Instant enlightenment

The belief in �instant enlightenment� is part of the Zen tradition that through a sudden breakthrough, delusion will instantaneously disappear. Such enlightenment is usually called satori or kensho in the Zen tradition. What I am interested in here, though, is the relationship of such sudden enlightenment to meditation.

In Zen, the distinction made in other Buddhist schools between samatha meditation (which cultivates concentration, including positive emotion, and leads to dhyana) and vipassana meditation (which leads to insight) is denied. For Zen, an intense aesthetic state such as dhyana will contain access to wisdom, so there is no need to cultivate wisdom separately. Instant enlightenment is thus seen also as an aesthetic state which contains spontaneous and intuitive wisdom. One could not prepare for it by thinking of any kind, only by opening the intuition.

Zen meditation practices are thus renowned for their minimalism. In the most basic and common, zazen, one simply experiences the present with awareness, and no other expectations.

The intense usefulness of this practice, which gets one to focus on acceptance of immediate conditions, should not obscure the layer of metaphysical assumptions through which Zen is interpreted. To have an aesthetic experience, however refined, and label it necessarily an insight experience, seems dogmatic, hardly different from having an experience of dhyana and labelling it God. The refinement or power of an experience alone will not justify us in claiming to have gained new understanding through it, unless one can also use reason in relation to that understanding.

Change through the Middle Way can only come gradually, for we can only make progress by reaching a new and better stage relative to the last one, and by exercising judgement as to the truth. We do not get closer to the truth (except by accident) by taking a random stab at it reliant on intuition alone, and a deeply absorbed pleasant experience by itself does not get us closer to the truth (though it may set up good conditions for investigation in us). An effort at wisdom is required, which means that the intellect is required. That does not mean that intellectual activity doesn�t have limitations, or that they can�t be recognised.

Thus, however useful practices such as zazen may be when separated from Zen beliefs about instant enlightenment, the overall framework of thinking here seems quite incompatible with the Middle Way, and thus showing a major conflict within Buddhist thought.

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