Satori

This is the word used in Zen teaching to designate the promise or payoff of Self-realization, of finding the answer to the question "Who am I?"

Synonyms include self-definition, awakening to our Inner Self, sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, and becoming the Truth.

It's often confused, though, with the lesser amazement of the "aha!" experience, when after great tension and bewilderment something becomes perfectly clear to us.

Every one of us lives in the expectation of eventually finding perfect happiness (the truth of which took me some time to accept), and we believe that some modification either of the outside world or within ourselves is the key that will unlock the door to this lost paradise.

The truth, according to Benoit and to Zen, is that this paradise is not something past or future but has always been our state and is our eternal being.

But something keeps us from becoming aware of it. Becoming conscious of that state is not something that will be available to us in the future but is offered to us from this moment, at every moment.

From ( H Benoit. (The Supreme Doctrine)