![]() “Satori,” in essence, means to take this gap away. ![]() “Is this person above me or below me?” “How should I talk with this person? What is appropriate?” They always have them in the back of their minds when they are talking. Someone who is very aware of, and very considerate of, peoples status in society are always aware of these gaps. These “gaps” between people’s status are called “sa”(差). Who is below and who is above in the social hierarchy is built not only into the culture, but into the language itself. Japanese society is very rigidly structured. How is that related to “enlightenment”? The path to Enlightenment: Take away the gap It’s a gerund, where if made into a phrase would be “take away the gap/difference.” Based on the writing, we infer that the meaning of “satori” is “true understanding.”īut what about the meaning beyond the writing? The Chinese character 悟 means to see clearly or understand. This brings us back to our main point, the meaning of “satori.” So we can infer that “hi” originally meant something like “royal.” What is the true meaning of “satori”? You wouldn’t catch it by just looking at the writing, but both words are formed by the word “hi” + either “ko” (for men) or “me” (for women). You can see this in the Japanese word for “prince” (hiko / 彦) and the Japanese word for “princess” (hime /姫). In Japanese, “ko” means “child” and is used for male children. It means “man.”īut when we look at another word, the word for “maiden” (otome / 乙女), we see a connection here that isn’t apparent just from the writing. What does “Otoko” really mean? By looking at the Chinese character 男 it’s simple. The thing is, this conforming of Japanese to Chinese characters obfuscates a layer of meaning as to what the words originally mean. The Japanese writing system was taken from China, so many indigenous words were given Chinese characters. Japanese is a really interesting language, because there are more layers to it when compared to other languages. Looking beyond the writing to find the meaning He was giving a talk where he talked about the concept of “Enlightenment.” What it really means, and he mentioned in Japanese the word for enlightenment is “Satori.” The man was speaking 60+ years ago and he basically brought Buddhism/Eastern Philosophy to the USA (himself being an Englishman). ![]() Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of Alan Watts talks on YouTube. ![]()
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