones and marrow” of the practitioner.  This is often read as mere poetry or perhaps poetic metaphor, but that’s just not the case.  Such phrases were meant to be taken literally.

     In his book Hidden Zen: Practices for Sudden Awakening & Embodied Realization, the Rinzai Zen (and Aikido) master, Meido Moore writes this “The late Song dynasty Chan Buddhism that arrived in Japan during the Kamakura period was marked by a strong emphasis on energetic vitality and inner cultivation of the body-mind’s subtle energetic system. Some Zen practitioners today lack knowledge of such practices and express surprise upon hearing about them, asserting that such an emphasis in Japanese Zen must be a later accretion perhaps originating with Hakuin and his heirs. But the early records of Zen in Japan reveal otherwise. Practices of energetic cultivation—and the signs of their fruition—were of great concern to thirteenth-century Japanese Zen practitioners, and also to the Chinese Chan masters and monks that had emigrated to Japan to teach them.”***

     The second problem is almost the exact opposite.  Much of Zen in the West—in fact, probably the majority of it—is almost entirely a psychological approach.  These are typically Soto Zen teachers who not only don’t place emphasis on kensho, but they view zazen as little more than a means of dealing with stress, becoming calmer, and helping one cope with anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues.  I don’t think there is anything “wrong” with this approach, and in fact it might be what is needed for some practitioners, but it is at best incomplete.  At worst, after many years of practice, the Zen student discovers that it hasn’t helped them very much to alleviate their suffering, either.  After all, the Buddha—or so the early Theravada suttas teach—said that he taught one thing and one thing only: suffering and how to end it.  And to do so, again, requires the whole of the Noble Eightfold Path, not just “right meditation.”  I must add that this 2nd problem isn’t just a Western one.  There are several popular, modern Japanese authors—who also happen to be monks—whose books are quite similar to many “mindfulness-only” Western authors.  The Japanese writers Shunyo Masuno, Ryunosuke Koike, and the Korean monk Haemin Sunim are examples off the top of my head.

     This 2nd, modern approach is a far cry from some of the great Soto Zen masters of the 20th century, such as Kodo Sawaki, Kosho Uchiyama, and Taisen Deshimaru.  It is true that they would have treated kensho as “nothing special” and would have told their students to just continue sitting, ignoring whatever experiences arose in their mind-states during zazen, but their Zen was not to just achieve a sense of calm or peace-of-mind.  It’s just that, for them, zazen itself was kensho, satori, or enlightenment.  This approach—as evident from the kensho of my youth—was quite capable of “manufacturing” an awakening experience, but it also kept such an experience from going to the Zennist’s head, thinking that they were enlightened, had achieved some sort of Buddhahood, or were some kind of awakened “master.”  However, I do think that the approach of these imminent Zen teachers may have not been quite correct, in that it might diminish the importance of kensho altogether.  I think what is needed is a balance.  An experience of kensho should be cultivated, even if one is practicing with the shikantaza-only method within Soto Zen, and, in fact, it should even be expected.  At the same time, everything shouldn’t be just about having an experience of satori.  The kensho, once experienced, should be considered “nothing special” and the practitioner should just continue to practice as before.  Recognize the encounter with one’s True Nature, but also acknowledge that it might not be a “complete” experience, and that it will take years and years of continued practice before you will be able to say, with certainty, that it was a genuine experience of awakening.

     Another way to look at modern problems in Zen is through the lens of samatha and vipassana, or “tranquility” and “insight.”  Usually, these are seen as the twin aspects of Buddhist meditation, and are to be cultivated within meditative praxis.  In some schools, particularly within the entire “vipassana meditation” of the West but also in certain Tibetan Buddhism, samatha is seen as a “lesser” practice and vipassana as the “higher” one.  I think this is erroneous, personally, but it’s also outside of the scope of this essay, so I will only touch upon it briefly before moving on to my samatha/vipassana “point” that I will attempt to make.  When I first encountered “insight meditation” after my 2nd kensho experience—throwing myself headlong into all I could discover about early Buddhism—I made the assumption that, coming from Theravada, it was probably the “original” meditation technique taught by the historical Buddha.  The more I studied, however, I discovered that it was (and is) a more recent development, originating in Burma in the late 19th, early 20th century, from Ledi Sayadaw and subsequent Burmese teachers, and then promulgated in the West through centers such as Spirit Rock and various “insight meditation societies.”  However, when you read the Pali suttas—and study early Buddhist teachings, now commonly just referred to as EBT—you realize that vipassana is not a meditation technique but is, rather, the result of samatha meditation.  Vipassana is the insight that you gain from various tranquility practices, most particularly the deep jhana meditations.  When the Buddha discusses meditation in the EBTs, it is almost entirely in reference to jhana.  Vipassana is the result of jhana—from a Zen perspective, you might say that satori is the result of deep samadhi.  I mention this so that you will understand what it is that I am referring to in the vipassana discussion that follows.

     One could argue that my powerful kensho experience was an insight (vipassana) into the nature of existence, but it didn’t “stick” because I lacked an embodied tranquility (samatha) that accompanied it.  The lack of calm also resulted in my continuous mental health and addiction issues for a number of years after the experience, not to mention my moral lapses.  Although maybe not entirely correct, I think that argument would be, for the most part, accurate.  Many cult leaders—or just cultish leaders of legitimate Eastern religions—may indeed have a profound nondual experience.  But without the deeply embodied tranquility—and the ethical framework that must be in place for that tranquility to be true—to go along with it, the result is an imbalanced personality.  Excuses are then made by their followers that they are “crazy wisdom” teachers, or some other nonsense such as that.  I mean, hey, I think tales of Drukpa Kunley* are quite enjoyable, but he should not in any way be the model for modern spiritual teachers.

     On the other side of the coin, you can have samatha without vipassana.  This is, in fact, what the majority of “spirituality” in the world consists of—but also why it doesn’t truly transform a person.  Consistent meditation, prayer, and other spiritual practices will produce a calm that pervades your entire life.  If you take your ethical life just as serious as your spiritual one, then that calm will also become quite deep.  But it’s also possible to be serene and peaceful 24/7 and not have any insight into reality or develop an absolutely transformative wisdom.

     When one has a mushin insight, whether it’s in Budo practice or not, it needs to also be accompanied by an embodied tranquility.  I think that this is also much harder, and much more rare, than most practitioners realize.  If you think that you are someone who is capable of both, the chances are that you are wrong.  When you experience a kensho or even any kind of “flow” state, it is quite energetic.  It feels incredibly “freeing” and even ecstatic.  But because of that ecstatic energy, it’s very hard to be in an embodied tranquility simultaneously.  You may, at times, experience both of them simultaneously, or are capable of “handling” both for a limited amount of time, but I doubt it will last.  If you think you “got it,” then you, in likelihood, do not!  I think it takes decades of consistent training for a combined samatha/vipassana awareness to become your regular, daily life experience.

     To summarize so far, yes, I think an experience of kensho is important and, yes, it should be cultivated.  However, once experienced, it should also—in the words of the great Budo Zen masters of the Soto tradition—be considered “nothing special,” and the Zennist should continue with her training as if no awakening has occurred.  This will help to ensure that it doesn’t go to one’s head, and that the practitioner doesn’t think that she is somehow awakened or is now enlightened.  Both tranquility and insight should be the goals, and for those to permeate the marrow of one’s bones, a highly ethical and moral life must, also, be cultivated.

     With all of this in mind, we now can get around to our final question.  Can the practice of Budo by itself lead to kensho?  Some of the famous Zen-influenced Budo texts, such as those by Yagyu Munenori, Takuan Soho, and Miyamoto Musashi, certainly imply this, if not outright assert it.  In short, I think that the answer is “no,” with some caveats.  I think when Musashi wrote about mushin, it is what we would now call a “flow state” but was not (and is not) an outright experience of true kensho.  Instead, it is more an expression of the kensho experience, and it can help one to embody the experience of satori in daily life, not just in the dojo.  A budoka, if they are serious about their Zen Budo, must—just as with the spiritual practitioner—have a daily spiritual practice and must cultivate an ethical life.  Anything less, and the martial artist is simply deluding himself about his attainments.

     If anyone is reading this and struggling with addiction, please feel free to email me.  I would gladly offer some of the practices that have helped me in my sobriety, and sometimes it just helps to have a conversation.  If you have any comments or questions about anything else in the essay, leave them in the “comments” section below or, again, feel free to send me an email if you would prefer private correspondence.

     As mentioned at the start, I’m currently working on an article on my son’s high-volume, high-frequency training, and how he used it to build such an outstanding physique.  Look for it in a couple of days or so, depending on how long it takes, and if I work on anything else at the same time.  In the meantime, if you’re looking for less Zen and more strength and power articles, look over the blog or consider purchasing one of My Books.  Click on the link for info on all of my books that are currently available for purchase.

*This is not just a “Zen” thing.  American Buddhism, for the most part, is completely overrun by liberal politics.  Buddhism in the good ol’ U.S.A. (and this might be true for Europe, as well; anyone who reads this from there can tell me) is basically liberal Christianity, just with the Buddha replacing Christ.  Imagine if the only form of Christianity in America was the Episcopal Church or some other “progressive” version of it—that’s essentially Buddhism in America.  Of course, if you go to Asia, you don’t find that to be the case.  In Japan, a lot of the Zen Buddhists—as with Budo practitioners—have, historically, been rather “right wing” in their politics.  When I spent a summer in Thailand on a work assignment over a decade ago, the Theravada Buddhists that I met were decidedly “conservative,” especially the monastics, though the lay Buddhists were also quite a bit more conservative than their secular counterparts.

*+I am always a bit hesitant to write about my Zen-Christian beliefs.  I have had Christians email me that I’m a “heretic” and not a Christian because of my practice of Zen—sometimes even karate is considered “demonic” by certain fundamentalist strains.  I have also had Zen practitioners message me that I shouldn’t be Christian.  When I first converted to Christianity, I did “set aside” my Zen practice.  But I realized that it is a deep part of who I am and who I have always been, the same way that someone from an Asian country who grew up in a Buddhist household, but then converts to Christianity, doesn’t completely lay aside his heritage but, rather, embraces it within his Christianity.  I “transcended” Zen, but I didn’t get rid of it.  Rather, it’s a matter of “transcending and including” or “both/and” thinking.  For anyone interested in the practice of Zen and Christianity together, I suggest the following books: Zen and the Bible by Kakichi Kodowaki (with, perhaps surprising to many, a forward by Joseph Ratzinger who would go on to be Pope Benedict XVI), Christian Zen by William Johnston, Mystics and Zen Masters by Thomas Merton, Living Zen, Loving God by Ruben Habito, We Walk the Path Together: Learning from Thich Nhat Hanh and Meister Eckhart by Brian J. Pierce (a Dominican monk), The Silence of Unknowing by Terence Grant, and I Want You to Be: On the God of Love by Tomas Halik.  Halik’s book is not really a Zen book, but it does discuss Zen quite a bit and his theology is one that I’ve always found alignment with my own beliefs on Christ.

**Taken from lionsroar.com/buddhism/five-precepts

***Moore’s book is the only book written by an American that I can think of, on the importance of energetic, bodily cultivation practices arising along with one’s kensho experiences.  In fact, reading it might be a shock for the majority of Westerners who have practiced Zen for decades and have never once heard of such practices.  However, if you are a Budo practitioner who is familiar with practices of Ki cultivation, nothing that he writes will be a shock whatsoever.  In fact, it will make perfect sense to you, as you will have heard much of the same advice in the dojo.  I doubt it’s much of a coincidence that Moore was a devoted Aikido practitioner before turning his life entirely towards Zen practice.

*Kunley is revered in Bhutan.  One of the things that he was known for was “enlightening” others with his “Divine Thunderbolt.”  You know, by removing it from his pants.