Satori : The Art of Enlightenment (Erich Fromm)

Heian Buddha (11th Century)

Erich Fromm

Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis

"The essence of Zen is the acquisition of enlightenment (satori). One who has not had this experience can never fully understand Zen. Since I have not experienced satori, I can talk about Zen only in a tangential way, and not as it ought to be talked about — out of the fullness of experience. But this is not, as C. G. Jung has suggested, because satori “depicts an art and a way of enlightenment which is practically impossible for the European to appreciate.”

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What is the basic aim of Zen ? To put it in Suzuki’s words :

“Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom. … We can say that Zen liberates all the energies properly and naturally stored in each of us, which are in ordinary circumstances cramped and distorted so that they find no adequate channel for activity. … It is the object of Zen, therefore, to save us from going crazy or being crippled. This is what I mean by freedom, giving free play to all the creative and benevolent impulses inherently lying in our hearts. Generally, we are blind to this fact, that we are in possession of all the necessary faculties that will make us happy and loving towards one another.”

We find in this definition a number of essential aspects of Zen which I should like to emphasize: Zen is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s being; it is a ways from bondage to freedom; it liberates our natural energies; it prevents us from going crazy or being crippled; and it impels us to express our faculty for happiness and love. The final aim of Zen is the experience of enlightenment, called satori.

Satori is not an abnormal state of mind; it is not a trance in which reality disappears. It is not a narcissistic state of mind, as it can be seen in some religious manifestations. “If anything, it is a perfectly normal state of mind. …” As Jöshü declared, “Zen is your everyday thought, it all depends on the adjustment of the hinge, whether the door opens in or opens out.” Satori has a peculiar effect on the person who experiences it.

“All your mental activities will now be working in a different key, which will be more satisfying, more peaceful, more full of joy than anything you ever experienced before. The tone of life will be altered. There is something rejuvenating in the possession of Zen. The spring flower will look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent.”

It is quite clear that satori is the true fulfillment of the state of wellbeing which Dr. Suzuki described in the passage quoted above. If we would try to express enlightenment in psychological terms, I would say that it is a state in which the person is completely tuned to the reality outside and inside of him, a state in which he is fully aware of it and fully grasps it. He is aware of it — that is, not his brain, nor any other part of his organism, but he, the whole man. He is aware of it; not as of an object over there which he grasps with his thought, but it, the flower, the dog, the man, in its, or his, full reality. He who awakes is open and responsive to the world, and he can be open and responsive because he has given up holding on to himself as a thing, and thus has become empty and ready to receive. To be enlightened means “the full awakening of the total personality to reality.”

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Zen is aimed at the knowledge of one’s own nature. It searches to “know thyself.” But this knowledge is not the “scientific” knowledge of the modern psychologist, the knowledge of the knower-intellect who knows himself as object; knowledge of self in Zen is knowledge which is not intellectual, which is non-alienated, it is full experience in which knower and known become one: As Suzuki has put it:

“The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of one’s being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or super‑added.”

This insight into one’s own nature is not an intellectual one, standing outside, but an experiential one, being inside, as it were. This difference between intellectual and experiential knowledge is of central importance for Zen and, at the same time, constitutes one of the basic difficulties the Western student has in trying to understand Zen. The West, for two thousand years (and with only few exceptions, such as the mystics) has believed that a final answer to the problem of existence can be given in thought; the “right answer” in religion and in philosophy is of paramount importance. By this insistence the way was prepared for the flourishing of the natural sciences. Here the right thought, while not giving a final answer to the problem of existence, is inherent in the method and necessary for the application of the thought to practice, that is, for technique. Zen, on the other hand, is based on the premise that the ultimate answer to life cannot be given in thought.

“The intellectual groove of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ is quite accommodating when things run their regular course; but as soon as the ultimate question of life comes up, the intellect fails to answer satisfactorily.”

For this very reason, the experience of satori can never be conveyed intellectually. It is

“an experience which no amount of explanation and argument can make communicable to others, unless the latter themselves had it previously. If satori is amenable to analysis in the sense that by so doing it becomes perfectly clear to another who has never had it, that satori will not be satori. For a satori turned into a concept ceases to be itself; and there will no more be a Zen experience.

It is not only that the final answer to life can not be given by any intellectual formulation; in order to arrive at enlightenment, one has to do away with the many constructs of the mind, which impede true insight.

“Zen wants one’s mind free and unobstructed; even the idea of oneness and allness is a stumbling block and a strangling snare which threatens the original freedom of the spirit.”

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