Kenshō Series: Bancroft

Kenshō Series: Hetherington

Kenshō — a Japanese Zen Buddhist term meaning “seeing nature” or “true essence” — refers to an initial, sudden glimpse or insight into one’s true nature, ultimate reality or the absolute. The experience is a temporary psychological state, a moment of awakening that signifies a fundamental shift in perception and understanding of oneself in the world. Kenshō is said to be not full enlightenment, but rather a critical first awakening that serves as a starting point for further training and integration of this understanding into daily life. “Kenshō” is often used interchangeably with “satori.”

From the Moon to Kenshō

“It wasn’t until after we had made rendezvous with our friend Stu Roosa in the Kittyhawk command module and were hurtling earthward at several miles per second that I had time to relax in weightlessness and contemplate that blue jewel-like home planet suspended in the velvety blackness from which we had come.

“What I saw out the window was all I had ever known, all I had ever loved and hated, longed for, all that I once thought I had ever been and ever would be. It was all there suspended in the cosmos on that fragile little sphere.

“I experienced a grand epiphany accompanied by exhilaration, an event I would later refer to in terms that could not be more foreign to my upbringing in West Texas, and later, New Mexico. From that moment on, my life was irrevocably altered.

“What I experienced during that three-day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness.”

— Dr. Edgar Mitchell, The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey Through the Material and Mystical Wolrds

A/k/a, kenshō in outer space.

Zen and the Art of Walt Whitman

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers.

And I become the other dreamers…

Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake.

— Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was subject to kenshō, that spontaneous state described by Dumoulin as “… an insight into the identity of one’s own nature with all of reality in an eternal now, as a vision that removes all distinctions.”

“He had shared the experience of countless people, irreligious by common standards, who had flashes of illumination or ecstasy — even Caliban saw the clouds open and ‘cried to dream again,’” Justin Kaplan wrote. “These experiences have a remembered correlative or ‘trigger.’ With Whitman it was the sea, music, the grass, the green world of summer. The rhythm of these experiences is sexual and urgent — tumescence, climax, detumescence — but the ‘afterglow’ may last a lifetime, as it did with him, and he invited it an prolonged it through poetry; the poet was the shaman of modern society — a master of ‘the techniques of ecstasy.’”

The Total Stillness of Something Absolutely New

“One hot afternoon, during summer vacation from grammar school, I wandered around in the yard looking for something to do,” wrote actor Richard Chamberlain in his memoir Shattered Love, describing his 7-year-old self.

Richard Chamberlain

“None of my pals seemed to be around, and I was bored. For want of a better idea I climbed the walnut tree and sat on the wall, leaning back against the restful curve. A light summer breeze ruffled the leaves as I watched the occasional car or pedestrian pass on the street. I gazed up at the over-hanging branches and hoped some of our local feathered friends — mockingbirds, blue jays and doves — would come and visit me.

“As I sat there motionless, something absolutely new happened to me. I was filled with total stillness. It was almost as if I wasn’t even breathing, almost as if I’d become a part of the wall, part of the tree. And in this stillness I was observing everything around me with complete neutrality, with no thought at all. There seemed to be observation, but no observer.

“I don’t know how long this lasted — probably not more than half an hour, possibly less. I did not know what was happening to me. I only knew that my thinking went silent, and my sense of self disappeared. I experienced absolute simplicity and peace.”

I had two similar experiences — once when I was about 5, on the sunny lawn in front of our house in Effingham, and another time when I was about 22, watching a fan revolve on a pleasant summer afternoon.

Telling no one of his experience, Chamberlain recalled that he very much wanted to feel that sense of vibrant, alert peace again — but never did, until 60 years later.