The Japanese Word for Sudden Enlightenment and the Moment of Total Presence
I was introduced to yoga and meditation about 15 years ago. New yoga centers were opening in Istanbul at the time. Yoga, meditation, and mindfulness practices were not as common and well known as they are today.
We began yoga in the most basic possible form, in a single room of a modest apartment, the birthplace of Cihangir Yoga, which is today a well-known center. Twice a week, a friend and I would walk to the yoga facility after work. The building was on the coast of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, one of the world's most gorgeous locations. These lovely hikes, I believe, served as an extra source of motivation as much as yoga experience itself.
We were attending yoga sessions with excellent instructors. They are still considered to be among the greatest in the field of yoga today in Turkey. We were exposed to a wide range of yoga practices including Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Yin, and many others. But there was usually a fantastic meditation session after long and tiring yoga classes, which I was actually looking forward to.
I remember these first yoga and meditation classes with gratitude and longing today. It was my first experience of deep enlightenment, as far as I know. I worked in a highly stressful environment then and needed a lot of relaxation; yoga was also quite soothing. When the instructor said, "It's over, time to go home.", I opened my eyes in a totally different mood. I’ll never forget the feeling of enlightenment and fulfillment I had as I walked out of the building and gazed out at the sea. I've never felt anything like this before.
In the following years, I was always on the search for this moment of fulfillment. It's a one-of-a-kind sensation that only those who have felt it can clearly understand. Meditation has been a part of my life ever since. I've always been interested in going within and traveling through myself, staying in the present and appreciating that moment, sometimes regularly on a daily basis, sometimes only for a few minutes among many busy occupations.
My experience of such enlightenment is a clue to Satori in Japanese. I don’t think it is fully a Satori moment, since Satori is a peak state in Zen Buddhism to which Budist monks devote their lives to reaching.
Satori is a unique moment of enlightenment and fulfillment, a feeling of total presence that cannot be described with words. Just like what I tried to explain at the beginning of this post, if you have experienced it once, you’ll easily understand it, and if you haven't, it is a feeling that will probably arouse curiosity in you.
The moment of enlightenment of Gautama Buddha under the Bodhi Tree is described as Satori in Zen Buddhism. At the same time, it means the targeted, dreamed place to be reached.
Am I a Buddhist? No, I am not. I prefer not to put myself in any particular thought pattern. But I appreciate some of Buddhism's methods of behavior and thinking, which embrace both humans and nature, and its contribution to the good in the world.
As a believer in goodness, I believe that if there had been no person known as Buddha, another person would have pursued virtue since the world is built on a cloud of compassion and goodness. Indeed, there are many valuable people like Rumi as well. But we'll go into these complex subjects in future posts, I hope.
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