satori

noun

1. (uncountable, usually)A sudden inexpressible feeling of spiritual awakening or enlightenment, the result of meditation and study.

   “[B]y his ſublime underſtanding and reputed great knovvledge in divine myſteries he obtain'd, and ſtill keeps, the name and repute of a Godo, that is, a perſon bleſs'd vvith a divine and moſt accute underſtanding, vvhom they ſuppoſe to be able to find out by his Satori, or Enthuſiaſtic Speculations, ſuch miſterious truths, as are far beyond the reach of common knovvledge.”

   “He [Darma or Bodhidharma] lived only upon vegetables, and thought this to be the higheſt degree of Holineſs, to paſs days and nights in an uninterrupted Satori, that is, a contemplation of the Divine Being.”

   “"Slim your hips the Zen way," Juliana said. "Lose pounds through painless satori. I'm sorry, Miss Davis. I'm woolgathering."”

   “It was as if [Neal] Cassady […] was in a state of satori, as totally into this very moment, Now, as a being can get.”

   “Zen teaches that we are all already enlightened, some of us simply don't choose to realize it. If we choose to embrace Satori, then we are enlightened.”

2. (figuratively, uncountable, usually)Enlightenment, epiphany.

   “What happened to the Merry Band on its trip during the summer of 1964 ranged from the cosmically sublime to the ridiculous, from peak ecstasy to full-tilt satori. To say that they were merely high would do a disservice to how stoned they really were, […]”

3. (countable, usually)A mutant gene of Drosophila, a genus of fruit flies, that causes homosexual behaviour in males (specifically, courtship directed to other males).

   “We have isolated a new Drosophila mutant, satori (sat), the males of which do not court or copulate with female flies. […] We have screened about 2000 fly lines with single P-element insertions for altered sexual behavior, yielding a mutant named satori (sat; nirvana in Japanese), the males of which do not court or copulate with females. Instead, sat males exhibit homosexual courtship.”

   “[T]he primary site of action of the fru gene should be in the neural cells. satori,^([sic]) one of the P-insertion alleles of fru which we isolated, carried the lacZ gene of E. coli as a reporter, and β-galactosidase expression was found in a subset of brain cells including those in the antennal lobe in the satori mutant.”

   “In Drosophila the satori (sat) mutants of males do not court or copulate with females but have sexual interest in males.”

4. (Japanese)A yokai (“supernatural monster”) having the form of a mind-reading monkey-like creature said to dwell in the mountains of the historical Japanese provinces of Hida and Mino (present-day Gifu Prefecture).

   “The Satori appears in [Toriyama] Sekien's Konjyaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki as a hairy, ape-like, mountain-dwelling creature that can read people's minds[…].”

   “Satori is a ghost that can read people's thoughts and haunts the mountains. The hairy Satori appears in an Edo-period book titled Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki. According to the book, Satori can read people's minds, but will not harm them. Even if a frightened person plans to kill him or her, Satori reads his or her mind and simply runs away before he or she can do any harm.”

   “This is most likely a type of Yokai called a Satori. They have the ability to read people's minds. And like with Satori, the only way to get rid of them is with a sudden, unexpected attack. […] The ability to read minds is dangerous, but it doesn't give the ability to predict sudden actions.”

5. (alt-of, alternative, uncountable)Alternative form of satori.