Stephen Mugen Snyder, Roshi describes the map of Awakening in the Zen tradition as having three levels: kensho, satori, and daigo-tettei. This is an excerpt from Mugen Roshi's "Demystifying Awakening Mentoring Group" - April 11, 2026.
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Transcript
In Zen, The term Kensho is used generically to mean any level of awakening. For me to confirm an awakening, I want to witness and I want to feel three things in the student. I want to feel a significant experience of absence of self. What would traditionally be called no-self. And the felt sense of this is that normally if someone asks, Who are you, Or tell me about yourself, We all turn inward and we make contact with a variety of things, Our body, Our mind, Our thoughts, Memories. And so we have this host of ways to identify ourselves. This is my name, This is who I am physically, This is what I do for a living, This is my education. My relationships, My interests, You know, Whatever we can come up with. There's lots of ways we can have what I call the markers of me. And when we're in contact with deep no-self or absence of self experience, We can't answer that question. If someone were to ask, Which I frequently do, Who's speaking? Who's here. When they self-reference, When they turn inward, They can't find an answer. There's legitimately and honestly Nothing that comes up in response. So that's one of the ways that absence of self will appear. If someone had just that experience, Then that would be a no self or absence of self experience, Which are. Very valuable and important to have. Because we can see, We can feel very much alive and fully functional without having a self operating in this moment. So again, This lets us build trust in this process. And for people that do have awakening experiences, One of the common. . . Communications they make. Or say to me is that they find operating or functioning with absence of self to be much easier. Than functioning with the cell. So it isn't a sense of a loss that's. . . Problematic. It's something that does take some getting used to. But it does feel more. . . It feels more. . . I think a primary sense. So it feels more fundamental is what I'm saying. So there's absence of self as one component. The other is there needs to be a very deep unity, A non-dual oneness experience of love. And so this is where the way I present the absolute, There's the unmanifest, Which has. . . Absence is its primary quality emptiness also peace and stillness as we did in the last meditation we were orienting to the unmanifest absolute And visually, It'll appear as that gray-black, The absence of all color. And the manifest absolute is. . . In effect, It's opposite, And it's characterized visually as a brilliant brightness. If we had to pick a color, We'd say a bright, Brilliant white. But again, That's not actually a white. The concepts don't quite work. But the qualities, The functions of the manifest absolute, Are an unconditioned unborn love so a love that always exists and loves all beings equally and fully. There's no preference. There's no less than or more than with this love. There's also pure presence, Pure. Beingness. The immediacy, The hereness, The nowness of the absolute. When you're in contact, You feel that there's a seatedness to it. That's the quality of presence of the absolute. And then there's pure awareness, Which is awareness without reflection. Meaning we make contact, But we can't compare it to a memory or prior experience. It's a direct experience without concept. So those are the functions of the absolute. If someone were having a Kensho experience, They'd be deeply seated in. The absence, The no-self experience. They'd also be deeply seated in the unity, Love, And presence of the absolute. And then finally, The third component would be a recognition, A deep, Aha of this is my true identity. This is who I really am. So you can have the different pieces. You can have the no self. You can have the unity. And people do on retreat or working in these groups. They can have one or the other. They can have both. But without the recognition, That still would not be a kensho. So I'm looking for all three, And there's. . . Ways that it appears and there's an energy to it and there's usually some type of reactivity from the person. From experiencing these. So all of that are the things that I look for. In that experience of Kensho. The Kensho can be of a variety of duration so some people could have the experience it could last minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months. The shorter the experience, The more shallow the Kensho is the perspective of the Zen tradition. So if one was abiding in no self for a matter of weeks or months, That would be quite a deep experience, Quite a deep Kensho. Because they would be functioning in much of their life without having that normal sense of me operating as the primary identity. So it's quite impactful and long-lasting the longer it lasts. And there can be many cancer so It's not like you have one and you've checked the box. It doesn't work like that. We can have many, Many Ken shows. I've had countless. I don't even know how many. Ken shows, Because often in different practices, Like working with koan practice, Each colon that gets resolved there can and will be a little mini Kensho, A recognition and opening of the absolute. Awakening is the absolute awakening to itself. So we can't say that I is an individual as a personality awakened. The personality is not part of the experience at all. And that can be quite. . . Confusing to hear, But essentially your deeper nature has the experience. The personality is not part of that. So part of the integration of any awakening experience is. . . Integrating that experience to the point that it will impact and will make some changes in the personality. One of the pieces of advice I give to folks after an awakening is that they want their outside to match their inside. So we all need to be looking at our life and our reactivity. The ways we express ourselves to see if we're congruent with our experience within, If we're congruent with the awakening experience. So this is part of the expected changes. And integration. An expression of awakening. So if the. . . If the awakening experience. Is more sustained. It lasts for weeks or months. It could be moving into the territory of a Satori experience. After the Kensho, We become very aware that We are. . . We have direct contact with qualities of the absolute. And our true nature. And I use the term true nature to mean the qualities of the absolute. That are abiding in your consciousness and any individual consciousness. Because all the qualities, All the functions of the absolute are here in each of our consciousness. So with the Satori experience, There's something that I call the 51% rule. And my observation is if 51% or more of consciousness has this experience, Meaning it's long lasting and impactful enough. That the majority of consciousness is part of that experience then there's a shift where the personality is no longer the foundation operating for this individual. True nature becomes the foundation. Personality will still be working. For both the Kensho and the Satori. After those experiences, It'll come back a little weaker, A little softer, But it does return. And for the Satori experience, Again, When they check in, To see who they are, They're going to be meeting qualities of the absolute in their true nature. And that is a big shift because then one is trying to express that, Integrate that into one's life. So that's part of the embodiment. Function or practice after awakening. That consciousness. So there still is going to be a sense of self. For the Satori experiencer. It won't be present all the time. It'll be some of the time. So sometimes they'll have no sense of self. And be functioning in their life, And sometimes they will have. There'll be triggers happening. And in the process afterwards, We're still working whatever material is arising. I encourage students to really watch for their overreactions in life. The overreactions are typically great ways for us to see where undigested material exists. Where deep wounding what i call the core wound is abiding and what its message is. And so. . . I include working the personality material as we're deepening our practice. So we become more and more refined individuals. In effect, The way I language it is, The vessel becomes more sturdy. To hold a deeper and deeper experience of the absolute. We don't ignore the personality. We don't ignore. . . Our proclivities, We work with all of it. And I think that's essential to do. My early teachers in the Zen tradition, Many of which did not work any personality material. Most of which in my opinion now had deep emptiness experience, Absence experiences, But didn't have the unity or love experiences. Many of them, If you went into them and said, I'm feeling this oneness of love for everything, I'm falling in love with everybody and everything I see. They would have no idea what you were talking about. And I had one teacher even say to me, This is not a realization or understanding that we care about. Just turn away. Go back to your sitting so there was a real rejection of that kind of experience Luckily today, It's becoming more and more integrated. Into the Zen tradition, Slowly but it is. But in the lineage that I'm anchoring, It's an essential part. We have to have, Again, Both that emptiness, The absence, And the love experience for the awakening. So with that Kensho experience, The. . . The sense of self becomes even softer. In our experience as true nature begins to be our foundation. We're still watching all our behavior, Some of the attributes of who we are, Who we take ourselves to be. Get purified in the awakening experience. Many do not. Many have to be worked. Individually. And this is part of what I do in one-on-ones. And I have a student here, Zenshin, Who has started doing one-on-ones as well. And that's part of the work that we do is supporting people to work with the different vulnerabilities. That humans carry around so we can identify them, Be with them. Learn to make choices about them. One of the big shifts that happens for people on the path is initially we're all identified. With our dysfunctions. And so when we behave badly, Will take an attitude or an approach that this is just me. This is how I do it. I was around someone recently who had a really bad temper. They angered easily. Any little slight would cause them to roar into anger. And I asked them about it. Just, You know, Is this common for you? They're not a student. They're just someone I knew outside. And they said, This is how I am. If people don't want me to get angry, They shouldn't irritate me or they shouldn't trigger me. So there was no responsibility for the anger itself. And no willingness to explore it. But it was a default setting for this person. Because it was who they were, They were not able to work it, Even if they wanted to. So part of what Doing these journeys into the Absolute affords us is we begin to see our behavior. As a function, A choice. So rather than this is me, We begin to realize this is what I choose. This is the pattern that I've learned or established. Or taken on from family or society or culture. And so once it begins something that we do rather than who we are, Then we can work with it. And that lets us examine it. And also it gives us choice points. When we get triggered and we would normally have an anger response, We can stay with the vulnerability that's getting triggered, Which is usually some form of weakness or incapacity. And so rather than feel the weakness or incapacity, We show a kind of faux strength. Working with the vulnerability of the weakness, Staying with that, Abiding with it. If we do that, To a certain level. Then the absolute will open and the strength of the absolute will come in to meet the weakness And if we continue doing this kind of practice, This will be inviting the different qualities of the absolute in response. So if someone is triggered and feeling weakness, Rather than having an angry outburst protecting the personality, The strength of the absolute can come in. And we can do a more holistic response. To what we feel as a challenge. So those are the first two. Categories of awakening and again there can be multiple experiences of both. The final awakening in the Zen tradition, The Zen map of awakening, Is called Daigotete, Which translates as fuller final enlightenment. It's not actually full or final enlightenment. There is no end. Awakening we can continue to have awakening experiences basically forever. There's no limit. But the reason it's called that is because two important things happen as a result of that realization. The first is the sense of self, The sense of me, Drops permanently. There's no longer a sense of self. And uh for the dagotete realization the core wound that primary wound most people carry of worthlessness, Valuelessness. I'm broken in a way that can't be fixed is often the inner feeling. That wounding gets resolved. The belief in that. Gets highlighted in a way that one can engage and work with it. And that can be resolved to where the core wound drops. It's satisfied in effect. So that's a very. . . Challenging realization. It takes a lot of personal work. To approach that. So that's why in the awakening Dharma lineage, We include the personality work. Because this helps refine, Again, As I mentioned earlier, And also it begins to prepare us to engage and work with our core wound. Which can then lead to it being resolved. In that experience of Daigo Tete.
