Kenshō
Kenshō ( Japanese 見 性 ; seeing one's own being , recognizing nature ) is a spiritual experience in the Buddhist tradition of Zen . The term describes an initial awakening experience in which the awakened person realizes his own true or Buddha nature, which enables him to work on understanding this knowledge in everyday life. Kenshō is also often translated as "self-being-look", which means that one recognizes the true nature of one's being and thereby all that is. The task for the practitioner is to transfer this state to his daily life, that is, to live according to this deeply felt knowledge.
The Kenshō experience
Through Kenshō one sees through the illusory nature of the independent self. It is in the nature of mind that every perception involves a perceived object , a perceptual process, and a perceiving subject . For example, I see you. : You - the perceived object; seeing - the process of perception; I - the perceiving subject who seems separated from the perceived objects in this way. The introspection of trying to understand the ego of a perceiving subject leads to the realization that an ego is always completely dependent on the process of perception and cannot be viewed separately from the perceived objects. Kenshō is sometimes used synonymously with satori , but is generally referred to as a "small satori experience" in which the fundamental experience of enlightenment has not yet occurred.
The search for Kenshō
The personal work towards the goal of this realization is mostly a lengthy process of meditation and introspection under the guidance of a Zen master or another teacher. The underlying method is: Who am I? because it is precisely this question that leads the search for one's true nature. The first step on the way to kenshō is the thought that there is no thinking I, but that it is precisely the process of thinking that creates the illusion of an I.
The basic question of being can also (and at least in Rinzai Zen is mostly) formulated in the form of Koans , intellectually "unsolvable" tasks that are understood on a deeper level and before and with the master in Dokusan (a direct encounter one on one , the contents of which are treated as strictly confidential) are resolved by a kind of "performance". Since these tasks are almost always based on paradoxes (most famous example: show me the sound of a clapping hand), the mind becomes confused and it can happen that students sit for weeks, months or even years to answer the question and are repeatedly sent out by the master in order to continue working until the solution arises automatically in a certain “state” - mostly because the question “falls away”, so to speak.
Koans come in several collections that are "worked on" one after the other. There is deep discussion about whether this type of training based on old stories makes sense. In the Soto school of Zen, one assumes an imperceptible maturation of the student (northern school) or a spontaneous kenshō (southern school). In the eyes of Soto followers, koans are more anecdotes . Anyone who is in contact with a real master often experiences various situations that are, as it were, spontaneous, individual koans.